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Margot shook her head. “I don’t know how Vanessa missed the ruby. When I cleaned up the next morning after the first break-in, I found the bag in the corner, under some broken glass. It was a fluke. Seven years ago, I put the diamond in the attic and the ruby in the greenhouse and I waited. I knew Vanessa would show up eventually, looking for those gems.”
“This was a long shot at best,” Tyler said. “Your odds—”
“I know,” Margot said, and suddenly she looked every one of her years. The sparkle and sizzle of my grandmother was gone, and now she sat at her kitchen table, an old woman, surrounded by an angry and disbelieving family and piles of regrets. “But she was bleeding me. Paying her every year was going to bankrupt me at some point.”
“Why didn’t you just give her the gems?” Matt asked.
“She wouldn’t have stayed away,” I answered. “Margot could have given her the gems, but Vanessa would have been back for another ten grand in a few years. She’s a bottomless hole.”
“And I wanted her to get caught,” Margot snapped. “I wanted her far away from us.”
“This is nuts, Margot!” Tyler snapped.
“You lied!” Savannah cried. “I asked you if the gems were here and you said no. We could have helped you. We could have figured something out.”
“I understand what you did,” I said, and everyone turned to face me. “The risks you took to keep your family safe.”
Margot nodded. “It wasn’t an easy decision, but when you gave her that alibi and I knew it was a lie—that she had blackmailed you into it. And I knew she would just keep coming at us. It was only a matter of time before she destroyed our lives. I’m sorry, Carter,” she breathed, her broken heart in her eyes. “I was too late to help you.”
I nodded and leaned my head against Zoe’s. “She’s gone,” I said, thinking of that lonely hotel room and those broken fingers. “She can’t come back—people far more scary than us are looking for her.”
The room was silent, everyone trying to make sense of the eighty-year-old criminal mastermind who was also our grandmother.
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I need some coffee,” Juliette said.
“And some eggs,” Savannah said, standing up to go to the stove, her pregnancy leading the way. “Zoe? You want some? You should eat.”
Zoe agreed, and suddenly, everyone was just going on about their day.
Coffee. Eggs.
A giant stolen ruby in the middle of the table.
Laughter, slightly hysterical but totally unstoppable, burped out of me. I laughed so hard I had to sit down and then, never one to be left out of a good time, Tyler joined in, his hands on my shoulders.
Then Savannah, who had to brace herself against the stove.
This was my family. Love it, hate it; I couldn’t change it and didn’t want to. I’d take them, all of them, my gem-stealing grandmother, my sparkling devil of a brother, my too-good-for-the-world sister.
I had them now and I was never going to let them go.
Zoe plunked herself down on my lap, smiling into my eyes. “Let me in on the joke,” she whispered.
“I think you have to be a Notorious O’Neill to get it,” I whispered, and leaned forward to kiss her. “You’re pretty notorious, but we need to work on the O’Neill part,” I said, rubbing her belly. The baby kicked and I took that as a yes vote.
“Are you asking me to marry you?” Zoe asked, and I nodded.
“A Christmas wedding,” I said. “A spring baby. What could be better?”
Zoe sighed and curled up against me, my sunshine on all the dark unknown days ahead. “Nothing,” she sighed. “Nothing at all.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
CARTER
“We maybe should have talked to each other before everyone decided to have babies,” Tyler said, trying to jam a deck of cards into one of the kids’ stockings. “We could have scheduled this better.”
“Is that the last of it?” I asked, checking the floor for any little pony or forgotten doll.
“I think so.”
Tyler stepped back next to me and we looked at the stockings strung up against the mantel in The Manor’s library. The Christmas tree glittered behind us, practically levitating on piles of presents. “It’s a lot of pink,” I said.
“Poor Jake is the odd man out,” Tyler said, talking about his son, born five months after Savannah’s Faith, who had been born early, six weeks after our Amelia. “We need more boys.”
“I need more sleep,” I muttered.
“Amen to that,” Tyler said with a smile. The glimmer was turned down on Ty these days—no sleep and dirty diapers could do that to a man. But there was a steadfastness in him that hadn’t been there before.
A steadfastness I never thought I’d see in my devilish little brother.
“I’m proud of you, Tyler,” I said, and Tyler blinked. “I don’t say that enough. But I mean it. You are a good man.”
