“You act and look like yourself, Evie Reyes. The man who helped create you is irrelevant. There’s a reason he isn’t in our lives. Men aren’t important. Let me take a page out of you and Sebastian’s playbook and speak to you in movie quotes. From the wise words of Jennifer Check, ‘Boys are just placeholders—they come and they go.’”
“But what if he comes looking for me?”
She laughed. “Then I’ll toss him into Falls Lake with all the others.”
I smiled at the memory. She’d been equal parts wise and snarky. I’d always admired her for being so boldly independent. She was who I strived to emulate every single day.
And she wasn’t wrong about men.
It was always my preference that mencameand went, and most of them were fine with that. Every one of them, in fact, had been more than happy to bounce and forget my name after we’d slept together.
“Interesting. I bet it’s someone big in the industry, then. I wonder if you’re the love child of some high exec,” Glenn laughed, pulling me from my thoughts.
I doubted I was the product of a love affair. My mother was too smart and practical to have gotten pregnant solely because of her emotions.
“Tell me more about your dad,” I said, switching the conversation. “You know, other than the heart attack.”
Glenn flashed a brief grimace and nodded. “That was just what we told the public. What actually happened was kind of embarrassing.”
“Oh?” I paused my unpacking.
“They found him completely naked, with his cock stiff as a metal rod. The autopsy report said he’d taken too many little blue pills, and that’s what caused the heart attack. My mom was mortified, so we said he’d died in his sleep. We couldn’t let their image be tarnished. They always pretended to have a storybook marriage. It was far from it.”
“Oh?” I asked, pressing for more.
He sighed. “I know he wasn’t the best husband, but he was a good man.”
I held back a snicker. If he was such a good man, then why was he going to dinner with my mother that night? And why did he kill her? None of the men on my list were “good.”
Glenn sensed my coldness and shrugged. There was silence for a beat before he spoke again. “Thankfully, we’d already been discussing me taking over his roles in various projects,Simon Says Sixbeing one of them. It was an easy transition, and it allowed me to make the calls I wanted without any real fight amongst my family.”
“Six Six,” I whispered under my breath.
“What?”
“Were you guys close?” I pressed, moving on from my joke.
I needed to know if he knew anything about my mom. Was he aware his dad had been one of her killers? Did he know she’d been murdered at all, or did he believe the suicide story they’d given?
He paused, setting the books in his hand down by his ankles.
“Somewhat. He brought me to meetings sometimes. If you’re asking about his affairs—yes, I knew about them. All of them.”
“All of them?” I raised an eyebrow. I licked my lips as my breathing hitched in excitement. I was so close…
He snickered and returned to the stack of books, filling the rest of the bottom row.
“Yes, even the one with your mother. It nearly destroyed our family.” He stood and brushed off his pants.
“He and my mother never had an affair,” I sneered, my mood dropping in an instant. Standing to join him, I huffed and glanced down at the hardcover still in my hand.
ITby Stephen King. It was one of the many first editions of his I’d collected sometime during my career. This book was thick.
“Evie.” He gave me a pointed look. “You don’t have to lie now. They’re both gone. I don’t hold it against her. She didn’t know my mom. She was just a career-driven woman doing what she needed to get to the top. That’s pretty common in this town. Ask your co-star.”
“Excuse me?” My mouth fell open. “My mother did not sleep her way to the top. And why are you bringing up Sebastian right now?”
He gave me a weird look and pursed his lips, as if trying to consider if he should tell me something or not.
