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There was just no fucking way. The Princes liking me? Mason protecting me? The four of them thrived on my humiliation and shame, feeding off it like fucking vampires. There was no way those sweet, innocent, chubby-cheeked kids were my tormentors.
Philip cleared his throat, shifting beside me. I glanced over to see him staring at the picture almost as intently as I had been, his face drawn.
“This was just before things went… bad. It was a few years after they all graduated college, and they’d just started a business together. They had very high hopes for it.”
I sank back onto my heels, stunned. Each new piece of information rocked me, and I felt like my world had been flipped on its head and shaken hard. The image in the picture before me didn’t match any version of reality I knew.
“What happened, Grandpa?” I whispered. “She looks so happy here. How did she go from this to leaving Roseland and never coming back? Never even mentioning this place to me?”
Philip frowned, releasing a heavy breath. “She changed. Everything changed. She became erratic, got mixed up with drugs and alcohol. Your grandmother wouldn’t abide by it, and that only made Charlotte act out more. She started behaving in ways that…” He trailed off, wiping a hand over his forehead, where a sheen of sweat glistened. “Never mind. It’s in the past, and there’s nothing we can do to change any of it. I need to go lie down. It’s best if you go back to your room until dinner.”
I wanted to ask him more, to press for more details, but the pallor of his face scared me. He looked sick. I reached out a hand but pulled it back quickly.
“Do you need help getting to your room?” I murmured.
“No, thank you,” he said stiffly. “I’m not that old yet.”
He retreated back down the hallway, his spine straight, reaching out to the wall once to steady himself. I watched him go and then fled back to my room, a riot of questions banging around in my brain.
What the actual fucking fuck?
I stared out my window at the ocean below, trying to piece together everything I’d learned into some kind of cohesive whole.
I had been born in Roseland.
My mom had never told me that, had never even mentioned this place as far as I could remember—and my dad definitely hadn’t. I’d always thought the two of them met in Sand Valley, but they must’ve met here if I was born before she left California.
Was that what’d driven her and my grandparents apart? The fact that she’d married someone so far below her social standing?
Then there was the mind-blowing fact that I’d known the Princes when we are all young kids, maybe just one or two years old, and they hadn’t hated me then. Although that wasn’t totally surprising, maybe, since most babies didn’t come out of the womb knowing how to hate—it was something they learned.
My mom had been friends with their parents, something Jacqueline had failed to mention when we’d talked about the Princes and their families before.
But somewhere in there, sometime between when that picture on the wall was taken and the day she got killed by a drunk driver, something had totally flipped. My mom had gone off the deep end, burning her bridges so completely that by the time she left Roseland, no one here even wanted to acknowledge her existence.
It couldn’t have been long after that picture was taken either. Maybe a year at most?
How could things have gone so bad so quickly?
Then again, maybe things were already going bad when it was taken. One snapshot didn’t necessarily mean anything.
And as I was beginning to learn, a pretty facade could cover up all kinds of decay.
The rest of the winter break passed without incident, mostly because I made it a point to stay out of Philip and Jacqueline’s way.
We all seemed happy with that arrangement, and I got the feeling that although they wanted me at the mansion in theory, they found my actual presence a bit stressful.
I drove into town a few times to shop or go to the movies, just to get out of the house, and on Christmas morning, we all exchanged the most boring gifts in the world. It was like a white elephant exchange, where you don’t know anything about the person who’ll be getting the gift, so you get them something utterly bland and hopefully non-offensive.
On the Sunday before school started back up, one of the house staff brought my car around and loaded my bags back into it. Philip was locked up in his study again—his good mood on the day of my arrival hadn’t lasted long—but Jacqueline walked down the front steps with me.
I turned to her awkwardly, twirling my key ring around my finger, when she surprised me by pulling me into a hug. My body jerked in surprise, but I tentatively wrapped my arms around her.
“Thank you for coming, Talia,” she murmured, her voice low in my ear. “I know it’s not the most fun spending time with two old folks like us, but… I’m very glad you came.”
The honest emotion in her voice surprised me, and I gripped her tighter before drawing away. “Me too. Thanks for having me.”
She smiled softly. “You’re welcome anytime. Come back some weekend, will you?”
