Chapter 1Save Mom

My dad was a cheat and a monster. My cousin led the charge to make my life a living hell at school, forcing me to drop out.

The day my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, we held hands and walked to the roof of the tallest building in our dead-end town.

The wind was howling. Mom’s voice trembled. "Maya, honey, I can't be a burden to you…"

Tears streamed down my face as I nodded and took a half-step toward the edge.

But then, words scrolled across my vision, bright and impossible against the gray sky: [Don't jump, Maya! Your mom is Clara Vance, the long-lost daughter of the billionaire Vance family!]

[If you jump, it's all over. Your mom will die, and you'll end up in a coma. You'll spend the rest of your life in a vegetable state in one of your uncle's mansions…]

I had to be hallucinating. A side effect of total despair.

My mom and I spread our arms, ready.

[Your dad took out a million-dollar life insurance policy on you both. Your deaths will make him a rich man!]

I lunged, grabbing my mom's arm and yanking her back from the ledge.

"Mom!" I stared into her confused, hopeless eyes. "This roof… let's find a different one. Another day."

* * *

I couldn't let my worthless father get a cent.

I dragged my mom to the public library, the last two dollars in my pocket clutched in my fist.

"Maya, what are we doing here?" she whispered, her hand gently stroking my hair. "You want to look up my… my sickness, don't you? Honey, there's no cure…"

A lump formed in my throat, but I had no time to explain.

I got on a computer, opened a browser, and typed. The first result that popped up was a news article: "Chicago billionaire family still offering $1 million reward for information on daughter, missing for forty years."

My heart hammered against my ribs. I scribbled down the phone number and logged off. I ran to the pay phone in the lobby, begging a stranger for a quarter.

"Hello, my name is Maya, I'm at the downtown public library. I have information about the Vance family's missing daughter!" I practically shouted into the receiver the moment a man answered.

It was late. His voice was tired, skeptical. "Information? Kid, I've gotten thousands of calls from people claiming they have information."

"You'd better be sure about this…"

"This time it's real," I insisted, my voice cracking. "If you hang up, you'll never find her." *And I'll never be able to afford another phone call.*

There was a pause on the other end, then a shift in his tone. "Okay. Stay right where you are. I'll be there in thirty minutes."

For that half hour, we huddled on the library steps. The wind was cold. Mom, exhausted, fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.

It was the tenth day since we'd escaped from the suffocating backwoods of Appalachia. We'd been washing dishes in greasy spoons just to eat. Mom finally collapsed from exhaustion and was rushed to the local clinic.

The doctor looked at her chart, pushed his glasses up his nose, and said bluntly, "Your mother has cancer. Late stage."

My world fell apart. After paying the clinic, all I had left was two dollars. I was seventeen. How could I ever afford the treatment she needed?

So I lied. I told her she was a burden. She said she wouldn't drag me down. She said she'd jump. She didn't know I planned to go with her.

My mom grew up in those mountains, raised by my grandma to be my dad's wife. She was never allowed to go to school. After she had me, she could never have another child. My dad, Dale, was the big man in our tiny town, but he was a joke to men from outside, the guy with "no son."

He took every ounce of that humiliation and beat it into my mother.

When I tried to step in, my grandma would yank me away. "If it wasn't for you, your mother wouldn't be getting this beating."

When I cried, she'd scream, "Stop your blubbering and go wash your cousin Billy's underwear!"

If I didn't, I'd get hit, too.

I was always the best student in my class. My teacher said knowledge was the only way out of the mountains. But after a decade of straight A's, I learned that good grades couldn't save you from a punch.

My uncle started the rumor: "A girl getting too smart takes the sense right out of the boys."

From then on, my cousin Billy made my life hell. He'd corner me after school. "It's your fault I'm so dumb! You stole my brains!" The bullying got so bad I stopped going to school altogether. My dad used my tuition money to buy that million-dollar life insurance policy.

I begged my mom to run away. "Mom, please," I'd whisper at night. "Living here is worse than being dead."

She'd just shake her head, saying she was born in the mountains and would die there, that she didn't know how to survive anywhere else.

Until the day my dad brought another woman home. She was pregnant.

She looked at us like we were dirt. "You expect me to marry you when you're this broke? You've still got these two taking up space."

My mom swallowed her pride and served the woman, cleaned up after her.

Then my dad said the words that finally broke her. "If you could've given me a son, I wouldn't need a new wife. I need money. I'm marrying Maya off to old man Hemlock for a piece of his land."

My mom begged, but my dad wouldn't budge. For the first time, she fought back, grabbing a kitchen knife. He beat her until she was bloody and unconscious.

The night before he planned to take us on a "hike," she shook me awake. "Maya… let's run."