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“Should we do the math?” Cato asks, drawing everyone’s eyes. “Five hundred thousand papers sold a day, at five bucks a pop.” He does the calculation in his head, and grins. “I’d say two and a half million dollars is the asking price.” He looks to Christabelle. “Will that do it?”
“I won’t publish my findings,” she murmurs, reaching out for a glass of water while everyone else—including Cato—enjoys alcohol.
Mary bustles in with plates. Placing them down three at a time, she beams the way moms do when her kids are back in one place.
Maybe we didn’t have a mother, and maybe our father was a piece of shit. But we had Mary, and that was important in a world that was only ever cruel.
“I started this project a while ago,” Christabelle continues, her shoulders sagging under the weight of everyone’s stares. “For different reasons. In a different season of my life. But now I’d like to find the answers and give them to you.” She swallows, nibbling on her bottom lip. “For free.”
I study her curiously. Wondering. Confused.
Why the fuck is the confident and powerful Christabelle Cannon, New York’s darling,nervouswhen she sits with us?
She was ready to set me on fire a week ago. She would have shoved the matches down my throat and gleefully danced on my ashes. Shown no fear. But now…
It doesn’t make sense.
“My assistant actually found something today.” Hesitantly, she looks over to Archer. Then to me. “A woman. Her name was Diane. And she, uh…” She coughs to clear her throat. “The timing, that is… it’s congruent with your birth.”
“Mine?” Surprised, I bring a hand up and thumb my own chest. “You foundmymother?”
“Well… I found the name of a woman who may or may not have been bedded by your father around the summer of eighty-seven. Nine months after then would be?—”
“My birthday,” I finish, an odd sense of tension swelling in my stomach. “Diane?”
She nods, small and mouse-like, and shifts to the side as Mary sets a plate down in front of her. “Diane Sullivan. She was eighteen, and soon after what may have been crossover with your father, she went missing.”
She glances back out at her captive audience. “Nothing is confirmed yet. I’ll have to spend a little time digging further into Diane’s life before I can say with any certainty she’s the woman you’re looking for.” She looks shyly toward Tim, lowering her gaze. “Where did your father put these women, once he no longer had use for them? Hypothetically, of course…”
He brings his wine up, scoffing as he takes a sip. “Hypothetically… I have no fucking clue. We own a lot of land out here, Ms. Cannon. However, I seem to recall discussion of the orchards out back.” Thoughtful, he sets his drink down and frowns. “You give us too much credit, thinking we know more than we do. He wasn’t our friend, and he didn’t discuss his decisions with us, like we had some kind of input.”
“Yeah.” She slumps back in her chair and quietly exhales. “I’m seeing that now. I incorrectly assumed you were all as guilty as your father. Now I understand you were his victims, just as surely as the women who birthed you.”
“The orchard,” Archer inserts gruffly. “Tim said—my father,” he adds, when Christabelle’s gaze swings to my brother, “he made a cruel comment once, when I refused to bend a knee and be his little lemming. He said he would slit my throat and toss me in the orchard too.” He leans back in his chair and wraps his arm over Minka’s shoulders. “He’d throw me in the orchardtoo.”
“We could make some of this better, ya know?” Minka leans into her husband’s side, sharing herself with him when she knows he needs physical touch to be grounded. To be comforted. “We could dig up the orchard. Exhume whatever remains we find. Identify them. Lay them to rest properly.”
“I’m sorry.” Christabelle shoves up from her seat, startling me as my arm falls from her shoulders and her napkin drifts to the floor. Thenshe stumbles her way out from between the table and her chair, her eyes glittering with what I fuckin swear are tears.
“I need to use the bathroom.” She lowers fractionally, a curtsy of some sort, and brushes my hand away when I try to reach out and take hers. “I’m busting. But continue your evening. Please.” She brings a fast hand up and swipes beneath her nose, but before anyone has a chance to say anything, sheclip-clip-clipsher way across the floor we danced upon last night, escaping the room we made love in.
“She’s a bit strange, huh?” Cato grabs a dinner roll from the center of the table and shoves half into his mouth. “Pretty as a peach, and probably smart as hell, considering she sells so many papers a day. But still…” he wrinkles his nose. “Strange.”
“Shut up.” I reach across and clap his ear before setting my napkin on the table and pushing up to stand. “I’ll go talk to her.”
I step around my chair and push it back in, then crossing the room, I stride through the doorway and slow when I spot Mary in the hall, her eyes wide with surprise. But then she nods to her left.
Which isnotthe direction of the bathroom.
“Thanks.”
I move through the hall and then the kitchen, taking in the delicious scents and dirty dishes. But I keep going, since Christabelle isn’t in here, cross the threshold of the back door, and come to a stop to find her, her shoes off, her shoulders bouncing as she softly cries, and her toes dipped in our pool.
The one she’s yet to make full use of, despite everyone’s apparent knowledge that she swims as often as fish do.
“What’s going on, Cannon?” I start across the patio and come up behind her, wrapping my hands around her hips to keep her dry and out of the water. Burying my nose in her soft, fragrant hair, I inhale. “You were a spitfire when we met. Now you cry at dinner?” I press a kiss to the side of her neck and hold her tighter when her body tremors.
“This isn’t you, Darling. When you have something to say, you just say it.”
