Crossing the Barrier by Martine Lewis Page B

talking to him as he was leaving for the locker room, and it reminded her Malakai was taken.
    “Lily, don’t take it like that. I’m telling you there’s an explanation.”
    “Sandra, please don’t. I know you want to think this is a fairy tale and all, but it’s not. He’s with someone else, no matter how we want to look at it.”
    In the passenger seat, Sandra crossed her arms with a sigh.
    Now that the high of the game was fading away, Lily was quickly becoming dispirited. All she wanted to do was get home, take a shower, and go to bed. She wanted to stop thinking about Malakai. Just thinking of him, of seeing him with Andrea again, made her head hurt, and prickles came to her eyes.
    God, she was tired.
    Ten minutes later, Lily pulled into her driveway, and she and Sandra got out of the car. Lily grabbed her clarinet case in the backseat and closed the door.
    “Tomorrow, wanna come over and study?” Sandra asked.
    “Sure. What time?”
    “Text me when you wake up, and we’ll go from there.”
    “K. Night.”
    When Lily walked into the house, she was immediately slammed by an array of unpleasant emotions: jealousy, envy, anger, anticipation, and more. As she brought her hand to her temple to massage the sudden pain, she discerned voices coming from the sitting room. Beatrice had company; she must have held her gathering, after all.
    As quietly as she could without looking like she was sneaking in, Lily made her way toward the stairway in the hope she wouldn’t be noticed.
    “Elizabeth,” Beatrice said, walking out of the sitting room. “You’re back.”
    Lily sometimes wondered if Beatrice didn’t have a power of her own; she always knew when Lily was there, especially when she wanted to drop something unpleasant on her.
    Again she sported this warm and welcoming smile that was anything but.
    “Yes,” she said, plastering the same smile on her own face. How she hated these games.
    “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
    Lily would have sighed had she been with anyone but Beatrice. Her mother should have known better. Lily had already told her she wanted nothing to do with meeting anyone else anymore.
    “Not tonight. I’m tired, and I want to shower and go to bed,” she said, taking a step toward the stairway, hoping she would escape the fight that was coming.
    “You ungrateful little–”
    “What, Mother? Brat? Bitch? Why don’t you say it?” Lily said, turning around and losing any pretense at civility.
    “Get in here, right now,” Beatrice ordered, pointing toward the sitting room.
    “No,” Lily answered calmly, turning again toward the stairway.
    She had put her foot on the first step when Beatrice grabbed her arm and squeezed, hard.
    “Now, Elizabeth. I won’t tell you a third time.”
    “Or what, Beatrice? What will you do?” she challenged, trying to shake her arm free.
    As Beatrice held her, Lily saw her thoughts. She was furious Lily was impeding her plans because she wanted her to meet…another boy? She had a boy and his parents over for her to meet?
    Again?
    Then she saw it.
    Beatrice wanted to marry Lily off as soon as possible, to get her out of her life so she could pretend she was single and without a child, and so she could get Lily’s inheritance—all of it.
    While Lily had known Beatrice wanted her to marry a person of her mother’s choosing as if she were a medieval princess, which, in and of itself was ludicrous, she hadn’t understood her reasons until now, and she was shocked. Had someone said something so ridiculous to Lily about their parents she wouldn’t have believed it. After all, who tried to arrange their children’s marriage in this day and age, in Texas? But that was exactly what Beatrice wanted to do, and all that to get her inheritance, as unbelievable as it sounded. What puzzled Lily even more was how Beatrice expected marrying Lily off would give her the inheritance to begin with. Lily could not understand Beatrice believed such a ploy would