WHEN WILLIAM SAID THE "END", Mallory angrily shoved her chair backwards and headed for the exit. That was how ridiculous William's story of Jane had sounded, how improbable. There was only one version of the story as far as Mallory was concerned, that Jane Camilla Anderson, sweet-hearted and benevolent as she was, was subject to a life of cruelty, and as such, liberated herself by falling off a cliff. But in her demise, she left life, left a seed of hope in the form of a little baby. That baby was her. Mallory Trent—or Anderson, whichever made more sense.

William's story was diametrically opposed to this version, and she was not stupid enough to believe it.

"Where are you going?" William jumped in front of the exit before she had a chance to walk right through it. Mallory wanted to push him aside, but reconsidered it. He possessed twice her strength, and she also wasn't really ready to leave yet. She wouldn't leave until she made sense out of his story, or rather, until she made William believe he was full-blown crazy.

"Do you really think I'm that stupid?" Mallory asked, looking at him square in the eye. "I'm seventeen, William, not a toddler. That story—that story was bullshit!"

William seemed dumbfounded for a while. Whether it was because of her use of language or by her sudden boldness, she didn't know, and frankly, she didn't care. She felt deeply insulted by the story William had told, because it demeaned Jane's innocence, and she was more worthy, far more worthy than how William had portrayed her.

"Believe it or not, Mal," William said, "all i say is the truth."

"Truth needs proof!"

William rose his brows. "You're clearly in denial. Your mother is not who you think she is."

"My mother is dead."

William shook his head somberly, as though he could not stomach such ignorance. "Did you pick anything from my story, Mal? Your mother is alive. Jane Camilla Anderson is alive, and she wants you—"

Mallory rose her hand to cut him off. She walked around his office, right to left, forward and backward, in all directions. That was the current state of her being, disorientated, confused. Nothing was making sense. Her life was not making sense. And there was nothing that drove a human the quickest to insanity other than feeling as though one's life had been lived upon a lie.

"It was year 2000, Mallory." William took a step towards her, "Everyone believed she'd died. Everyone except me and the three men she'd entrusted her secret with—and one journalist who was too intelligent for her good. Point is, Jane wanted everyone to believe she died, and for seventeen years, she achieved just that."

"Doesn't make any sense, "Mallory said more to herself, than to William.

He strode over to his table and yanked out one of the lower drawers. Loads of envelopes spilt out from it, thousands of them. Mallory knelt on the floor and thumbed all the envelopes her finger was chanced to find. They all had the same texture, all smelt of lavender, and all came from the same sender. Jane. Jane Anderson.

"We kept in touch for years." William picked one of the letters and sniffed it. "Not one day passed by without her sending me one of this...She's a terrific woman, that Jane, so lovely. She loved me, and loved her."

Mallory fought the compunction to hit her head against the wall, in the hopes that all the gears in her head would come together to make sense out of this, to bind all the broken fragments of information into coherency. First Jane was dead, then she wasn't. Then Jane was in love with Cole, and then, William? Mallory didn't believe what William was saying. It sounded like delusion, but she was still curious about where she fell in this mushy picture.

"And where do I fall in all this?" Mallory asked, opening the seal of one letter.

William searched through the pile of letters. "You? You were an unfortunate mistake of Jane's."

Mallory nearly choked on air. "What—"

"Jane and I never planned to have you. She'd married my brother by that time—"

"Lewis..."

William shook his head. "Yes, him. And I don't know how it happened, but we began to have an affair. The day we found out she was pregnant with you, we knew we had to get rid of Lewis, or else, all hell might come loose."

"Get rid of your own brother?" Mallory said, "For a logical man, you sound surprisingly demented."

William shrugged. "Jane said it was the best, and she was right. Lewis was a stumbling block. The only reason she married him was because he was the rightful successor to Starlight Academy after my father. She'd always dreamt of owning Starlight Academy, an institution as big as it. And Lewis sighed a legal contract that she would have it, but only after he died. You could have seen the appeal for Jane."

Mallory was deeply disturbed, even though she knew all William was saying was fiction. But she was still deeply disturbed by William's comfort with the death of his own brother. He seemed to withhold a firm conviction that Lewis had to die. It scared Mallory to bits.

"So Jane killed him," Mallory said. "And then what?"

"She decided she didn't want to be owner anymore, then she passed it on to me," William said. "And then, well, she decided she was sick of Los Angeles. She'd always been a person who hated responsibilities. She hated to cook, or clean, or wash, just about anything that required manual effort. So when she had you, you could have seen how difficult it was for her. And to make that worse, people were hitting her from every side, blaming her for the death of Lewis, for getting involved with the brother of her dead husband. And she complained about some men pestering her too, some men she said were 'mistakes' she should have avoided."

"The three men you met at the funeral," Mallory said. "The men she'd gotten involved with along with you."

William sat on the edge of the table. "Yeah. Anyway it got up to Jane's neck, and she decided to leave. She faked her death so everyone would believe she was dead dead and leave her alone. She left you with Cole and left me with the promise of owning Starlight Academy. Little did I know that she'd left it with four other men, too. And little did all of us know that she'd in actuality passed the legal ownership up to you."

William handed her a sheet of paper.

I thereby transfer the legal ownership of Starlight Academy on to Mallory Isabelle Anderson.

- Jane Anderson, owner of Starlight Academy,

Mallory scrambled away from the sheet of paper immediately after she read that statement. Her heart pummeled in her chest. Whether it was from thrill or surprise, she didn't know.

"How can I—It can't be! What the hell is happening!"

William took the sheet of paper from the floor and placed it delicately in a seal. Mallory couldn't comprehend how William could be so emotionless, so unfazed to this. Mallory was freaking out. She was hyperventilating. Nothing was making sense, nothing except the overwhelming fact that she was the owner of Starlight Academy, and if that was true then there was a high chance that everything William had been saying was true too, that Jane Anderson was really not who she thought she was.

"But I'm clearly not the owner, William. You are."

"Me?" William laughed. "I'm the temporary owner. Once you turn eighteen, all this—" he waved around—"this organization would be all yours. And I don't have too much of a problem with that. But Jane does. Jane wants her organisation back" He handed her a letter. "She sent me this months ago."

Dear Will,

It's lonely here in London. I have no one to speak to or talk to anymore. Greene broke up with me last month. Said he could no longer satisfy my insatiable needs, but what I really think is that he's lost interest in us. I saw him getting all cosy with some other woman last week, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I've been thinking a lot.

The truth is, nothing felt like home ever since I left Los Angeles. Nothing. And I miss my home, my real home. I miss Starlight Academy too, and most importantly, I miss you.

I heard Mallory turned seventeen today. I heard she beautiful and sweet and blah, blah, blah...I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I don't think any is as bad as giving that girl ownership over Starlight Academy. I want my property back...

I know you miss me, Will, and I miss you too, but I'm never coming to Los Angeles until I know it's conducive for me to stay. That is, until Mallory, Cole, Diana, and everyone related to my past life, is gone. I want no remembrance of it.

Until then, see you again...whenever

Jane.

Mallory looked up from the letter and gazed at William, who said, "well...", as though expecting a response from her.

Mallory had none except, "my mother is a psychopath."