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“You aren’t excited about the money?” Dad asked.
I shook my head. I had more money than I could spend in five years, and considering the way money rolled out of my hands, that was saying something.
But with this last win, I’d finally taken my brother, Carter’s, advice and talked to a money guy. I got a nice little check every month from my investments.
Carter, I thought, the whiskey making me fond rather than irritated at the thought of my brother. Leave it to the Golden Boy to find a way to run a con on nothing.
I stepped into the greenhouse, which was warm and humid, like breathing underwater. Plants lined a table, and more hung from baskets. No blooms, just the young shoots, green arrows out of dark soil.
Margot was starting over with her orchids and I had to wonder why. I took a sip and touched the soil in one of the baskets. Dry, but not very, considering Margot was on some cruise and Savannah was off falling in love in Paris.
Someone was watering the plants, and it could only be Juliette. Always Juliette.
I found the hose coiled in the corner and turned it on, finding the balance between a trickle and a flood, just like Margot taught me a million years ago.
“Orchids are particular,” she’d said, filling the hanging pan under a pink flower. “Some want water from the bottom, some want it from the top. Some want lots, some barely any.”
“Seems like a lot of work,” I’d said, pissed off at the world because I knew why I was here and that my mother was never coming back. I didn’t want to take care of the damn plants, I wanted to smash them. Break those little pink flowers into pieces.
“That’s why I need your help,” she’d said, looking right at me, right down to that twitchy dark place. She knew I wanted to wreck her flowers. Wreck everything. And still she wanted my help.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, scowling.
“I’ll show you,” she said, putting the hose in my hand.
“You think the gems are in here?” Richard asked, digging into one of the pots, crushing the green bud with his big, fat, clumsy fingers.
“No, Dad,” I said, and flicked the hose at him as if Richard was a cat digging in a house plant.
“Hey! Watch it!” Richard said, bouncing away, bumping into a worktable.
“I don’t think the gems are here.” I splashed a little water in each of the pots, I didn’t know which was which. Which, if any, needed special care.
I turned off the hose, flinging it back in its corner. The last sip of whiskey burned a familiar trail down my throat. An odd longing bobbed in my chest, an unvoiced wish for something I didn’t even understand.
I miss this place. I miss Margot and Savannah. I miss Juliette.
I thought of who I’d been, that boy with those bright green dreams pushing out of the rotten soil my mother had planted me in.
The thought, as soon as it was fully formed and poisonous, was plucked out. Destroyed.
Wishing for something different was a waste. These were the cards I’d been dealt, and if I didn’t like them—too bad.
I was Tyler O’Neill, born a con man, from a long line of con men and petty crooks. This was my life.
And the best thing I could do for Juliette Tremblant was to keep myself and Dad far away from her.
I tested the weight of the tumbler in my hand. Tossing it. Catching it. Fine crystal, it was so perfect. Better than a baseball.
The tumbler rocketed through the air—a perfect arc, catching the light at its zenith, splashing rainbows across the courtyard—and then smashed against the stone wall, fracturing into a million glittering pieces.
“Tyler?” Dad asked, his voice careful.
“I’ll start in the upstairs bedrooms,” I said, and headed back to the house.
6
TYLER
“Somebody’s pounding on the door, son,” Richard said, from the other couch in the library. We’d passed out here after searching the room for gems. And emptying the contents of that whiskey bottle.
“I hear them,” I said, pushing a pillow over my eyes to block out the morning sun.
“You need to answer that.”
“You answer it.”
“What if it’s that cop?” Richard said. “You want to explain me?”
No. No, I did not.
I stood, got my bearings, and stumbled to the front door.
“Someone better be dead,” I muttered, opening the door only to find the kid, staring up at me.
“Miguel?” I asked, the name erupting from the fog in my brain. I carefully kept the door closed around me - no need for the kid to see Richard. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “You…okay?”
Miguel nodded, pushing back the gray hood of his sweatshirt, revealing bruises and the burn that looked no better for having been twenty-four hours older.
