The Last Cake for Hannah

From the back cover

At her daughter's eighteenth birthday banquet, Eleanor Mercer promises to grant two wishes before the city's most influential executives and board members. Hannah's first wish is for her mother's health and long life. Her second is that Sylvia Drake, Eleanor's closest friend of twenty years, become her real mother, so that she and her father, Richard, might finally have a complete home.

Richard praises Sylvia's devotion, and Hannah insists she is legally an adult with the right to choose her mother. Eleanor grants the wish, names Sylvia as Hannah's mother, and tears apart a notarized corporate equity transfer agreement she spent three months drafting. Hannah kneels before Sylvia, listing the small kindnesses she remembers and dismissing Eleanor as a mother who only threw money at her.

As whispers ripple through the hall, Eleanor faces her husband and speaks of his mistress's proxy, leaving Richard pale with denial.