“Daph?” Oliver says. “You sure about this?”
She pulls back from hugging Decker—she’s been making her way down the line—and gives him a feral grin that’s also in Margot’s arsenal. “For any other reason? No. For this one? Oh,fuckyes.”
Same, Daphne.
Same.
32
THIS ENDS NOW
Margot
I’ve never loved my parents’home, but pulling up to it today, there’s a new level of distaste in my mouth.
I look down at my phone again, at the message from Rhys, short enough to see in the preview without opening the full text.
I believe in you and I’m not giving up on you.
My heart thumps with equal parts pain and hope.
I’mnotokay.
Idohave a lot of work to do.
But maybe I don’t have to do it alone.
Even if I’m still terrified I’ll hurt him.
My driver opens my door, and I step out into the sunshine, then just as quickly into the shadows as I make my way up the steps of the Upper East Side brownstone that my grandfather bought and then passed down to my father.
The house I grew up in.
The house that will never behomein any sense of the word again.
I ring the doorbell, and the housekeeper lets me in.
She and I catch up as she shows me to the dining room.
How did I do it?
How did I come to Sunday afternoon dinner here with my parents once a month for the past four years?
How did I sit under the paintings of our family that were swapped out after Daph was disinherited and didn’t come running back home begging for forgiveness the way my parents thought she would?
How did I stare at the moose head on the wall?
It makes me ill now, the thought of my grandfather hunting the ancestor of that majestic creature who scared the shit out of me over the wood pile at the triplets’ cabin.
If he’d done it for food—but no.
It was for sport.
Maybe Idoknow how to love.
Maybe Idohave it in me.
My father strides into the room, dressed down for the weekend in casual slacks and a polo.
