Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
“Here we are,” Kate announced hastily as she spotted her place card, gold script on thick linen card stock. Unfortunately for her, she apparently had a place of honor at table one, directly across from the bridal dais where Spencer was, indeed, staring daggers at her and Jake. She ducked behind the tower of tulips, obscuring him from view. She still had Kennedy’s champagne glass, but she wasn’t about to give Spencer the opportunity to pounce and lecture her again, so she quietly set it beside her plate. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.
The wedding party had taken their seats as well, including Spencer’s awful brother, Eric, and his boring college-roommate-turned-lawyer, Ian. Kate shifted her position before almost making eye contact with Juliette Winters, the ferocious second-in-command of Kennedy’s marketing team. The woman was an absolute shark, as formidable in meetings as she was on the dating scene. Kate had no desire to give Juliette any more reasons to hate her tonight after the book tour debacle six months ago.
Next to Juliette, in the maid-of-honor position, was a woman in a dress Kate recognized instantly, thanks to its boxy fit. It was the woman from the garden, only this time Kate was close enough to identify her. Cassidy Smith, Kennedy’s cousin from the banished side of the family. No wonder she couldn’t afford a better dress. Kate had met the poor girl a few times over the years at Kennedy’s parties, and she’d always seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown about something. She’d at least cleaned up her eye makeup so it was less raccoon, more Alice Cooper. Who had she been talking to out there, and what had they been discussing that had made the other person mad enough to slap her? Kate could hardly ask Cassidy, even though she was burning up with curiosity.
Jake took the seat beside her, breaking into her suspicious thoughts as he looked over the table decorations. “Kennedy must be a big fan of pink.”
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said a young man in a bright red dress shirt, flopping into the seat beside Kate and slinging his jacket over the chair beside him. “It’s like being inside of an enormous vagina.”
Jake choked on a poorly timed sip of wine, spraying red across the soft pink of the tablecloth in an unfortunate pastiche that seemed to only underscore the point. “I wasn’t thinking that,” he said. He looked around the table with fresh eyes. “Though, now I can’t… unthink it.”
The new arrival waved an empty wineglass at a passing waiter. “Hello? Refill?”
“I think you’ve had enough until we get to the main course, Richie, don’t you?” said an older Black man in a navy blazer as he took the seat beside Richie. Kate glanced surreptitiously at his place card, where the name Steven Moyer was etched in gold. Kate dug her fingers into Jake’s arm to keep from gasping out loud. Richie and Steven. As in she’s pushed me to this, Richie .
“I’m Steven, the family’s real estate lawyer,” he said, shaking Kate’s hand in a formal grasp. “And this is—”
“Richie, the black sheep cousin, and you are Kate and no name, fantastic, we’re all friends now,” said the younger man, draining half his freshly filled wineglass in one sip and making a face. “God, is this really the best that Auntie R would let them pull from stock? It tastes like cooking sherry mixed with grape juice.”
Kate’s knowledge of wine ran to the “silver bladder bag in a box” variety, but she thought the wine tasted fine. Then again, that might be why she thought the wine tasted fine. She sipped slowly as the waiters brought out the main course. Richie picked at it, complaining about Kennedy’s banal choices of chicken or fish, criticizing the plating and the undercooked potatoes as he drained another glass and a half. Kate would have preferred something far less dainty herself, with less fork selection and a paper napkin.
“The, uh, photos are a nice touch,” Kate said, her attempt at polite conversation with a man she was rapidly realizing was deeply unpleasant to share a meal with. She waved at the photos embedded in the surface of the tulip vase. “Very… retro?”
“They’re of Uncle Gordon and Aunt Brielle’s wedding,” Richie said in a bored tone. “Kennedy’s parents, may they rest in peace, blah blah blah. From when they got married here. Ken has dreamed of having her wedding here just like they did ever since she was a little girl. She used to carry their wedding album around and make us re-create scenes from the wedding. I was the only boy, so I always had to play Uncle Gordon. Of course, that was before Auntie R basically banished us from the island under the guise of ‘preservation.’”
“If there’s one thing your aunt is good at, it’s spin doctoring,” Steven said with a shrug. “She has the majority of the board in her pocket, too, so she can get away with it.”
“Perfect little people-pleaser Ken really got her back, though, didn’t she?” Richie snorted into his wineglass. “More cutthroat than the Bitch Bull herself, going behind her back to the board like she did.”
“There’s no telling what Rebecca will do about it now, though,” Steven said. “Hell hath no fury like a Rebecca Hempstead spurned, and she’ll bring all hell down on us for it.”
Kate thought of Mr. Sheffield from the portrait gallery, whose entire family business Rebecca ruined over a broken engagement.
“You don’t seem particularly fond of your aunt,” Jake observed.
Richie snorted once again. “Who would be? She thinks because she’s made so much money with her little stock market ploys that suddenly she’s the only Hempstead worth cashing the family trust checks? It’s all Great-Grandpa Russell’s fault, really, willing everything straight to Ferdinand and decreeing some ridiculous inheritance restriction that only the eldest of the eldest can manage the trust. That’s some old-fashioned bullshit. But it was Grandpa Ferdinand who really put the ice pick in the family back, cutting out his own siblings because they dared to question the will. And now we all suffer the consequences, bowing and scraping at the divine altar of Rebecca to give us our share.”
“You have to ask Rebecca for your inheritance?” Kate asked. She hadn’t run across the specifics of their trust during her late-night, ill-advised Google rabbit-holing, but there had been enough litigation among the Hempsteads to power a small village of lawyers.
“It’s more complicated than that, actually,” said Steven. “According to Russell Hempstead’s will, upon his death the entirety of the Hempstead fortune would be placed in a trust, with the eldest child of the eldest child in charge of overseeing and doling out those funds to the family. However, he put an… interesting stipulation upon the release of any such funds.”
“Interesting,” Richie muttered. “More like sadistic and humiliating.”
“I believe his intentions were good,” Steven said with a frown. “He’d seen many of his peers and their heirs fall to infighting and wasteful living over the fortunes they had amassed in their day. Russell came from farming stock, and he believed in the power of hard work. So he put in a clause—any Hempstead could request their inheritance at any time, up to one million dollars each, but only if they presented their plan to use that money in a significant and impactful way to contribute positively to society.”
“Like curing cancer?” Jake asked, bewildered.
“Or starting a business, or a charity foundation,” Steven said. “He wanted his children and his grandchildren to work for their money, same as he had.”
“Yeah, except he made all his money back in the twenties running rum up the coast of Seattle,” Richie said, rolling his eyes. “Significant and impactful, sure, but I doubt anyone would think he was contributing positively to society. Meanwhile, if I want to so much as buy toilet paper, I’ve got to run it up the flagpole through the Bitch Bull. She’s denied every request I’ve ever made. Twelve times! Twelve times she’s poisoned the board against my perfectly legitimate business plans. I swear, if she tries to intervene next month, I’ll—”
“Richie,” Steven said sharply, glaring at him. “I think you’ve had enough, don’t you?”
“Of Rebecca, you bet,” Richie said venomously. “She can’t hold our inheritance hostage forever. Speak of the she-devil now.”
Richie turned his sullen attention toward the bridal dais as the chandeliers dimmed and a single spotlight flared to life, illuminating Abraham.
“Everyone, please, can I have your attention?” he called, holding up a hand to block the glare of the spotlight. “Dessert will be served shortly, which means it’s time for speeches! And, first up, we have the honor of hearing from a woman who needs no introduction, but who absolutely deserves one. What hasn’t she done, folks? Top of the Forbes list, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year for six years running, and she even served a stint as a US diplomat in Japan. Please join me in welcoming and extending our sincere gratitude to the woman who made this weekend possible, our esteemed and revered host, Ms. Rebecca Hempstead!”
The room politely cheered as a woman in a bold floral caftan climbed the short steps to the stage. She towered over Abraham, lean and willowy like a former athlete. Kate would have guessed her to be in her forties based on her flawless skin, but the steel gray of her bob haircut and Kate’s own googling put her closer to her sixties. Kate had always heard that meeting celebrities in real life was underwhelming, but Rebecca Hempstead managed to be the opposite; sparkling and perfectly put together, tall and imposing while still portraying feminine grace. This was the woman who moved the market before breakfast, who made politicians scramble to get a few minutes with her, who held the Hempstead family reins in an iron fist.
“Good evening,” Rebecca said, her voice rich and smooth, as if the generations of fine breeding and top-tier schooling had smoothed any accented edge. “And welcome to Hempstead Manor. I see some very familiar faces in the crowd tonight—John Berry, president of Washington National Bank, the very bank my grandfather started over a hundred years ago. And Prince Abdullah, As-salaam alaikum ! George and Agatha, so good to see you taking a break from the campaign trail. And what an auspicious gathering to bring such luminous dignitaries like yourselves together! When Kennedy asked for my blessing to hold her wedding here, where her own parents were married so many happy years ago, how could I refuse her?”
Richie made a choking sound, earning himself a glare that would have melted steel.
“After all, it was such a tragedy to lose my brother and his wife in that gondola accident in Switzerland all those years ago, with nothing left of them but this lovely family heirloom necklace that Kennedy wears to this day.”
Kate leaned toward Jake. “Actually, I read they found a whole foot in a shoe, too, but I guess that doesn’t fit into the wedding speech as nicely.”
Rebecca pulled a tissue from her pocket, dabbing at eyes that looked awfully dry from table one’s perspective. “I know that for many of you, this weekend is your first time touring the grandeur of our estate. And during the lengthy, numerous, laborious preparations for this weekend, in which I opened my home to strangers, I began to understand what an unrealized gift we have here on our ancestral island. The statuary my grandfather collected from the European art scene; the incredible architectural wonder of Edwin Frothington’s neoclassical Romanian castle; the rich history of Hempstead Island as a central point of activity during Prohibition. And, of course, my own humble contributions from a lifetime spent hunting nature’s most devious animals and collecting them in my own personal menagerie.”
Kate shuddered at the idea of this Chuck E. Cheese funhouse of horrors being billed as a “menagerie.”
“And so,” Rebecca continued, her smile turning indulgent, “with such a gift in mind, I realized I could no longer keep it from the annals of history. To let time turn its face away from all that the Hempsteads have accomplished would not only be foolish, it would be a true erasure of historical significance.”
Richie stiffened in his seat, his posture suddenly as rigid as a Catholic schoolgirl come Sunday morning. “Where is she going with this?”
“I don’t know,” Steven said, “but I don’t like it.”
It was true that Rebecca seemed to be picking up steam, barreling toward some destination only she knew, even as she took a dramatic pause to make eye contact with every important person in the room. The room, in turn, held its breath, Kate’s lungs burning with the need to breathe even as she couldn’t grant them release until she knew what, exactly, Rebecca Hempstead was up to.
“That’s why,” Rebecca said, eyes gleaming, “in the spirit of great estates like the Rockefeller family’s Kykuit before us, I’ve decided to gift Hempstead Island to the San Juan Islands Historical Trust upon my death. And to support such a generous endowment, I’ll also be directing the Hempstead Family Trust to support those preservation efforts in perpetuity.”
The collective gasp in the room couldn’t have been more dramatic if it had come from a studio audience. But the applause that followed drowned out the thunder raging overhead. Richie sank back into his seat in horror, and Steven had gone preternaturally still, as if Rebecca had dealt him a death blow. Kate couldn’t see Kennedy beyond the glare of the spotlight fixed on Rebecca, but she couldn’t imagine the woman still sported her bridely glow after her aunt basically stripped her of her entire inheritance right then and there.
“Holy shit,” Kate whispered. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying? She’s turning over the entire Hempstead family fortune to make this place a public park when she dies?”
“Hell of a wedding present,” Jake said.
“She can’t do that!” Richie whispered harshly. “She can’t, can she?”
“If she’s announcing it, knowing Rebecca, it’s already done,” Steven said, looking lost.
“We have to stop her!” Richie hissed. “Call an emergency board meeting, take her to court, something. Get her checked for incompetence, put her in a loony bin. Something, Steven! We can’t just let her do this. That’s my inheritance, too, damnit!”
“I don’t think your aunt sees it that way,” Steven said, shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice was a harsh whisper. “What the fuck am I going to do now?”
“Thank you, thank you!” Rebecca announced with a polished laugh. “But this weekend isn’t just about me, or about the historic value of Hempstead Island. This weekend is about the future.” Rebecca lifted a glass, her smile wide and wolfish. “To Kennedy, and the future.”