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“Anything, Merit.”
“Call the lawyers, and get them ready.”
• • •
The Botanic Garden had been—and still was—a beautiful place to visit. But I knew this trip wasn’t going to go well, and the paths and gardens were still shadowed by my memories.
My mother had held my sister Charlotte’s sixteenth birthday there. I’d been stuffed into a party dress and forced to join in. She was three years older, and I felt ugly and coltish beside her friends, who already knew their ways around makeup, clothes, and pretty hairstyles. I was already uncomfortable in starchy crinoline and a training bra. I felt even more so when matched against Charlotte’s beautiful friends.
More recently, I’d walked there after Ethan’s death, when I’d wanted solitude and solemnity. That hadn’t fostered happy memories, either.
The park had closed a few hours ago. But the large black gates at the entrance were open, a man in a dark suit checking invitations and waving expensive cars into the park.
He waved us in, and Ethan pulled into a parking slot backward, the car facing the front entrance in case we needed to make a quick getaway.
“You look beautiful and formidable,” Ethan said as he opened my door and offered a hand to help me out of the car.
“Let’s hope the latter more than the former.” Once out, I adjusted the skirt so it fell appropriately around my hips. Not that it wouldn’t make an impression regardless, which was surely part of the reason Ethan had chosen it.
The deep black tuxedo he’d selected for himself certainly made an impression. He’d brushed back his hair, tucked it behind his ears, and looked very much the rich magnate. Which was true, to a point.
He didn’t say anything, but offered me his arm, and when I slipped mine into it, we walked from the parking area to the main building, where a jazz ensemble played and Chicagoland’s wealthiest humans sipped champagne.
Just inside the door, two women sat behind a table with LADIES AUXILIARY printed across the tablecloth. Ethan offered our names, and one of the women provided small silver pins in the shape of tulips. No sticker name tags or Sharpies for this crowd.
The other woman gestured toward the door. “You’ll find the silent auction over there, cocktails and light snacks on the terrace. You’re welcome to explore the park. The lights of Evening Island are on, and it’s a lovely night for a walk.”
“That it is,” Ethan said with a smile, and handed me a pin as we walked inside. To the women and men who checked us out—or checked him out—he’d have looked cool and collected as he surveyed the room, evaluated his options. But I knew him better than most, and certainly well enough to recognize the tension in his shoulders, the low-level buzz of irritated magic around him.
“Do you see him?” he asked.
“No.” But this vibe wasn’t right for Adrien Reed. The crowd here was mostly young couples with young money. Louboutin rather than Chanel. It was different flash for different generations, but flash all the same. Reed liked ostentatious wealth—his palatial house was as baroque as it got—all gilding and velvet and dark wood. But this wasn’t his particular brand of it.
“I don’t think he’d be in here,” I said. “You’re sure he’s coming?”
“I’m sure.”
I wanted to hound him, to ask how my father had been sure, to get the details of the singular “phone call” he’d made. But this wasn’t the time or the place.
“Champagne?” he asked as a waiter in black walked by with delicate flutes on a silver tray.
“No. I’d rather have my wits.”
“Fair point,” he said. “I think you’re right, and he’s not in here.”
“I don’t suppose that means you’re ready to return to the House?” The question was rhetorical, I knew, but my tone was cutting.
“No,” Ethan said, eyes flashing, a reminder that he hadn’t forgotten his mission.
“Are you up for a walk?”
I’d have preferred Pumas to the heels I was currently wearing for that particular activity, but I knew what I’d gotten into.
“Why not?” I said, and we made our way through the crowd.
• • •
The Chicago Botanic Garden was actually composed of several themed gardens with weaving paths between. Evening Island was on the opposite side of the basin pond and was linked to other gardens by paths and bridges. We passed a rose garden and a small walled garden before reaching the meadow that surrounded the basin.
