“He told me that his family is complicated,” Lacy said, as we reached the closest stairs. I realized that they were the same ones that we’d taken to the secret room a couple months earlier. Part of me wanted to step inside and hide away from the rest of this weekend’s drama, but the better part of me wanted to forge ahead, trampling Anton’s family nonsense as I pushed Lacy all the way down the aisle. “I just didn’t realize that he meantthiscomplicated.”
We wound down the stairs, through to the main floor, and out the front door into the darkness of the night and toward the Carriage House. “Is his father more… sane?” I asked. “Do you think his arrival tomorrow will help calm things down?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like it.” Lacy’s eyebrows dipped as she thought back. “A few weeks before we got engaged,Anton mentioned something vague, something about how his dad had gotten into some shady stuff in recent years. At the time, Anton said that was why he didn’t want anything to do with his family’s business.”
“Shady stuff?”
Lacy blinked as if trying to remember the full conversation. “He said that his father had begun ‘transporting items.’” She put air quotes around the last two words. “Anton doesn’t say much about his family, and now I see why.” Lacy shivered under the cold moonlight, and I put an arm around her. “Maybe that should’ve been a red flag.”
“Or maybe he’s trying to make a new family, a new future for himself.” I was proud of myself for the remark, particularly because I wasn’t the kind of person to see the best in others. Still, until this weekend, Lacy had never doubted Anton or his love for her, even when I’d done so during the murder investigation two months ago.
I reminded myself that Anton had been a steady presence for Lacy for almost two years now. When he first moved here, he didn’t push for them to move in together, even though he knew no one else in town. Instead, he’d got a little apartment and a job as a short-order cook at the diner, in part so he could get to know the town and the citizenry. He’d even met Charlie before I had the chance to do so. Even after Anton and Lacy had moved in together and started having little tiffs about things like who should cook and who should load the dishwasher, he always seemed to emerge from those conversations as a reasonable guy.
No wonder Anton wanted nothing to do with his family.
I said a few of these things out loud, and although I wasn’t trying to defend him, I did want to remind Lacy that his family wasn’t him. If that was the case, then my discovery of being related to the Finches this past year would’ve sent me spiraling. Savilla was becoming a fabulous sister, but the rest of the enormously wealthy side of my family was questionable at best—murderous at their worst. Maybe that’s why Savilla had latched on to me andAunt DeeDee so tightly since the revelation of our biological connection.
“You’re right,” Lacy said, breathing in the night air. “Anton isn’t his family, and his family isn’t him.” She spoke the words with the cadence of a mantra.
“You’re keeping your last name anyway, right?” I said, nudging her. “That way you won’t officially be one of them.”
“I certainly am keeping it now.” Lacy laughed. “Maybe Anton will want to take my name too.”
She was smiling by the time we walked back into the Carriage House, which was the most I could expect, and she kept the smile on even as we spotted the added three participants—Cousin Charlotte, Cousin Myrtis, and Bella Rivera—in tonight’s party, standing at the bar, conversing among themselves.
I was shocked that Bella had deigned to return to the party, and when she caught my eye, I noticed that she kept a possessive hand on that bright pink bag. Trying my best to channel Momma, I moved toward the Texan additions as Lacy peeled off toward Jemma.
“Long time no see,” I said, taking a champagne glass and forcing a smile.
Bella’s face remained neutral, almost as if she hadn’t heard me—even though I was only two feet away from her. Myrtis turned a listening ear toward us, and Charlotte narrowed her eyes as if studying me. I ignored the pair of them for now.
“Given your handiwork on Lacy’s dress,” I said, lifting the glass to my lips as I attempted to appear friendly, “I’m surprised you didn’t go straight to your room, pack up, and leave immediately, out of pure shame.”
Bella spoke this time, her eyes wide as they darted between me and the cousins. “You don’t know what you—or your friend—are getting into.”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice low.
“That’s not how this works,” Charlotte said, inserting herself into the conversation as she inched closer to us. Her voice waslight even though her words were heavy, but then she composed her face and glanced around the room. “Is Valerie Hurt joining us tonight?”
“How do you know Valerie?” I asked, surprised.
“Todd—” Charlotte seemed to catch herself. “Reverend Todd introduced us.”
I couldn’t keep the confusion from my face. The priest didn’t know Will, did he? Or had they become bosom buddies in the past few hours? Perhaps Will knew Todd the same way that he obviously knew Charlotte. There was some connection here I couldn’t quite put together.
“How’s their baby?” Charlotte continued, obviously unconcerned about what I did or did not know about this family and their connection to Will. It was difficult to tell whether she was trying to change the subject or was genuinely interested. Maybe it was both. “I know it was a difficult labor.”
“Are you and Valerie… are you two friends?” I asked, trying to get the missing information.
“Tangentially,” Charlotte said, the vague response raising more questions about Anton’s family and their interest in this town and the people in it.
Since I was certain that she wouldn’t answer any of them, I tried to read her body language, her expression, her voice. Charlotte’s posture was erect and her face stoic; her tone was distant, almost to the point of being disdainful.
“Are you talking about Valerie and Will?” Myrtis asked, stepping forward. “I heard they’ve been on the rocks ever since the baby arrived and he lost his job.”
My mind swarmed like a beehive. I felt as if I’d stepped into an alternate reality, one in which I was the stranger at this enormous estate. It was true that I’d been at college for the past few months but, even so, I was confident that besides Anton, no other Swanson had stepped foot in Aubergine. “How do you both know about…?”
“Recently, Will hasbecome a friend,” Charlotte finally admitted. “He mentioned that the baby’s medical bills have become a bit overwhelming.”
