Everyone held their breath when Odessa Cullraven went walking through the square with her camera. She took her family’s legacy seriously—they all did. If they didn’t have so much money, the whole lot of them would have been branded as “crazy” years ago, but wealth bought you eccentricity and undeserved respect.
She paused on the sidewalk, shielding her eyes with her hand. The summer breeze ruffled the black hem of her skirt, making it blend with her shadow. For a moment, standing out there in the harsh glare of the sun, it looked like she didn’t have a face.
And then she tossed back her pretty dark head and laughed.
A year later, the statue finally came down. Helena Peters threw a party to celebrate at The Blue Bar, which nobody but her attended. They were all too busy getting drunk off the late (or so people assumed) Nathaniel Cullraven’s good scotch at Odessa Cullraven’s “A Family in Retrospective” seminar.
???????
Deena Spangler had gone to the seminar. Like she’d told Nadine over a year ago she’d always been dying for a look inside the house. It had been a pretty bland lecture, for the town’s most infamous family, tinged with the expected gothic drama, but noticeably watered-down.
The highlights of the reel were Caledon Cullraven’s madness and Adelaide Carmody Cullraven’s alleged death at the hands of her husband, Benjamin’s, jealous rage.Thatwas the kind of drama people came there for.
Nobody pointed out the sinister parallel between the most recent Benjamin andhiswife, but everyone sitting in the ballroom was loudly—and obviously—thinking about it.
Corrine had come downstairs towards the end of the lecture, secreting herself in the corner with the rest of the historical society ladies, who had shown up as a visible show of support. Deena had watched her face, rapt with wary interest as she watched the various portraits and biographies of her in-laws flash in sequence across the screen.
After a lengthy wrap-up, in which Odessa expounded at length on her own accomplishments (during which there was a flight to the refreshment table for desperate alcohol refills), she mentioned her youngest brother’s law practice, which he ran with the help of his paralegal wife.
When their wedding photo appeared on the screen, him tall and dark, her rounded and pretty, that was the only time all evening that Deena saw Corrine Cullraven smile.
“How was the seminar?” Rael asked, when she got back home. He was right where she’d left him, half-dressed in bed, paging through a book that he put down as she walked in.
Deena glanced at the title.Gravity’s Rainbow.“Oh, I think it was about what everyone was expecting. Booze was good, though.”
“Nate always did like to keep his liquor cabinet fully stocked.”
“Your father and his were close, huh?” Deena watched his stomach flex as he sat up. “I figured that was why he retired when Nathaniel disappeared.”
Rael scoffed. “I think he saw it as a sign that the old guard was falling.”
“Old guard?” She pulled off her tight cocktail dress, aware of him following her movements. “I never could shake the feeling that you knew more about what was going on in that house than you ever let anyone know.”
“Oh, Deena. I could tell you things about that place that would make your blood run cold. Ravensgate is only as good as its Master, and it has had some callous men holding its reins.”
“Odessa seems to be doing well enough with it.”
“Yes,” he said noncommittally. “I’m sure she is.”
“I’m surprised Cal didn’t want it.”
“He never did. Not really. That’s why he staked out his own way. There was a lot of pressure riding on him though. Both him and Ben were named after prominent figures in their families, both of them ruthless. It’s impossible to live up to a god and their father could never quite figure out which of them he favored, so he pitted them against each other like roosters at a cock fight. Ben became the stiff upstanding one, and Cal naturally became his opposite, flouting convention whenever he could. Chafing at the bit.”
“That must be why he liked Nadine,” Deena said.
She knew it sounded bitchy but she wasn’t particularly sorry. Nadine wasn’t here and even if she was, Deena was pretty sure that the girl would be the first to agree that she wasn’t exactly trophy wife material.
Like the rest of the town, Deena had been watching Cal run his way through women for years. It was ironic that the girl who should have been knocked down the hardest had been the one to put an end to his self-professed bachelorhood. More than one heartbroken girl had been told that he “wasn’t the marrying kind.”
Good for her, Deena thought.She was a sweet shy little thing. Although I bet she’s not so shy now. Not with him as a husband.
“I hear they’re married now,” she said aloud.
Rael gave her a faint smile. He was used to her fishing. “They’re expecting.”
“That was fast.”
“Deena,” he said chidingly, reaching out to tweak her breast. “You’re too nosy for your own good, you know that? You can’t manage everything in this city.”
