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But it was a beginning.
Just as quickly, her main objective had taken a sharp turn. One without an ominous ending and the probability of doing jail time.
With a renewed kick in her step, she floated down to dinner. She didn’t wear the gown on her bed. That was meant for late-night production set shenanigans.
Instead, she wore a pair of comfortable jeans and one of her old over-sized sweatshirts she found in a closet they had failed to raid when moving in.
Flynn’s eyes went wide as she sat across from him.
“Hello, everyone,” she said with a smile, whipping out the cloth napkin to the side. “Dinner smells heavenly.”
Ariana’s silverware clattered with dramatic flair onto her plate. “What are you wearing?”
“I’m wearing clothes, Ariana.”
“That is not adequate dinner attire.”
“Why? Are we expecting company? Some obscure prince from a remote municipality coming to dinner?”
Errol cleared his throat. His comb-over plastered with some sort of pomade, his attire heartening back to a time when fashion ruled, looking utterly ridiculous. “Mother has established rules that everyone abides by out of respect for the esteemed role she plays in this family.”
Birdie turned to the elderly woman wearing a beaded, silk caftan with a leopard print turban wrapped around her head. “And you’re doing a smash-up job, Ariana. Truly. I know we have a number of things to accomplish tonight, and I just wanted to be comfortable before getting started.”
That seemed to shut Ariana up. It was one thing to participate in their sick little production, it was another thing entirely to discuss it out in the open where the staff might overhear and spill the tea to an entertainment news outlet for a sweet chunk of change.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew she was pushing the envelope, but she also needed to regain some small vestige of control in her life.
Her mission was still a go, but with less bloodlust, and this time, she had other people on her side. She’d continue the farce of playing their ridiculous Blame Game, but she refused to play the part of a doormat in the process.
Everyone ate their dinner in silence, Birdie winning this round. Later, when she went to her room, she removed her clothes and lifted the dress over her head, the silkiness of the fabric kissing her skin as it traveled down her curves.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she had to admit, the dress was beautiful. Snow white with a low décolletage, randomly dappled with what had to have been Swarovski crystals.
She noticed a cloth pouch next to where the dress had been placed on the bed. She opened it and found a tube of red lipstick. Christian Dior.
Nice.
She turned it upside down and smiled at Dior’s classic red shade, simply dubbed 999. A blue-based red that showed up on women out on the town more often than the most ambitious Instagram influencer. She used to wear the color herself during high-powered meetings, when it was important to balance being a savvy business mogul while reminding the men in the room that she was also a woman. Unapologetically so.
Business moguls wore power ties, therefore, she wore her power lipstick.
Ariana was a superfreak who knew the most iconic lip shades.
She glided the color on her lips with perfect recall and smiled at the memory of a life that had sifted through her fingers like grains of sand.
Now she was off to play the Hollywood harlot lacking morals and good sense. So her stepson slash husband could stick his nose in between his mother’s heaving breasts while surrounded by voyeuristic teddy bears.
Rubbing her eyebrows, she didn’t think she could make this shit up if she tried. Mia would be appalled at the absurdity of it all.
Maisie would have found it hilarious.
Despite super human compartmentalization skills she transported to another time and another town, that seemed a lifetime ago.
* * *
Myrtle Beach
Sixteen years ago
