“Good evening,” the butler said, opening the door and ushering us inside. “The family is in the sitting area for drinks.”
The family?
It better not be Cressida.
I cringed when I heard her braying laugh.
Now I wished I had just sprung for the Chanel suit, hidden the tags, then returned it.
You can do it!I pep talked myself.Stand up straight. If you make it through the evening, I’ll buy you Chinese—crab rangoons, lo mein noodles, and egg rolls. You’ve managed to deal with Cressida before. You can handle it.
Except it was worse than Cressida, and Chinese food was not going to cut it. Because there in the sitting area, sipping on high-priced alcohol, was my stepfather and my stepsister, the two people that were at the very top of my hate list.
Shannyn blew me a kiss. My stepfather didn’t say anything at all, just looked at me and made a dismissive noise.
“Isn’t this a nice surprise!” Ethel was almost giddy. “My son and my granddaughter are here on a visit.”
Her son and her—what the fuck?
Then it hit me. Ethel and my stepfamily had the same last names!
It wasn’t as if I had ever met my stepfather’s parents. He had loved to remind me that they were not my grandparents. Whenever huge boxes would arrive for Shannyn, it was made clear that those toys, clothes, and presents were not for me, and I wasn’t supposed to touch them. Yet of course, Shannyn could go in my room and take and destroy whatever of mine she wanted to.
Calm! Be calm! Think about the Chinese food. We’ll order pot stickers and chicken wings too. And fried rice.
“What a small world,” my stepfather drawled. He was just as greasy and manipulative as ever.
“The esteemed Mr. Svensson.” Alistair stood up and offered Beck his hand. “And my stepdaughter.”
Beck looked at me in surprise.
“She didn’t tell you?” my stepfather said with a thin smile.
“I don’t understand,” Ethel said, confused.
“You remember that woman Dad shacked up with? The obnoxious one who kicked the bucket?” Shannyn said to her grandmother.
“Oh yes, the one with the daughter who you said no one liked in school.”
I seethed.
Shannyn pointed. “That’s her.”
“Good gracious!” Ethel downed the rest of her drink.
“No one liked me because you spread lies about me in school,” I said hotly.
“You did always tell me she had some mental issues just like her mother,” Ethel said, seeming to see me in a new, wholly unflattering light.
“I am perfectly fine, mentally speaking,” I said then remembered what I was wearing.
Right. Maybe not the best advertisement.
“Honestly, Mother,” my stepfather drawled, “I can’t believe you are allowing Tess to raise my nieces. She is a terrible influence. You should have met Tess’s mother. We can’t have Enola and Annie end up like her.”
I was trying not to lose it any more than I had. I went to the snack table to grab a shrimp cocktail in a little crystal cup.
“I agree,” Cressida said. “Tess makes questionable choices, and Beck makes even worse ones.”
