Chapter 1

When Diane Settle, my wife, saw that I was serious about calling the police, she quickly grabbed my hand and tried to talk me down.

“Honey, calm down. Let’s talk this out. There’s no need to blow this out of proportion. If word of this gets out, it won’t just embarrass you and me. Christopher will be humiliated too.”

I snapped at her furiously.

“He tried to pawn off that useless daughter of his on my brilliant Christopher, and now, he’s stolen from us. If anyone is going to be humiliated, it’s him.”

Cal Pinkham did not like that. He raised his voice and started shouting.

“A PhD student like Christopher has spent so much time buried in books that his brain has turned to sawdust. That man has no charm at all. With what he has to offer, nobody on the dating market would want him. I was doing you a favor.

“I only introduced my wonderful daughter to your family because you’re been treating me well over the years. Yet here you are, blind as a bat, looking down on Becky like your son is too good for her.

“Let me tell you something. You shouldn’t look down on a butler’s daughter. A woman from my hometown works as a housekeeper, and her daughter is a bank president. Becky is just a late bloomer. When she comes into her own, she’ll be so amazing it’ll blow you away!”

I actually laughed.

“A late bloomer? She’s forty years old and halfway to the grave. What is she waiting for, retirement? At this rate, the only thing that will finally bloom is the mold on her headstone. Well, that would blow me away, all right.”

Cal had worked for our family for years. He was always going on about his brilliant daughter. Every other word out of his mouth had something to do with “Becky”.

One day, he said he was worried Becky could not take care of herself at home alone and asked if he could bring her over for a while.

He assured me repeatedly that Becky would just play her games quietly and not cause any trouble.

I assumed he had fathered a daughter late in life and had thought she was just a child, so I agreed.

That day, I even went out of my way to buy snacks that kids liked. However, when Cal walked in with his daughter, I realized she was not a little girl at all, but a five-foot-three, two-hundred-pound, forty-year-old grown woman.

After asking around, I learned that Becky had dropped out in eighth grade and never went back, choosing video games over school. She had been spoiled rotten her whole life. Forget holding down a job, at forty years old, she could not even scramble an egg. When she got hungry, she would just eat a sleeve of crackers.

Her family was also flat broke. Her mother had a gambling problem. Every now and then, they had to move again to keep the debt collectors from showing up at their door.