Chapter Four
FOUR
Phoebe
Fuck the bus. Fuck Rhode Island (sorry if you live here). And fuck my creepy fucking birth father, who’s making me check over my shoulder a hundred times a minute.
“He is so fucking weird,” I say harshly into my phone. “Not the interesting kind of weird, but the I-will-butcher-you-in-your-sleep type of fucked-up freak.”
“You want to drop another fuck?” Rocky snaps hotly.
“You plan to pick it up for me?”
“Fuck no.”
My scowl pinches into a smile, but my power walking stride never loses blistering heat as I trek from the bus stop to Briny Pearl. I’m very late to the lunch with the godmothers and Hails on account of my lack of forethought about how painfully slow the bus would be.
“Let’s return to the part where you said you saw him,” Rocky says, his voice deep and coarse like harsh sandpaper against my ears.
Him. “That creep wishes he were as cool as Jason Voorhees.”
“Your sick fascination with the ugly fuck from Friday the 13th isn’t dispelling the father-daughter comparisons here.”
I skid to a full-blown halt right outside of Briny Pearl. I glare at the pirate ship wheel on the restaurant’s navy-blue siding. “I’m not like my dad. Take it back right now.”
“Only if you stay on topic. For fuck’s sake, Phebs. I’m going out of my mind picturing him tailing your bus.”
“Like I said, he was waiting at the bus stop in Victoria. I thought he was going to follow me on, but he just waved me goodbye with a creepy smirk.”
“Use another fucking adjective.”
I hate that I love Rocky’s aggravated, serrated edges.
I might be a freak in the sense that I like being cut up by him, but I refuse to believe I share more than a genetic code with Varrick Wolfe.
Personality, uh-uh—we are not the same. Not that we’re on speaking terms. He’s just done the stalkerish loitering thing.
I expel a molten breath. “Picture a fortysomething version of Christan Bale in American Psycho. That was his pompous, punchable smile.”
“Great. Did he know you were going to Newport?” Rocky asks.
“Unsure.” I fix the spaghetti strap to my slim pink dress, then bend at the knees to retie the loose ribbon on my white wedges.
“He knew I was leaving Victoria to hop on the bus, at least. Maybe my mom told him. She’s been keeping in contact with Varrick.
” It’s been a point of contention among me and my brothers and her, and I feel ill even imagining her spending two seconds with a man who murdered Rocky’s entire family.
What else is he capable of?
My skin crawls, and as I scan my surroundings, my body tightens in preparation to throw a fist, knee a groin, or run for my life. Luckily, I’m alone near the sunny entrance of the restaurant. Just me and some potted yellow daylilies.
“You didn’t think to call me on the bus?” Rocky questions. It sounds like he’s power walking as angrily as I just was.
“I did think about it, and I thought that you would’ve followed me.
” I hear the slam of a car door over the phone.
It swells my lungs, knowing he’s quick to be there for me, but at the same time, this isn’t one of those cases where he should show up.
“You can’t come here.” I hear the engine. “Rocky.”
“Give me one decent reason.”
“It’d look exceptionally shitty banging my ex-husband shortly after breaking up with the town sweetheart.”
“I’m not going to fuck you in Rhode Island, Phoebe. I’m just making sure you weren’t tailed.”
My face flames. I open my mouth, but I replay the gritty mean tone he had with me. And now I do just want him to fuck me in Rhode Island.
He must hear the shift of my breath. Because he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll destroy your cunt later.”
I glare. “If I let you.”
“Funny you think I won’t just take you anyway.”
I’d flip him off if he were near me. I chew the corner of my smile. “Threatening me with a bad time.”
“Always. I’m fuck out of good times.”
“Same.” I love how deranged this conversation is, and shit, I really need to go to lunch. I’m stalling now. “I need to go. I love you. Bye.” I hang up, not giving him the opportunity to serve an I love you back. It feels like a victorious declaration of love. One that doesn’t need reciprocation.
While gathering my dark blue hair into a messy high pony, I barrel into the fancy restaurant and offer a brisk smile to the hostess. “I’m meeting someone on the patio.” Then I follow a server out into the glaring sunshine, squinting as I locate Hailey, Addison Tinrock, and two empty chairs.
Confusion knits my brows. How is my mom still not here?
I plop down unladylike into a free wicker seat.
“Hi, Hails,” I greet my best friend, happy to see signs of good sleep since I spent the night at Rocky’s boathouse and didn’t wake up in our loft.
No dark circles under her eyes. Her platinum-blonde hair is combed and tangle-free.
I catch a glimpse of her toes, which have a new metallic polish.
Go, Hails.
Smoky shadow accentuates her gray irises. She appears reserved and standoffish, but her smile peeks at me over a sip of coffee. Her black lipstick leaves a stain against the rim, and I watch how her body relaxes like she’s relieved I’m a part of the lunch.
I smile back, then notice Addison staring more at the door. Maybe she’s expecting her own best friend to trail after me, but my mom is nowhere in sight.
“So, Addison, did you happen to tell your old creepy friend that I’d be here today?
” I stretch forward like this is an interrogation.
Because it is. My trust in her and my mom hasn’t just been on thin ice.
It’s plummeted into hypothermic waters. They’re lucky Hailey and I have retrieved it, but like hell am I holding it in my hand just to get frostbite.
I believe in actions more than words.
“My old creepy friend?” she repeats like I doled out a freezer-burnt dessert when she’s only ever been fed Michelin-star soufflés.
“Six-foot-something. Dresses like he’s old money.
Clean-shaven. Very fit. Probably runs ten miles to the soundtrack of babies crying.
Stupidly good-looking according to ladies at the club who need to be checked for cataracts, but he’s grotesque to my own two eyes.
That old creepy friend. You know, the one you lost touch with back in ’86 in Victoria. ”
Addison sends me a sharp reprimanding look to lower my voice.
I’m not feeling demure. I’ve learned too much.
Like how our parents ran jobs with Varrick Wolfe in the eighties.
They have history with him that we don’t.
They know him, and I simultaneously want nothing to do with the man while also wanting to know everything about him. The latter, mostly to protect myself.
“I haven’t said a word to Varrick,” Addison says, pushing a plate of oysters toward me. Even as my stomach grumbles, I don’t take the distraction.
“But my mom has,” I state, knowing she’s been popping in and out of Stonehaven since Claudia died.
The historic mansion is located on a tiny island a short boat ride from the Victoria harbor, and it’s belonged to the Wolfes since they founded the town in 1887.
Unfortunately, Varrick married into the Wolfe dynasty before he killed them off, so he has sole claim to the residence.
Hailey frowns at me. “You think Elizabeth tipped him off that we’d be here?”
“I think someone did, seeing as how he was waiting for me to get on the bus.”
“You took the bus?” Addison puts two fingers to her temple, sinking backward like a migraine is coming on.
“That’s what you’re getting out of this?
” Irritation claws at my insides. Their priorities seem fucked-up.
The godmothers are more worried about me and Hails ditching our grifter lifestyle than anything else.
Rocky would say they don’t want to lose their assets they’ve cultivated for twenty-four years, but I’ve always believed it’s deeper.
They’re worried Hailey and I won’t live the lives they’ve dreamed for us.
All they’ve ever wanted was for us to have it better than them.
From what they’ve said, they grew up poor as dirt, and they scraped their way to the upper echelons of society.
So seeing their daughters choose the bottom-feeder lives they fought to escape—it must hurt a little.
At least enough to burst a blood vessel in Addison’s temple.
“If Bethy tipped him off, she would’ve had a good reason.” Addison reaches for her wineglass. “The last thing she’d do is put you in harm’s way. The only reason she’s entertaining that ghoul is to protect you, Nova, and Oliver.”
I clench down on my teeth. My heart pangs as guilt begins to gnaw from the inside out. I have no idea if my mom even loved Varrick. She was only twenty-two when she ran from Connecticut. From him. Pregnant with triplets.
He couldn’t have been much older than her. What was their relationship even like? Were me and my brothers conceived out of hate? Was it forced? Do I want that answer?
It’d paint a graphic picture of her present interactions with my dad at Stonehaven. I should have these facts rather than bury my head in the sand, but my throat swells with emotion. I can’t ask Addison for those exact details when they need to come from my mom.
“Has there been signs of life?” I ask, my voice scratchy and edged. “What if he threw her into the bay?”
“He didn’t throw her into the bay…” Addison says, but her forehead wrinkles again. She downs the last sip of white wine and only eases when she glances left. She immediately rises from her chair in relief. “There you are.”
Elizabeth Graves is…a mess. My mom struts in with disheveled, bed-head hair. It’s dyed a pretty honey blonde that seems a little too yellow in the sunlight. Her peach blouse is severely wrinkled—her leather Birkin halfway unzipped.