Chapter 5 #2
Gotta play the Margie part. Especially since I start my housekeeping job at the retreat center tomorrow.
Rhys drops his spoon on the table. “Look, I know who you are.”
Every muscle in my body seizes. I don’t know how I manage to not choke on my food, but I manage to not choke on my food.
Which is good.
Margie would, by default, know exactly what he meant.
Unfortunately, I’m not only Margie. “You do?”
The man stares at me like he can read the code of all of my past lives that have imprinted somewhere in my soul. Like he knows every identity I’ve had in every incarnation of my life back to the beginning of time.
And like he knows that Margie Johnson is a lie, and Margot Merriweather-Brown is not to be trusted.
And then he picks up his spoon again and looks down at his stew. “Decker told me about the DNA thing.”
Thank.
Fucking.
Fuck.
I shovel a spoonful of stew into my mouth, then swallow without hardly tasting it, which is a shame considering how good it is.
“He did?” I ask after I swallow.
“You didn’t tell any of your friends you have unexpected half brothers?”
I’m actively sweating now when I shouldn’t be.
He doesn’t know who I am.
He thinks my only secret is that I’m related to the triplets, which, clearly, I suspected he knew anyway.
“Of course I told my friends. But they’re not here. Where it could get uncomfortable for their family if their parents find out.”
That’s the story. That they don’t know if their parents know that they know that their dad is not their dad, and they don’t want me to blow it.
It’s a good story.
Even if I suspect that the triplets’ cousin who runs the coffee shop knows who I am too.
In the related-to-the-triplets sense.
Once a secret’s out, you can’t put it back. They’re playing with fire.
And that means that even if I never tell another soul, I’m still at risk of being blamed. So I have to stay squeaky-clean and stick to this story in public no matter what.
“You meet them?” Rhys asks me. “The parents?”
“No. I don’t—I will if all three of the triplets want me to, but I get the impression they’d rather I just remain an old friend of Lucky’s who washed out of nursing school. And I’m aware that not all of them are happy I’m here.”
“You really go to nursing school?”
I shake my head, reverting to the story I told Lucky. “College wasn’t for me. Any kind of school, really. After high school. Which was hard.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Des Moines.”
“Iowa?”
“Is there another one?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Had a buddy who went to high school there. How old did you say you were?”
Fuck. Here we go. “I’m twenty-nine.” Thirty-one, actually, but I’m fine fudging the truth here. The triplets haven’t asked, so right now, it doesn’t matter.
“Huh,” Rhys says. “So was he. Where’d you go to high school?”
“You know all of the high schools in Des Moines?”
“Know my buddy’s.”
“You must be very close. Where did he go?”
He stares at me.
I stare back.
I’m not often questioned by strangers, but I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of being questioned by my father.
Rhys O’Malley is getting nothing out of me.
Except a gnawing anxiety in the pit of my stomach as I question if he’s grilling Margie or if he knows more than he’s letting on.
If Cyril had been dyed, dusted, and smacked with a frying pan upon entering a room, he would’ve absolutely not rested until he found every hole in their story.
Good thing I really love research.
Because I can pull off being Margie Johnson like a boss.
Even if I’m well and truly sweating now. Can he smell it? Can he smell my sweat?
“I hope it wasn’t Piedmont,” I say, naming a real high school in Des Moines. “They were assholes in football. Though Northview wasn’t much better.”
“You didn’t go to either of those two then?”
I force a smile. “I didn’t say that, now did I? Where did you grow up? Was football a big thing there? You probably get this a lot, but you look like you could’ve been a linebacker.”
More staring.
More eating stew.
“I gather your high school experience was as fantastic as mine then.” I take another spoonful of stew too.
“What wasn’t great about yours?”
“The usual. Not part of the in crowd, didn’t like half my teachers, and with being raised by a single mom, I needed to work to help pay the bills.”
This is my favorite part of my fake life history.
The part where I was tight with my mom and we worked together to raise me, even if I was a misfit who just wanted someone to understand her.
My original plan to tell anyone who presses is that she got married once to a man with two daughters, and my stepsisters hated me for those few years, and one of them even stole the captain of the football team out from under me for a prom date when I thought a miracle was about to happen.
Yes, fine, I’m twisting Cinderella a little, but it was my favorite when I was little. I’ll never be Cinderella, but playing housekeeper for a few weeks while pretending to be basically broke and alone is as close as I’ll ever get.
But I don’t like the way he’s staring at me, and I’m starting to think the Cinderella thing might be overkill in my fake story.
It’s like he doesn’t believe even the little bits that I’ve told him. Or I’ve triggered something with my story that’s making him even more suspicious of me.
Do I need to make up more details? Tell him a fabricated story about somewhere that I worked in high school?
More likely, I need to shut up and ask more questions of him than I give answers in return.
Or maybe tell him the fucking truth? my conscience whispers.
As if I wouldn’t in a heartbeat if I thought I could trust him.
Sleep in the same cabin when he’s passed the basic security checks from both Cyril and the triplets?
Fine.
Outright tell him who I am?
There’s not a world where that makes sense, no matter how much I’m sweating under his scrutiny.
“So where did you grow up?” I ask him with as much of a smile as I can force.
He lifts his eyes and stares at me with the slightest smirk playing on his lips. “Connecticut.”
My stomach bottoms out.
I’m not overly worried about being recognized here.
My father loves the limelight, so while I’m known in some circles, I’m not famous famous the way some of my friends from childhood are because dear ol’ dad takes all of the attention from Aurora Gardens and the family for himself and rarely shines it on anyone else.
But I’d still prefer that an unexpected roommate had grown up somewhere much, much farther from New York.
Much farther from where I’m occasionally on local news channels.
An engine hums outside, saving me from having to come up with a quick follow-up question that I don’t want to know the answer to.
Like, were you living there before coming here? or how much do you pay attention to the New York scene?
“Jack’s here.” Rhys takes one last spoonful, finishing his bowl of soup, and rises, heading toward the front door.
My belly flutters.
The one thing I didn’t expect when I decided to come out here to meet my half brothers was how much I’d like them.
I hoped I would, but you never know what you’ll find on the other side of a DNA test. See also, my father is an asshole, and while my mother doesn’t like him much, she likes the life he provides enough that she does what he tells her.
Neither of which I appreciate having in my DNA.
But here, Lucky’s been so very kind.
Decker might be suspicious, but I respect that about him.
Listening to them talk at the coffee shop yesterday—it was like watching Daphne in action. I can see the family resemblance, even if they likely don’t see it back in me.
No matter how hard I play at being Margie.
It doesn’t escape my notice that Rhys checks above the door before he opens it.
Like he has concerns that I’ve constructed more booby traps just for fun.
I hear a voice outside, but the door shuts before I can filter out the words.
After two more rushed bites of stew—seriously, you wouldn’t think beef and barley and some random vegetables could taste this good, but they do—I head outside too.
Jack doesn’t spot me immediately. He and Rhys are pulling tools out of the back of Jack’s truck, so I get a second to take stock of my third half brother while my heart speeds up and my eyes sting a little.
He’s real.
There truly are three of them.
And this third brother of mine has his hair military-short, with his face clean-shaven. He’s in jeans and a T-shirt, and there’s a mid-size black-and-brown mutt poking his head out of the truck with a happy grin.
All three of the triplets have distinctive styles.
If Daph and I shared a face, people still would’ve been able to tell us apart based on our haircuts and clothing choices, so that makes sense.
I’m almost to the car, debating pausing to meet the dog first, before Jack notices me and does a double take.
“Hi.” I extend a hand. “I’m Margie.”
“Jack.” He shakes, his grip warm and friendly without being weak, and I instantly like him too. His smile’s not as golden retriever-ish as Lucky’s, but also nowhere near as skeptical as Decker’s. “So weird. You have my brother’s eyes.”
I blink at him as my eyes sting harder.
I have brothers.
Family.
Ties that go beyond just Daphne and me.
People that maybe, if all goes well, might accept me for all of who I am and want to spend more time with me someday.
I swallow back the instinctive answer of and you have my sister’s love of chaos as Rhys grunts and shuts the tailgate on the truck.
“All three of you have the same eyes, dumbass,” Rhys mutters. “Hers are blue. Same as yours.”
“But they’re the same shape as Decker’s.”
“If you say so.” Rhys jerks his head toward the car. “And that’s Bandit. He’ll be your best friend if you let him.”
“He’s beautiful.” I rub the short black-and-brown-spotted fur on Bandit’s head between his two floppy ears, and he licks my hand, prompting an even bigger real smile from me. “And I’m happy to be his new best friend.”
My life doesn’t easily lend itself to having a pet, but I’ve been thinking more and more that I’m missing out. And god knows I could spoil a dog silly.
Once everything’s settled with my father and I’ve taken his position at Aurora Gardens.
“Just give him back when you’re done,” Jack says.
“Of course. Thank you for your help with the van. I can scrub a toilet until you can see your reflection in it, but I don’t know much about what goes on under the hood of a car.”
“You know a little something about rigging a home security system though. Call me next time you do it. I can help.”
“Do not call him,” Rhys mutters.
“Of the three of us—me and my brothers, I mean—I’m the one with a degree in explosives engineering, which makes me the best for high-impact results for homemade security systems.”
“Stop talking,” Rhys says to him.
“Don’t mind Mr. Grumpy Butt,” Jack says to me while I keep loving on his dog enough that he lets Bandit down out of the truck. “Some chick painted his face with hair dye and he can’t see it for the gift that it was.”
A startled laugh rolls out of me. “That was me, and it was a gift?”
“You’ve given him the gift of seeing who likes him for his personality instead of his face.”
Rhys lifts a middle finger, which makes me like him even more.
I want to be that unfiltered all the time.
I really, really do.
And Jack has a point. Now that the streaks are fading from Rhys’s face, I can see that he’s likely one of those guys who’s regularly being hit on.
Not just for his size, but because he’s classically handsome too.
The jawline. The nose. The cheekbones. The beard.
The intense, hooded blue eyes that seem to see everything.
Stop it, I order myself.
“Can we get to work?” he says.
Jack and I share a grin, and I get a little misty-eyed again.
Daph and I might have some family who are people I’d want to hang out with when all of this is over.
Unless they no longer want to see me when they find out who I really am.
Fuck, this is complicated.
But necessary.
Because no matter how much I might like my new half brothers, I still have an amazing life back in New York, with more goals and hopes and dreams for all of the places I still want to take Aurora Gardens.
After I force my father out.
See how much he likes having his family and his life taken away from him like he took it away from Daphne.
The cheating fucker.
“You want to watch and see how this is done?” Jack asks me as he trails Rhys to the open garage and I rub all over Bandit’s belly.
“She’s not going to need another belt anytime soon,” Rhys says.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not interesting,” Jack replies.
Rhys looks at me—the intensity, holy damn. “You ever need to replace a belt on a car before, Margie?”
My lungs freeze at the way he says Margie.
There’s definitely lingering suspicion in that question.
“Ignore him,” Jack says again. “He’s had a shitty year and isn’t done taking it out on everyone around him.”
Rhys holds eye contact with me for another moment, then shakes his head and pops the hood on the beat-up old van. “Whatever. Let’s do this.”
My current motto.
Right behind please like me.
The dog grins up at me.
I smile back at him.
If only people were this easy too.