Cordelia wasn't sure which was worse – being completely frozen out by her mother, or being insulted day in, day out. The day after the party, she appreciated the distance – she didn't want to talk to Fiona. But it had been three days, and her mother hadn't spoken a word to her. Spalding was mute. The staff would get in trouble if Fiona or Spalding saw them not working. Cordelia had been completely without human contact for the last three days – and as much as she hated to admit it, she was lonely. She hated Fiona – she had to keep reminding herself that she hated her – but in a way, she hated not talking to her more. She couldn't make sense of it. And she missed Misty so much it was like a physical ache – she felt it all over, from her head to her toes. As dumb as it sounded, she couldn't wait to get back to school.

0o0o

It was the weekend before she went back to school when Fiona finally started talking to her again. It had been five days of silence – five days of trying to talk to a brick wall. She wasn't sure why Fiona decided to talk to her again – perhaps some part of her, very, very deep down did care for her daughter. Cordelia didn't think that was the case. She thought it was because Fiona missed having someone to belittle all day.

Cordelia had joined her mother in the sitting room, sitting quietly on the couch opposite with a book in hand. Fiona, cigarette in hand, didn't look up as she entered the room – white smoke curled from her mouth, stretching towards the ceiling before dissipating. The orange light from the fireplace gave the sitting room an eerie look, bathed her mother in pale orange and made the shadows of her face even more sever.

She must have sat there for half an hour before her mother finally spoke, slicking through her book without taking a word of it in. "Is there anything you need for school?" Fiona asked, her voice slightly croaky from the cigarette.

Cordelia looked up in surprise. There was nothing in Fiona's voice to suggest contempt or anger, nothing at all – one could almost believe the events of the party never happened, could almost believe that Fiona had spent the week treating Cordelia normally. "As a matter of fact, there is. Some of the girls get money to spend at town."

Fiona rolled her eyes. "What I meant was, do you need any more dresses or pantyhose or notebooks. I am not giving you any of my money."

MY money, Cordelia thought, Daddy's money. "But Mother, people pity me at school when I've got nothing to spend. We go into town often and all the other girls have plenty of money to buy whatever they want." That was a lie, of course – according to her friends, they rarely if ever were allowed to go into town. But she had to say something to get Fiona to cave – she had to milk her for all she was worth (which wasn't very much) before Cordelia left her forever. She knew that running away basically doomed her inheritance to the whims of her mother, and if she didn't manage to find something at all to prove that Fiona had murdered her father, she would never see a cent of her father's money. HER money.

Fiona crossed her arms. "If all the other girls jumped off a cliff, would you?"

Cordelia sighed. "Mother. They think I'm a scholarship girl because I never get to buy anything new. They pity me, Mother, and by extension you. Do you want everyone to think we're poor?" A vein in Fiona's forehead twitched, and her lips went very thin. Cordelia knew she had struck a nerve – if there was one thing Fiona cared about, above everything else, it was her reputation.

"How much do you want?" she asked, her tone of voice cold and flat.

"Fifty dollars?" Cordelia suggested. She knew fifty dollars was nothing at all to Fiona. That didn't mean she would make it easy, though.

Fiona narrowed her eyes, but didn't say anything. "Fine. I will give you the cash after dinner. I don't want to hear any more complaining, however."

"Of course. Thank you, Mother," Cordelia said sweetly, rising from her hair and pressing a kiss to her mother's cheek.

She now had a total of $117 for her and Misty – combined with whatever Misty managed to scrounge up, they would surely have enough money to cross the country.

0o0o

She hid the money in the lining of her suitcase, just in case Fiona had a change of heart and took the money back. When she was sure it was secure, Cordelia snuck upstairs. She pushed the door of her father's study open as quietly as she could, and locked the door behind her. There had to be something else in there – something she had missed before.

It was hours before she found it – pressing on each panel of the wall, she ad hardly believed it when she felt one was loose. She carefully peeled it off the wall, using her fingernails to pry it apart. Behind the panel was a hollow – and in the hollow was a safe.

Excitement began to pound through her veins. She had found something that belonged to her father – something that had, somehow, evaded the prying, hawklike eyes of Fiona. But what was the combination? How could she get in?

It was another hour before she managed to open it. The code was the digits of her birthday – 17.12.32 – scrambled up. 271321. At first, she didn't think there was anything in the safe. It looked to be a whole heap of paper – but buried under the paper was a small wooden box.

She didn't have a key, and she didn't want to break it in case she damaged whatever was inside. So she turned to the paper. One of the documents was her birth certificate, another was her father's birth certificate. There wasn't anything else but some cash, which she pocketed. Where on earth could the key be? Where could he have hidden it so her mother couldn't find it?

She felt under cabinets, putting her hand in more than one spiderweb. It was not under the cushions of the couch, or taped to the bottom of the desk. It wasn't hidden conspicuously in the hollow, nor was it hiding in a copy of her father's favourite book, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. She scanned the bookshelf in case there was something she had missed. There were books on all of her father's favourite topics – law, nature, biology. There were dozens of classic novels. But there was one book that seemed not to fit with the rest. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a childhood favourite of hers, though not the copy her father used to read to her before bed – that copy, with its beautiful illustrations, was packed safely in her suitcase. Her hands trembled as she took it from the shelf – it was lighter than she had been expecting it to be.

It was hollow. Of course it was – and inside it was a small silver key. Her hands were shaking, she was so – excited? Nervous? She didn't know. But she knew that she had to open that box.

She fitted the key into the lock, and turned it. The lid popped open slightly with a click, and Cordelia took a deep breath before opening it.

It was full of jewellery. There was a string of pearls, a pair of diamond earrings, a diamond engagement ring – the diamond about the size of an apple – and three ruby bracelets. Cordelia exhaled shakily. She had discovered a small fortune – these had to be worth thousands of dollars apiece. It was her father's last gift to her – she knew that, somehow. After a moment of thinking, she recognised the jewellery as her grandmother's – though her grandmother had died when Cordelia was in elementary school, she had vague memories of the jewels she was constantly dripping with. And here they were, hidden in a little box that Fiona didn't know about.

She tidied the study quickly, pressing the panel back onto the wall, re-locking the box and putting the book back in the shelf. She took both of the birth certificates, and all the cash that had been in the safe – she now had a total of $417 in cash, which was even more than she could have hoped to ever gather. Of course, the jewels were worth fair more than four-hundred dollars, but she hadn't yet decided what she would do with them. Should she sell them? Or should she hold onto her father's last gift, her grandmother's most prized possessions?

She wasn't sure where to hide the key safely – she didn't want to put it in the lining of her suitcase with her purse. She didn't want to wear it around her neck in case Fiona recognised it. She decided to put it in the sole of her left boot, prying it up with a pocket knife. She could feel it every time she took a step – it felt like a large rock – but it was worth it to know it was safe with every step she took.

She slipped the box into her toiletries bag, padding it with, well, a packet of pads. She wasn't 100% pleased with her hiding places, but it was the best she could do for now. When she and Misty found somewhere to settle, she would be able to hide them better.

She went to bed happy. She was at least a thousand dollars richer than she had been the day before – and there was only one more day at home before she could see Misty again. Only one more day before she could escape from the clutches of her mother.

Chapter title from 'Illume (9-11)" by Fleetwood Mac.