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“Not anymore,” Edward says. “We sold them off just before we built the winery so we could extend the growing operation.”
“Oh,” I say, trying not to sound too disappointed.
As soon as we pull up in front of the house, a man rushes to open my door. I thank him as I exit the car. He removes my suitcase from the trunk and then hands my bag off to another man, who seems to have appeared from thin air behind me. The first man grabs the car keys from Edward’s waiting palm, and soon the Ferrari speeds off to who knows where.
Standing in the curved driveway, I’m overwhelmed by the unmistakable scent of lilacs. I inhale deeply, humming with pleasure, before I recall that it’s not the right season for them. I glance around to see what flower might be playing tricks on my senses, but I don’t see any blooms. Just evergreen shrubs trimmed into perfect rectangles.
A slim blonde appears on the stone steps leading up to the house like a real-life Stepford Wife. Her red lips and nails stand in stark contrast to the whites of her pants and teeth. Edward ushers me toward her, and I experience the fleeting notion that I’m about to be fed to the lions.
“Mariah Katherine Greyson,” he says, “I’d like you to meet my wife, Chastity Luann Radcliff.”
“How lovely to meet you, Miss Greyson.” She takes my hand in hers. “It’s about time we were acquainted.”
Knowing full well that this meeting is neither lovely, nor timely, I nevertheless respond, “It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Radcliff.”
“Christopher,” she calls over her shoulder. “Come meet Miss Greyson.”
A young man around my age emerges from inside the house. He’s tall, like his father—like our father, I remind myself—with dark, assessing eyes and a jaw like an anvil. My mom never mentioned Edward having a son, so Christopher must’ve come along after she and Grandpa moved off the property.
“Mariah,” Edward says, “this is my son, Christopher Edgar Radcliff.”
“Hi.” I offer him my hand, but he just stares at me, his gaze sharp as a needle.
“Manners, Christopher,” Chastity says.
Edward clears his throat. Finally, Christopher shakes my hand, squeezing hard enough to evoke genuine concern for my metacarpals.
“There,” Chastity says. “Now that introductions are out of the way, your lunch will be served in the conservatory. However, dinner’s going to be a bit later than usual tonight. Lilliana got caught up at school.”
Lilliana is Edward and Chastity’s daughter. She was still in diapers when her dad bought the estate. Too young to remember my mom, though my mom remembered her as a fussy baby with a perpetually runny nose.
Edward frowns at his wife and checks his very large, very shiny Rolex. “I suppose that’ll give us time for a tour of the grounds. Mariah, why don’t you head up to your room, unpack, and have some lunch. I’ll come find you. We can take a stroll through Isabella’s old stomping grounds.”
At the sound of my mother’s name on her husband’s lips, Chastity’s eyelid twitches like he’s just said the C-word in church. Impressively, her smile remains as pure and uncracked as porcelain.
“What a lovely idea,” she says. “Miss Greyson, come with me, I’ll show you to the guestroom.”
Entering the house is like stepping into a time capsule. Nearly every piece of furniture is a finely polished antique. I follow Chastity up the grand staircase to the second floor and down the hall to my room—sorry,the guestroom—where the first thing I notice is the enormous bed, topped with fluffy white pillows and a matching duvet. There’s a nice rug, a cute vanity, and a big window overlooking the vineyard.
“This is one of our most comfortable guestrooms,” Chastity says. “I’m sure it’s the Taj Mahal compared to what you’re used to.”
What I’m used tomight not be an exquisitely preserved mansion, but I didn’t exactly grow up poor. My grandpa ended up with a lot of money when he sold this place. He invested most of it, and his investments didn’t always pay off, but he set aside plenty for me to go to college. The rest, he spent on a modest house in a quiet neighborhood for the three of us—his daughter, her unborn child, and himself.
I think the main reason I never thought much about my father was because Grandpa made damn sure I knew how much he loved me. It was important to him that Mom and I were well taken care of, long after the stroke that eventually stole him away.
The house we lived in is currently being held in a trust for me, along with my mom’s more-than-generous savings, set to be deposited into my bank account three weeks from now, on my eighteenth birthday.
I resent Chastity’s assumption that I’m here to mooch off Edward’s wealth or her hospitality. Greysons take care of their own, which is more than I can say for the man who waited seventeen years to meet me.
“It’s a very nice room,” I say, unzipping my suitcase, which is already waiting for me on the bed.
“If I may,” she says, in her sweetest southern-belle drawl. “Can I ask, how bad was it? Your momma’s passing?”
For my own self-preservation, I try not to think about the days leading up to my mom’s death. We knew it was coming, like dark clouds closing in across the plains, but that didn’t make the storm easier to weather.
Witnessing her mind slipping away from her had to have been the worst of it. I was used to her talking to people I couldn’t see, but this was different. She was all over the place, murmuring incoherently. Saying things like, “I don’t want to go back. They’re calling me back...”
“Who’s calling you where?” I asked, standing over her hospice bed, dabbing at her dry, cracked lips with a damp washcloth. My eyes stung from crying, and I hadn’t left her bedside all day, so my stomach was starting to digest itself.
