My family was the richest in Harborview, but my mother had built her entire philosophy on thrift.

Leave food on your plate, and you'd be shipped to the backcountry to work the fields for half a year.

Spend one cent more than necessary, and you'd kneel under the blazing sun until you'd repented.

If I wanted to buy something, I had to apply two months in advance and wait for her approval.

After yet another time when not having a phone nearly got me cornered by a pack of street punks, I finally broke.

I demanded an answer:

"Why does the scholarship student you sponsor get a million a year, while I have to ask permission to spend ten dollars?"

Her face darkened.

"You're going to inherit this family one day. What does a little money like that even count for?"

To punish my vanity, she dumped me deep in the mountains.

"This is exactly where Myrtle lived before I took her in. Go experience it. See for yourself what real hardship looks like."

I chased her car crying for miles. She never once looked back.

Three years later, she finally came to bring me home.

But when she saw what I'd become, the regret nearly destroyed her.

……

When my mother called my name,

I was up on the slope, gathering wild greens.

The sound of "Irene Gilbert" reached me,

and my whole body went rigid. I turned, unable to believe it.

A woman in expensive clothes stood watching me, her eyes rimmed red.

The jewels at her throat caught the light and stung my eyes.

Beside her stood a girl about my age,

also dressed head to toe in designer labels, looking like a little princess.

I rubbed my eyes and looked harder.

It took me a long moment to make them out. It was my mother, and Myrtle Fox.

I froze where I stood.

Three years apart, and my mother had raised Myrtle into something polished and refined.

That pride, that poise, ran all the way to the bone.

As if she'd been born to wealth.

My hand trembled. Without thinking, I turned to go.

My mother ran up and caught my wrist from behind.

"Irene, what's wrong?"

"Don't you know your own mother?"

I kept my eyes off her, hugging the greens to my chest, saying nothing.

She looked me over from head to foot.

Her gaze stopped on the patches sewn into my jeans, and her voice cracked.

"You've suffered. I came to take you home."

"Starting next year, I'm handing the company to you."

"Three years out here, you must understand by now how hard money is to earn. You'll be more than ready to run it as CEO."

"No need."

My voice came out hoarse as I refused, pulling my hand free.

My mother's brow furrowed.

"Still sulking?"

"I left you here three years ago to toughen you up. I did it for your own good."

And she reached for me again.

This time she reached for my right hand.

I didn't pull away. But her fingers closed on nothing.

Her face went stiff.

Stunned, she gripped my empty sleeve, her voice shaking.

"Your—your arm, where is it?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She shoved the sleeve up.

When she saw the stump, the breath went out of her and the blood drained from her face.

"Irene, what is this…"

"You little tramp! How long does it take to dig up some weeds? You're still not done?"

A man's vicious voice came roaring up from the foot of the hill, cutting her off.

My body flinched on reflex. I yanked my sleeve down, turned, and ran.

I was already married.

Three years ago my mother left me here, and not long after, I was married to Noah Fox.

My arm—he'd cut it off because I disobeyed.

With no phone, and people always watching so I could never make it out of the mountains, there was no way to call for help.

I fought it for two years. This year I finally gave up.

Noah was brutal. Come back late, and the beating would come.

A cold sweat broke over me—and then my path was blocked again.

Myrtle caught hold of me, her brows drawn tight.

"Irene, you can be angry at Mom, but hurting yourself just to play the victim? Really?"

"Sending you here broke Mom's heart too, you know."

"She's missed you all these years. Why won't you appreciate that?"

At her words, Mom's face hardened too.

"Irene, everything I did back then was for your own good, you—"

"Stop it! Just stop!"

The mention of that time tore the scream out of me before I could think.

The wild greens I'd been clutching scattered across the ground, and my breath came in ragged gasps, my face gone bloodless.

"Don't bring that up again. I'm begging you."

Mom froze, startled by how hard I'd snapped.

But Myrtle, as if on purpose, fixed her eyes on mine. "So a couple of punks almost roughed you up. It's been three years. You still can't get over it?"

My breath locked in my chest, and no matter how I fought it down, the memory came rushing back like a tide.

Three years ago, I'd represented my school at a speech contest.

On the way home, a few thugs cornered me in an alley.

Everyone knew I was the daughter of Harborview's richest woman.

They wanted money.

They searched every inch of me and didn't turn up a single dollar.

The one in charge got angry and told me to call home and ask for it.

I was crying too hard to talk, and I told them I didn't have a phone.

They thought I was lying, and that made them furious, so they beat me.

When that wasn't enough, they stripped my clothes off and took pictures.

They were going to use them to threaten my mother.

I'd always had fair skin, and the moment they saw me stripped bare their faces changed and they all rushed me at once—I struggled with everything I had, screaming until my throat tore, and only because the noise pulled a passerby in did anyone drag me out of it.

When I got home that day, I walked in on my mother throwing a birthday party for Myrtle.

A five-hundred-thousand-dollar necklace, handed over without a second thought.

That was when I finally broke.

My whole childhood, Mom raised me on austerity.

My clothes came from discount sites, and jewelry or handbags weren't even worth dreaming about.

Even buying a single book meant applying to her two months in advance.

She'd check with my teachers and classmates.

Only once she'd confirmed the book was actually useful for my studies would she give me the money.

But for Myrtle, on top of tuition, the living allowance alone never dropped below a million a year.

I smashed the birthday cake and screamed at my mother, everything inside me breaking loose at once.

"Do you have any idea what happened to me? Why couldn't you even buy me a phone?"

"We have all this money. Was it really too much to ask?"

Myrtle ducked behind my mother, cowering like I was some kind of monster.

My mother looked at the ruined cake, her face going cold.

"You're still in school. What do you need a phone for? It would only rot your mind."

"You're jealous of Myrtle, aren't you? Do you have any idea what kind of childhood she had?"

She grabbed my arm and, without another word, forced me into the car.

She brought me to Fox Hollow.

"Myrtle grew up here. You've had it easy and you still aren't satisfied, so go live the life she lived."

Panicked, I clung to her hand, past caring about my own hurt now, just sobbing that I was sorry.

"Mom, are you really going to pull me out of school just to punish me?"

"A few thugs almost assaulted me, do you understand? They took pictures of me!"

"I was wrong. I'll never do it again. Just take me home..."

My mother went still for a moment, then said flatly, "School means nothing. Your future is mine to decide, with or without it."

With that, she shook off my hand and got in the car.

I ran after her, ten miles, until the skin of my feet wore raw.

She never looked back.

In the end they dragged me back and locked me in a room.

I begged the man to let me go. Just send me home, I told him, and I would repay him however he wanted.

He only sneered.

"What are you thinking? Myrtle gave her orders. You're supposed to suffer, and suffer well."

"You still don't know what I am to Myrtle, do you?"

He watched the shock and despair drain into my eyes, and came toward me one slow step at a time.

"My name's Noah."

"I'm Myrtle Fox's cousin."

And just like that, I belonged to Noah.

Afterward I fought it. I ran.

But Fox Hollow was full of Myrtle's people, and there was nowhere to run.

Every time they caught me and brought me back, the price went up.

Noah beat me. He broke two sticks across my body.

The worst time, he'd been drinking, and he cut off one of my arms.

Blood spread across the floor, and he didn't dare call for an ambulance.

He found a couple of rags, wrapped it up, and called it done.

After that I finally learned to be obedient. I never dared run again.

A year and more has passed now, and my arm has healed.

But the wound my own mother drove through my heart only hurts worse.

And there she stood in front of me, voice cold as ever.

"After I sent you here that year, I went back and found those punks."

"Not one photo of you ever got out. They were all destroyed, and those boys are behind bars now."

"I pulled every string I had to avenge you. Can't you show me a little understanding?"

I didn't want to bring it up.

I never wanted to bring that up again!

Why wouldn't she let me go.

Did she have to watch me lose my mind!

I clawed at my own hair and broke down sobbing.

"Stop talking about it! Say one more word and I'll throw myself off this mountain!!"

She saw that something was wrong with me, that I wasn't faking it.

At last she took out her phone and called someone, I didn't know who.

"I invested three million in your Fox Hollow so you'd look after my daughter for three years."

"Why is she in this state? What happened to her?"

"And her hand—what happened to her hand? You'd better explain, or I'll see you in court!"

There was a beat of silence, and then the mayor's voice came on.

"Mrs. Gilbert, we've taken good care of your daughter Irene the whole time."

"But she's jealous of Myrtle. She wouldn't listen to a word we said."

"She broke her own arm two years ago. We wanted to call you then, and she wouldn't let us."

"This really has nothing to do with us..."

My mother hung up.

A businesswoman's caution kept her from believing the mayor outright.

She made a few more calls, and the answer came back the same every time.

The villagers were united. Every one of them said I'd broken my own arm.

That I'd always been arrogant, that I looked down on everyone.

When the last call ended, my mother was past containing her fury and swung her hand at my face.

The slap cracked across my cheek, knocked my head sideways, and left me standing there with hollow eyes.

Her chest heaved.

"It seems you still haven't suffered enough."

"If it weren't time for you to take over the company, I'd leave you here another ten years!"

Then she told the driver waiting nearby to push me into the car.

My ears were ringing, my cheek burning in waves.

I sat in the car, silent, heart gone to ash, the same as every other beating these three years.

It didn't matter where I was.

It was a beating either way.

The only thing that changed was that Noah had been swapped out for my mother.

To me, there was no difference.

Three hours later, I came home to the house I hadn't seen in three years.