Bella must’ve noticed my expression because she touched her temple and gave an excuse. “I have a headache.”
Myrtis spoke up from the back. “Must’ve been the cheap champagne.”
Heat rose to my cheeks despite the cold. I really tried not to hate people, but these ladies weren’t making it easy. Turning to Bella, I decided to start with the most awkward question I could think of. “So, you and Anton in the bathtub, huh?”
“I call him Anthony,” Bella quipped back. “Always have. Anton is so…” She wrinkled her nose. “Soabbreviated.”
“That’s how a nickname works.”
“He calls me Arabella,” Bella said, with an air of nostalgia that I neither appreciated nor believed. Every time he’d said this woman’s name in my presence, it had been “Bella”. Plain and simple.
“I love the name Arabella,” Myrtis fawned, leaning forward from the back seat. “Always have. The first time Anton brought you to that family dinner years ago, I told Charlotte, ‘Arabella is the perfect name.’ Didn’t I, Charlotte?”
Charlotte didn’t answer, staring out the window as if she was above all of this. I did think I saw her nudge Myrtis ever so slightly.
Myrtis scooted away from her cousin and situated her head like a bobbing balloon between the two of us in the front seat. “I know Aunt Patty and Uncle Michael would love to do more business with your family.”
I assumed Myrtis was referring to Patty Swanson and the man who must be her husband. Michael Swanson. Good to know.
“That’s entirely up to my father,” Bella answered, though she glanced over her shoulder quickly at Charlotte.
The tension in the car was humming with things unsaid, a history I couldn’t begin tounravel.
“But I thought this was a test run,” Myrtis said, all innocence.
Charlotte leaned into her cousin’s ear and whispered. I watched as Myrtis’s face went blank, her eyes wide, before she composed herself and nodded sharply.
A moment later, Charlotte deigned to speak. “We didn’t come here this weekend to talk business, much less conduct it. We’re here to celebrate Anton and…” She paused, as if she’d forgotten Lacy’s name, but I wasn’t about to help her.
“Lacy,” Bella offered.
“Yes, Anton and Lacy.” Charlotte smiled in a way that was much too fake, and then her eyes fixed on mine in the rearview mirror. “Are you here with anyone this weekend?”
Surely she’d seen me with Charlie in the Carriage House? But the way she asked the question seemed like she wanted me to admit to something more. I willingly took the bait this time.
“I’m dating a man named Charlie.”
Her head tilted, but her face remained unreadable. “The sheriff?”
“The very one,” I said lightly, even though I wondered how she knew this information. “Why? Do you need to confess to a crime?”
The car went silent at that and, for a moment, I relished it, feeling I’d gotten the upper hand. I decided to return to Myrtis’s earlier comment. “You said that this weekend was supposed to be a test run? For what?”
No one answered.
I tried again, this time with a different question. “Is Will working with your family on a project?”
Bella’s eyes went to the rearview mirror then, and I could almost feel the meeting of the minds in that car. I wanted to scream at these three women, command them to tell me what they knew and why my best friend’s wedding was turning into some kind of hellish networking opportunity. I pressed my lips together, trying to keep myself from overreacting.
“I know Will is from up north somewhere,” I said, trying torecall what Momma had once told me. “D.C.? New York? Boston?”
Bella lifted a shoulder, suddenly mum.
Now, at the most inopportune time, the three of them had decided to go for radio silence. Frustration buzzed in my chest, and I had the urge to stop the car and demand that all three of them get out and go home—all the way back to Texas. Instead, I tried to channel Aunt DeeDee’s desire never to cause a scene unless absolutely necessary, but Momma’s straight shooting was definitely winning out.
“Look, I have no idea what kind of business opportunities you’re talking about, but Anton has moved on from both his family’s expectations and from… you,” I said, catching Bella’s eye as we took the road that would lead us to Main Street. “He’s made a life with Lacy, here in Aubergine, and this weekend he’s getting married. I get that moving on is hard, but it’s time.”
Bella crossed her arms but didn’t say a word. Myrtis was suddenly tight-lipped as well, and I was beginning to get the sense that I’d originally misread the power dynamics at play here.
