Never The Best (Savannah's Best #5)

8. Pearl

CHAPTER 8

Pearl

O ne of the fantastic things about leaving Savannah was not having to attend the Beaumont family dinners. If you lived in Los Angeles, no one expected you to show up for family time at the Beaumont estate, which always felt like a performance, one I had no interest in participating in.

Like always, the long mahogany dining table gleamed under the soft glow of the chandelier, and the sterling silverware was arranged as though we were expecting royalty instead of having just another suffocating family gathering.

My mother sat at the head of the table, her back as straight as the chair she’d occupied for the past forty years. Cash was at the other end, leaning into his self-appointed role as patriarch with all the smugness of someone who thought he’d inherited a throne instead of a crumbling family legacy.

I was seated between Alice and Madeline—my saving grace at family events since they were born. I adored my nieces, and the feeling was mutual. They were clever, quick-witted, and full of teenage rebellion that kept their parents perpetually exasperated. Tonight, they were trying not to laugh too loudly at whatever it was that Alice whispered under her breath about Cash, who had just launched into another long-winded lecture about the problem with the youth of today expecting handouts.

It went along the lines of, "In our day, we had to work for what we had…blah, blah, blah."

All bullshit because Cash had inherited the family fortune, including most of mine, which I'd happily given away—and he'd still managed to fuck it up. He thought I didn't know, but I did. I was a freaking finance director, and as a Beaumont, I still got the quarterly reports. Cash, despite his name, wasn't good with money, but God, did he pretend he was.

“Girls,” Caroline hissed, her pearl necklace catching the light as she shot us a withering glare, the same pearl necklace she'd be clutching any second now. “Stop tittering at the table. It’s unseemly.”

“Sorry, Mom." Alice did not sound remotely apologetic as she pressed her lips together to stifle a grin. Maddie elbowed me gently, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Honestly, Pearl,” Cash said, turning his disapproving gaze on me. "Do you always have to encourage them? They need a role model, not a bad influence.”

“I’m a bad influence?” I raised an eyebrow. “Pray, tell me, how?”

“Because you don’t take anything seriously,” he shot back, cutting into his steak with far more force than necessary. “And let’s not even get started on your so-called career.”

I felt Alice stiffen beside me, and Maddie’s playful grin faded. I forced a smile, even as my chest tightened. “My so-called career pays my bills, Cash, since I gave you most of my inheritance, remember?”

I wasn't passive-aggressive; oh no, in the past decade, I'd become aggressive-aggressive. I refused to take any bullshit from anyone—at least on the surface. I was faking confidence and hutzpah until I actually had it.

Cash had called me in Los Angeles, saying that he needed me to reinvest my inheritance into the family business to save the Beaumont family name. He made it sound like it was my duty. Lucky for him, I didn't want to be burdened by the family legacy . The more I took from the Beaumont coffers, the more they'd try to control me.

I wished Cash had been honest with me and said that he'd overleveraged several properties, taken out massive loans, and made some terrible investments that hadn’t paid off. Real estate was a volatile game, and Cash had bet big—on luxury condos during a downturn, on high-risk commercial developments that went belly-up, and even on a golf resort in the middle of nowhere that no one wanted to visit. Instead, he'd all but demanded that I save the business. He couldn't sell his part of the company because he had children, while I, the loser, didn't have any offspring to worry about.

Then, I’d helped him out with an open heart. Now, as I watched Cash act like the king of the Beaumont empire, I wondered if I’d made a mistake by letting him throw my good money after bad. He hadn’t saved the legacy. The quarterly reports told me the real story: unpaid debts, declining property values, shrinking margins. The empire was crumbling, and Cash had the nerve to sit here and act like I was the one who didn’t take things seriously.

“Don’t be defensive, Pearl,” Mama chimed in. “Your brother is only trying to help. You wouldn’t need to work at all if you’d simply made better choices. Now that you're not fat any longer, I thought you'd do the right thing and find yourself a beau, but?—”

I set my fork down, the sharp clink against my plate louder than I’d intended. “Mama, we've discussed this enough times now for you to know how this conversation ends. Do we really need to do it all over again?"

Birdie Beaumont’s lips pursed, an unmistakable and familiar sign of her displeasure with me. “I don't understand why you're so stubborn. There’s nothing wrong with making a good match, Pearl. Josie has done quite well for herself, and she’ll make an excellent wife for Rhett. Not everyone is content to…what is it you do again?”

"Mama, I work in finance, and I'm good at it. My goal in life is not to marry some wealthy, vapid Savannah socialite and spend my days planning luncheons and charity events." I loosened my grip on the stem of my wine glass before I broke the damn thing.

“Oh, but you think working for Nina Davenport is a good thing?” Caroline now took over the let's hammer on Pearl part of the dinner.

This was the age-old battle that women participated in, weakening our gender’s ability to succeed. "I don’t know what your problem is with Nina having her own company—she's never insulted your choices or those of women who want to be homemakers."

"We're more than homemakers," Caroline ground out, her jaw tight. "We help the society at large."

"So does Nina. Savannah Lace employs a large number of people, and?—"

"Enough!" Mama banged a hand on the table. We all stared at my mother. She pursed her lips and cleared her throat. “Pearl, I know you think you’re being some fancy independent woman, but what you’re being is lonely.”

“I’m alone, Mama, not lonely.”

Cash sighed, shaking his head. "You know, Pearl, if you’d just listen to us, you’d actually get somewhere."

Before I could speak, quiet Maddy mused innocently, "What does getting somewhere mean, Daddy?"

"That means," Cash said, trying to sound superior, "Pearl would be married and have kids by now. Instead, she chose to run away to the West Coast and now works for a company that is not considered serious in the field—just Nina's minions playing Designing Women ."

The condescension was just too much. I knew I was about to lose my temper and say things I would regret, so I shut up. My stress levels were remarkably high right now, and I wanted to throw up the food I'd eaten .

“Daddy, I know Bianca Davenport, and she told me how her mother built that Savannah Lace from the ground up,” Alice remarked. “Miss Davenport is smart, successful, and honestly, pretty admirable. I want to be just like her when I grow up."

Caroline was about to scream the house down when Mama put her foot down.

"Let’s eat one meal in peace, shall we?" Mama's tone carried a familiar note of maternal disappointment. "I don't know, Pearl, we were doing fine before you came back to Savannah. Now, every time we meet as a family, it's like this,"

"Then, Mama, I, from now on, have a plausible reason to decline your future invitations to family dinners," I said without inflection, burying the hurt of my family’s not wanting me deep inside. I looked at my plate and knew I wouldn’t be able to eat another bite.

The table fell into an awkward silence, broken only by the clink of silverware. I glanced at Alice and Maddie, who both gave me supportive smiles.

“Anyway,” Birdie said after a moment, her voice taking on a lighter, more performative tone as she turned to Caroline. “Josie called me this afternoon. She and Rhett are thinking about having their wedding at the Historic Savannah Club. Such a lovely venue.”

“You know Josie, she has such an eye for these things. She was responsible for the last Garden Committee event, and it was beautiful,” Caroline agreed, her smile saccharine. “Rhett is lucky to have her.”

I felt a knot form in my stomach. It wasn’t jealousy—not of Josie, not of Rhett, not even of their engagement—it was exhaustion. I was tired of never measuring up to whatever impossible and unknown standard my family had set. I’d felt it my entire life, first in the way they talked about my weight and now in the way they dismissed my choices, my independence, my career.

"What do you think, Pearl?" Caroline persisted, and I saw malice in her eyes. Everyone knew about what happened that summer between Rhett and me. This was her way of reminding me.

"About what?" I asked nonchalantly, not wanting to give Caroline the pleasure of seeing anything resembling my true feelings on my face and in my demeanor.

“You know about what," Caroline retorted. "Now, don’t be bitter, Pearl. You’ll find someone eventually, maybe once you adjust your attitude.”

Alice and Maddie both turned to me, their eyes wide, waiting to see how I’d respond. I smiled at them, a genuine smile this time. “That sounds like a whole lot of work, and right now, I already have a full-time job,” I joked, meeting Caroline's gaze head-on.

Cash sighed loudly as if the weight of being the Beaumont patriarch was almost too much to bear. “This is exactly what I mean, Pearl. You’re thirty-one years old. Maybe it’s time to grow up.”

I opened my mouth to respond but then decided it wasn't worth it.

"I think Aunt Pearl is the coolest person I know," Maddie breathed .

"I agree." Alice gripped my hand in hers.

"Girls, this has nothing to do with you," Caroline muttered with fake patience.

"It kinda does, Mama," Maddie continued thoughtfully. "I want to go to college and be an academic. Will you have a problem with me working? It's 2024; we don't expect women to stay home barefoot and pregnant, do we?"

"Darlin', you'll be wearing Jimmy Choos and not be barefoot," Caroline snapped.

Maddy sighed. "That's not what I…." She trailed off and smiled wanly at me.

We fell silent again, and by the time dessert was served—some lemon meringue pie that Birdie insisted was just divine —I’d had enough. I bid everyone farewell, but I wasn't lucky because Cash insisted on walking me to my car.

"Pearl, I don't want you to think that I don't appreciate what you did for the family." When Cash and I were alone, our dynamic was different than when he was with the others, demanding I anoint him as patriarch.

"I know, Cash," I said wearily.

"Ah, you know, Lev Steele seems to be in the market for a wife," he continued, "I think that?—"

"Lev and I are friendly," I cut him off, "but we're never going to date."

"Why not?" Cash tucked into the pockets of his slacks.

"Because I'm not attracted to him." I put a hand on my brother's shoulder. "Cash, I like my life. I don't ever feel that I need a man or children in it to feel good about it. It's already good. I know you don't understand that, and that's fine, but I need you to stop harping on about it 'cause, if it continues, I'm not going to come over and pretend we're a happy family."

Cash took a deep breath. "I'm a traditionalist, Pearl."

"I respect that and the choices you made; you should offer me the same courtesy."

Cash hugged me then, surprising me. "I'll try."

I pulled away and smiled at him. He was nearly seventeen years older than me and had almost been a parent while I was growing up, since our father died when I was so young.

"That's all any of us can do,” I said to him.

As I drove home, I wondered if coming to Savannah was a mistake. Then I thought about the people I worked with, I thought of Aunt Hattie, and knew it wasn't. I loved it here. This was my home, and I wouldn't let Rhett, or my family, drive me away.

My mother acted like she was concerned about my single status, but I knew she wasn't. She was disappointed. The fact that I didn't want to get married and wasn't interested in playing the role of some Stepford wife who planned charity galas and lived for compliments about her party-throwing skills wasn't me.

Why was happiness designated as getting married and having kids? The truth was that I didn't want to have children. Still, you couldn't say that because the minute you did, people wanted to know if it was because you couldn’t physiologically have kids—and if you said that wasn't the case, you were branded as being selfish since you didn't want to propagate the human race.

If I ever met a man who I wanted to be with, I wouldn’t get married—I'd love and cherish and live with my partner, but I wouldn't want to wear a white dress, sign marriage documents, or change my last name. And I didn't want to have children. It was a personal choice, but in Savannah, that would be seen as blasphemous.

Aunt Hattie had gone through the ridicule her single status caused when she chose to live the life she did—it hadn't been easy. But now, at the age of fifty-five, she didn’t give a flying fuck, as she put it, and she'd live her life the way she wanted, and everyone else could go stuff their stuffiness where the sun don't shine .