Chapter 9

Ethan never thought his father would hit him over Josephine.

He cupped his cheek, stunned. "Dad, have you lost your mind?"

"You're the one who said it. You said she hasn't earned a single dollar in her life. You said she's basically a housekeeper."

"You said she's barely different from staff."

"All she did was raise me. You funded her. I didn't come out of her body. Why shouldn't I call her what she is?"

Richard seemed to age five years in thirty seconds.

His voice came out rough. "When I said those things, I was stressed, I was venting. Your mother — yeah, she's not sophisticated, she's spent her life scrubbing counters and doing laundry."

"But have you forgotten how good she was to you? Every day of your childhood?"

"The reason she's not your biological mother is a mistake I made in my twenties. But she carried you. She fed you. She put you through every grade you ever finished."

Richard said it slowly, the way you plead with someone you're losing.

He was already running the calculations. He and Ethan needed Josephine. When Ethan and Caroline had kids, someone had to help with childcare — Caroline wasn't going to quit her career. Vivienne would never touch a dirty diaper. Professional nannies were expensive, and both Richard and Ethan were suspicious of strangers in the house.

Push Josephine out now and they had no one.

And — Richard had to admit it — he still had feelings for her. Something. Forty years of sleeping next to a person leaves a residue.

Even if Vivienne ranked higher in his head, Josephine was family.

Ethan didn't care.

All he saw was that his father had hit him for a woman who shared no blood with either of them.

Decades of conditioning — quiet comments, small disrespect passed at the dinner table, the way Richard treated Josephine in front of Ethan his whole life — had settled into Ethan's bones. In his mind, Josephine wasn't even fully human. A housekeeper from outside the family would've gotten more deference.

And his father had hit him for her.

His rage crystallized.

He dropped the conversation and walked away, tossing back, "Think what you want. I am never calling her my mother again."

Richard almost collapsed. He had meant well. His idiot son couldn't see it.

Ethan was young, he told himself. Stupid. He'd come around.

Richard had been in this marriage forty years. He wasn't in the mood to blow it up now.

He made a decision right there.

When they got home, he was going to cut Vivienne off.

He and Josephine would grow old together. Quietly. Properly.

He'd said for forty years that Vivienne was his soulmate. Forty years had also taught him that soulmates aren't for daily life.

His life, if nothing went sideways, would end with Josephine's hand in his.

The problem now was Ethan. If his own son refused to support Josephine in her old age, then what?

He'd work on Ethan later. Maybe lean into Josephine's natural ability to do more — more housework, more childcare. Even if she wasn't Ethan's biological mother, she had spent forty years raising him. She deserved a quiet retirement.

Richard was busy plotting out how to gently guide Josephine into accepting a permanent role as the family's unpaid caretaker, bowing meekly in exchange for shelter.

Meanwhile, Ethan had already gone to find Vivienne.

He was hot with fury and freshly wounded. He marched straight up to her.

"Vivienne — I know. I know you're my biological mother. From now on you should just move in with us."

"As for that other woman — tomorrow, when we get back, I'll throw her out."

Vivienne had not expected any of this. Her face jumped with surprise.

She tried not to show the delight underneath. "Did your father tell you?"

"Oh, sweetheart. It's not that I didn't want to claim you. Your father wouldn't allow it."

"And honestly — with Josephine being so unstable, if she'd found out you were my son, who knows what she'd have done. I didn't want to risk you."

She put her arms around him.

"You don't know how much it meant to me today, finally hearing you call me Mom."

"I've waited thirty years. I just wasn't allowed."

And then she actually began to sob.

Ethan's eyes went wet watching the aunt who had been secretly his mother cry in his arms.

He hugged her tight. "Mom."

"Mom, I'm grown now. I make my own money. You can claim me openly. That one at home — she's not my mother. If she knows her place, we can keep her around as housekeeping."

"We'll put her in charge of taking care of you. It's the least she owes us after keeping us apart all these years."

He spat the words.

He had forgotten, entirely, the day he'd stood in the kitchen at eight years old, dragging buckets of water so his mom didn't have to lift them.

The day he'd climbed onto the step stool to wash dishes because she'd fallen asleep at the table with her apron still on.

Those memories had eroded, replaced by brighter, louder ones his father had carefully installed.

Vivienne heard him and was overcome with satisfaction.

For thirty years she had taken from Josephine. But Josephine had gotten something back, hadn't she? All those years of hearing her son call her Mom — wasn't that payment enough?

She squeezed him tighter.

And then, behind them, a voice said —

"What the hell is going on here?"