The year I worked on Harvest Center was the first and only glimmer of hope I had for my future at the company I’d been born into. I imagined myself heading up the charity division with all the energy my mother spent throwing herself in the public eye. Daydreamed about how the money allotted for the charity could help people. I started searching for properties for the next center, considered who we’d already trained and how many more we could get on board to help start it up.
Nearly on the year anniversary of the start of the project, she called me into her office and stonewalled me.
Harvest Center had served its purpose, and in the end, our nonprofit hadn’t been profitable enough to expand. The single center would be all there was, and I was to be moved to marketing and advertising instead.
The fight that followed was the first and only of its kind.
My life until that point had been a long string of concessions, a gradual bending of will by her hand. The charity was the center of my happiness at Bower, the culmination of my hard work. It had consumed my life, from months of planning and building to the hundreds of hours I’d spent in the kitchens and gardens there.
It was all I wanted, and she took it from me. And for once, I wasn’t going to stand for it.
Perhaps it was her shock that I’d fought back that drove her to cruelty. It was a shedding of twenty-four years of lies between us, and when the truth spilled out, it was a deluge of loathing. I told her all the ways she’d failed me, all the ways I wished she’d cared. I told her what I thought of her—that she was cruel and selfish and that I would never be like her, no matter how hard she tried.
In turn, she let me know exactly what she thought of me. How weak and soft I was. How my father had ruined me, how she regretted letting him have control. How stupid and naive I was—qualities that would ruin the company. That the real reason for her taking Harvest was to teach me a lesson—there was no place for gentility in this world. And if she had to break me to prove the point, then so be it.
I could very easily mark that moment as the point in my life when the world came into focus. My beliefs and dreams about what my life would be turned into a fairy tale, a silly notion of princesses and castles that was just as naive as my mother had accused me of being. And in that moment, the idealistic little girl died, and a cynical shade took her place.
A week later, she packed me off to England “to cool off.” My aunt—the younger of the two Bower sisters—ran European distribution there, and I was to learn the ins and outs of that and agriculture at our farms in Yorkshire. Two glorious years of freedom, and then she’d crooked her finger and called me back. And I wouldn’t have gone if not for her offer.
Over the course of ten years, she would shift her shares to me annually in a sliding scale, and at the end of that decade, I would only have one less share than her.
My counteroffer—she’d give me Harvest Center to do with what I pleased.
She’d agreed, and like a fool, I’d come running, sure of all the good I could do, the difference I could make. One board member was all that stood between me and outvoting her. It had been too alluring to pass up.
But now that I was back, it just felt like another trap. Particularly when she’d added my residence to her terms. What little freedom I’d stupidly thought I’d have disappeared with the snap of her fingers.
The greater good, I reminded myself. A few years of indentured servitude was nothing compared to a lifetime of opportunity.
As we ambled toward the Village, Mother continued on about some photo shoot she had planned for the two of us for the next magazine issue, some farce where we were to go out to one of our farms in Long Island and pretend to be the best of friends—probably all rainbows and sun hats with a basket of flowers between us. I’d been groomed my whole life for this, and I’d never dreaded it more than right now.
And trust me, I’d dreaded it a lot.
I didn’t want photo shoots and board meetings and, least of all, legal meetings regarding the Bennets. What I wanted was to throw myself into Harvest Center and pretend like I was anywhere but back in my mother’s clutches. What I wanted was the sanctuary of my room where my books and my garden waited for me. I wanted my little joys.
Do what you have to do, Maisie, my aunt Ava would say. And do good where you can. The only way to survive the Bowers is through small sacrifices.
And so I would. I’d tune Mother out. Show up everywhere she required me to be. Keep my mouth shut as often as was in my power. I’d play her game. And in return, I’d get the keys to the kingdom and do some real good.
At least I had my father to keep me company. We were two lone soldiers waging war against a tyrant. And by war, I meant we hid in the woods, stayed quiet, and hoped she kept on marching toward whatever town she was about to sack.
I watched rain streak the window, offering the occasional noncommittal noise or disinterested nod, which was all the encouragement my mother needed to prattle on about the magazine, some photographer she’d fired, butting heads with the board, a shopping excursion, and a new designer handbag she needed to pick up from Saks.
Mercifully, we pulled up in front of our home, and instantly, I exited the confined space. A deep sigh of fresh air brightened things considerably.
Ours was a beautiful home in the Village, an extravagant mansion built sometime in the late 1800s, but not by my ancestors, like the Bennets. No, this old historic home had been purchased by my mother, I suspected simply because the Bennets had something she didn’t.
As big as she talked regarding putting the Bennets in their supposed place, her insecurity spoke louder. The feud was old and tired, the vengeance bred into her so deep by my grandmother, it seemed inescapable. I used to think it was competition that drove her, but now that she was after the Bennets’ throats, I realized it was deeper than that. But I guessed she’d never read about the good old Count of Monte Cristo. If she had, she’d know revenge never paid off. A miserable soul was a miserable soul.
No amount of petty fuckery would change that.
She was still talking as we climbed the steps, the door opening before we reached it by our estate manager, which was just a fancy name for a butler. We had a cook and a maid too—they occupied the servants’ quarters. Because this ridiculous house I called home actually had such things as butlers and servant’s quarters.
“Hello, Mrs. Bower,” James said coolly, warming when he turned to me and frowned on inspection. “Maisie, did you get caught in the rain? I told you to take an umbrella.”
“You did, and you were right.”
“You should have made her take the car, James,” Mother said as she passed, never quite looking at him as she handed over her purse and coat.
“I tried, ma’am. She wouldn’t have it,” he defended, taking her things.
God forbid she hang her own coat. Or open her own door for that matter.
“Well, you should have made her anyway,” she snapped, smoothing her hair as she strode to the writing desk in the hallway. It had a chair, but no one ever sat there. It was as staged as the rest of her but had one practical use—it served as a landing pad for mail and keys. On approaching, she rifled through a stack of envelopes on its surface.
James somehow managed to look both regretful and annoyed.
I patted his arm. “He really did try his best, Mother.”