"I keep thinking about the cease and desist," Allison said, not looking up. "You asked me about it the other night, and I told you it was about the book resembling the Carringtons too closely. Which was true. But it wasn't the whole truth, and I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to decide if that matters."
The table went very still. Even Taylor stopped chewing.
"It matters," I said.
Allison exhaled, set the beignet down, and finally looked up. "The chapter that set her off wasn't really about the family. Not directly. It was about the house. Fictionalized, obviously. I changed the name, changed the address, gave it a different architect entirely on paper. But I'd based some of the details on things I'd picked up doing research, records I'd pulled at the historical society, old renovation permits, that kind of thing. There were gaps. Dates that didn't line up the way you'd expect. A renovation logged one year that referenced materials that weren't supposed to exist yet, according to the timeline everyone always tells about the house. I thought it was an interesting detail. Historical fiction loves a good discrepancy, gives you something to build a subplot around. I wrote maybe four pages about it, entirely fictional framing, nothing that named real names."
"And Evelyn cared about four fictional pages of framing," I said slowly.
"Evelyn cared enormously," Allison said, and there was something almost bewildered in the way she said it. "Not annoyed. Not embarrassed. Disproportionately upset, in a way that didn't match fiction about a house that wasn't even tied to her. She doesn’t own that damn house. Or didn’t, anyway. Yet she had her lawyer call within the week. Not about the family resemblance, not at first. That came later, in the actual letter. The first call was specifically about the chapter with the renovation records. I remember because the lawyer used the word speculative about six times, like he was trying to talk himself into believing it too."
"Did you ever figure out why it bothered her so much?"
"No." Allison shook her head. "I didn't understand it then, and I still don't. It was such a small thing. A handful of dates that didn't add up in a novel nobody outside of my agent had even read yet. But she reacted like I'd printed something true."
Reginald hadn't turned a page of his newspaper.
I noticed. He was listening.
"Renovation records," I repeated, keeping my voice as light as I could manage, which took more effort than it should have. "Belle Rêve's."
"I never said," Allison said. "In the manuscript, I mean. I kept it vague on purpose, gave the fictional house its own history so nobody could point to a real address and sue me over it. But the dates I used, the gaps, all of that came from research I did on three or four different Garden District properties. Belle Rêve was one of them. I don't actually know which house Evelyn thought I was writing about. Maybe she didn't either. Maybe she just saw the words “renovation records” and “don't line up” sitting next to each other and panicked before she even got to the part where I'd changed everything."
"Panic seems like a strong reaction to research," Vivienne said, and there was nothing performative in her voice now, no documentarian distance. She sounded, for once, genuinely interested rather than merely observant.
"That's what I thought too," Allison said. "At the time I figured it was just Evelyn being Evelyn, protective of her legacy, precious about her image. I didn't think much more of it. But sitting here now, knowing what we know, it feels different. It feels like maybe I wrote something true by accident and didn't realize what I was holding."
Nobody said anything for a moment. Teddy had abandoned Reginald's shoe and installed himself instead beneath Allison's chair, which felt like a small, furry vote of confidence.
"Well," Reginald said finally, folding his newspaper with force. “Historical societies are full of paperwork nobody's bothered to reconcile in decades. Dates get transcribed incorrectly. Permits get filed under the wrong year. It happens more than people realize. I wouldn't read too much into four pages of a novel."
It was a reasonable thing to say. It was also, I noticed, the first time all morning Reginald had volunteered an opinion nobody had asked him for.
"You'd know," I said, mildly, reaching for the coffee pot again. "Better than any of us, probably."
"I would," he agreed, and smiled, thin and composed, without elaborating.
I poured the coffee. I passed the beignets. Underneath the table, out of sight of everyone but me, I reached down and scratched behind Teddy's ears.
“What do you think happened?” I asked Vivienne, genuinely curious. She had a sharp mind.
“I think that someone tried too hard,” she said. “It was very…symbolic. Ritualistic. Always like they knew it had little chance of success in killing Evelyn.”
“Poppycock,” Taylor said. “Why bother then?
“They just wanted an amusement,” Vivienne replied, with a shrug.
She was holding her champagne flute by the upper portion of the glass, not the stem.
I knew there was a reason I liked her.
Twelve
Hollis showed up after brunch with a manila folder and an appetite.
“Hey, Harper.” He let himself in via the backdoor while I was bringing all the platters and leftover food into the kitchen.
“Your timing is unreal,” I told him as he reached up in the cupboard for a plate and started loading up.
