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Oh, God, he’d lied. When I’d asked Tyler if there was anything suspicious or weird at The Manor, he’d said nothing. And maybe his father wasn’t worth mentioning to Tyler, but it sure as hell was worth mentioning to me!
Why are you surprised? I wondered. I’d been waiting for something like this. Bracing myself for it. That I still managed to be shocked by Tyler’s duplicity, by his total lack of ethics or even decency, was ridiculous.
I should know better.
Ask your father.
I hadn’t yet. And I didn’t know if I was going to. Because unless my father picked him up and drove him out of town, Tyler made a choice.
But even as I thought that I knew it wasn’t fair.
None of this was fair.
“How much more?” I asked, my voice sharp, and Richard’s smile got wider. Brighter. The confidence artist turning it up full blast.
“Not much.”
“It was you,” I said, connecting the dots, “that was sneaking around The Manor. The trampled plants, the damaged windowsills.”
Richard laughed and I stiffened. “I forgot my key and I was early,” he said.
“You don’t have a key,” I snapped, ready to punish this man for Tyler’s lies. “Margot and Savannah haven’t seen or heard from you in years.”
Suddenly I realized what this was all about.
“You’re here because of the gems, aren’t you?”
He blinked, feigning wide-eyed surprise. “Gems?”
I stepped up closer, tired of the games the O’Neill men seemed to love to run on me. “The gems aren’t here,” I said, silky smooth. “They never were. And if you’re smart, you’ll realize that and move on.”
“I’m sorry, I’m confused. Is it a crime to spend time with my son? Have I done something wrong?”
Yes, I wanted to say. There’s something really wrong about leaving your children to their evil bitch of a mother. And then staying away from your son, creating holes and gaps with your absence where misguided hero worship could grow like some kind of rotten vine.
“Maybe not,” I said, but I would be running his name through the computer as soon as I had the chance. I’d bet good money that the man was wanted for something somewhere.
But right now I had bigger fish to fry.
“Where’s Tyler?”
“Remy’s,” Richard said. “He left about an hour ago.”
I reeled slightly at the name of the old jazz club, bombarded by a summer of memories I’d pushed away and tried to forget.
It was the last place I wanted to go, and Tyler was taking me back there, to the place where that summer had been most sweet.
And where the memories would be razor-sharp and waiting to slice me into ribbons.
10
JULIETTE
I stood in Remy’s sand-and-gravel parking lot staring at the old shack, with its ridiculous lights and decorations. A grinning light up jack-o’-lantern from a Halloween party twenty years ago still blinked in a window.
I barely heard the music pouring through the broken screen door. All I heard was the pounding of my heart.
The dim echo of Tyler’s words ten years ago.
You, his voice whispered from the past, making my stomach clench and my head spin, you and a piano are all I want.
“Right,” I whispered, feeling myself begin to collapse, fold inward with the memories. And I couldn’t have that.
He’d lied to me over and over again. About wanting me. Loving me. About his damn father being at the Manor.
I anchored myself in my righteous anger, and I climbed the splintered wooden steps to the front door.
“Hold on a second there, sweetheart.”
Pink sequins glittered in the darkness and I felt a crushing mix of fondness and resignation.
Priscilla Ellis. Tyler’s number-one fan. The old woman had never liked me, which had more to do with my mother’s money and my father’s job. But to say the distrust went both ways was an understatement.
“You here to get that boy all worked up?” Priscilla asked, eyeing me through a haze of smoke. “Run him off again?”
“I’m here to get some answers,” I replied, and Priscilla shook her head.
“I can’t have that,” Priscilla said. “That boy just came back and I need him.”
“To play piano?” I laughed, “Please—”
Priscilla appeared out of the shadows so fast I took a step back. “You don’t know Tyler,” she said. “You never did. You overlooked everything about him you thought was bad, and only saw what you wanted. You picked him into pieces—”
“That’s not true,” I breathed, alive with all I’d felt that summer. Every ounce of love turned back on me like a knife. “I loved him. I knew him—”
I stopped. I thought I’d known him. But then he’d left and everything I thought I’d known was destroyed.
“Just like you think you know him now,” Priscilla said, taking a long drag on her Marlboro.
“I know what I need to,” I said, through my teeth.
“Right,” Priscilla said, taking her time with the word. “Tell me, you know about the money?”
