Chapter 2

Tom hurried over to me, his young face etched with worry. "Mom, are you okay?"

Before I could answer, the socialite' s son, whose name I now remembered was Kevin, stepped forward. He was built like a football player, broad and thick, while my Tom was wiry and lean like a runner.

Kevin smirked at Tom. "Your mom' s a psycho. Guess that makes you a psycho' s kid, huh?"

Tom' s face flushed. "Shut up. Don' t talk about my mom."

"Make me, skinny," Kevin taunted, shoving Tom hard in the chest.

Tom stumbled back, but he didn' t fall. He dropped his bag and shoved Kevin right back. It wasn't as powerful, but it was defiant. In the next second, Kevin tackled Tom, and they both went down in a tangle of limbs.

The crowd gasped.

"Kevin!" the socialite shrieked, her poised facade cracking.

Mark reacted instantly. He lunged forward and pulled the boys apart, but his actions were completely one-sided. He grabbed Kevin, holding him gently.

"Are you okay, son? Did he hurt you?" Mark' s voice was full of concern. He checked Kevin' s hands, his face, his arms.

He didn' t even glance at Tom, who was getting up slowly, a trickle of blood coming from his lip.

I rushed to my son. "Tom! Are you hurt?"

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the blood. "I' m fine, Mom." But his eyes were fixed on his father, and the look in them was a mix of shock and deep hurt.

Mark was still fussing over Kevin. He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at a tiny scratch on Kevin' s knuckle.

"There, there, it' s just a little scrape," he said in that soft, gentle voice he used to use on me. "We' ll get some ointment on that as soon as we get home."

The blatant favoritism was like a slap in the face. It was so cruel, so public. I could feel the anger rising in my throat, hot and bitter.

I stood up and walked over to him. "What about your other son, Mark? The one who is actually bleeding. Are you going to ask if he' s okay?"

Mark finally looked at Tom, but his expression was cold, impatient. "He' s a teenage boy. He' ll live. He shouldn' t have started a fight."

"He didn' t start it!" I yelled. "Your... his son pushed him first!"

"I don' t have time for this, Sarah," Mark said, dismissing me completely. He turned his back on us and put a comforting arm around Kevin' s shoulders, leading him and his mother away from the crowd.

I wasn' t going to let him just walk away. I followed them to his shiny black car.

"We need to talk about the scholarship, Mark."

He stopped, his hand on the car door. He sighed, a long, suffering sound, as if I were the biggest burden in his life. He turned to face me, his expression hard.

"There' s nothing to talk about. The decision is made."

"What decision?" I demanded, though I already knew the answer. The cold dread from my other life was creeping back in.

"Tom is a great athlete," he said, the words sounding hollow and practiced. "But Kevin has a real shot at going pro. This scholarship, the connections that come with it... it' s a better investment for him. It' s for the best."

"The best for who, Mark? For you? Because his mother is wealthy and knows people who can help your career?"

He didn' t even have the decency to deny it. "It' s about looking at the big picture, Sarah. Something you were never good at."

I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. The big picture. I remembered a time, years ago, when Mark and this woman, a young widow named Jessica, had first become... friends. He told me her husband had died, leaving her with a young son and a mountain of debt. He said he felt sorry for her.

And I, like a fool, had felt sorry for her too. I believed him.

Back then, we had nothing. Mark was still in his residency, working brutal hours for low pay. We lived in a tiny apartment. There were times, during what felt like our own private famine, that I made soup from vegetable scraps and foraged for wild greens in the park just so we could eat. I patched Mark' s old shirts and darned his socks. I worked double shifts at the hospital to pay for his books.

All that time, he was taking money from our grocery budget to buy her lunch. He was using our struggles as a sob story to get her sympathy. He was complaining to her about his tired, stressed-out wife, while I was at home trying to figure out how to stretch twenty dollars for a week.

He had painted me as the villain and her as the saint, all while I sacrificed everything for him.

And now he was asking me to sacrifice my son' s future for them.

"So that' s it?" I asked, my voice trembling. "You' re just taking it from him? His one shot? After everything he' s worked for?"

"He can go to a community college," Mark said flatly. "It' s not the end of the world. He' s resilient."

He looked past me, at the school building, his jaw tight. He was clearly worried about the scene I' d made, about how it would look.

"Listen to me," he said, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper. "You and Tom are going to get in the car, go home, and pack your things. I want you both back in your old town by tomorrow morning. I' ll send you money. But you are not to cause any more trouble for me here. Do you understand?"

He wanted to erase us. To ship us back to the small, dead-end town we came from so he could live his shiny new life without the inconvenience of a past.

He was throwing us away like garbage. Just like he did before.