Chapter 1
C H A P T E R
O N E
keep your counsel
“Where’s your family, Caledon?” The woman next to him—Lisa—straightened her graduation cap self-consciously.
They were surrounded by a teeming sea of graduates and well-wishers, many of whom were taking photos.
At an institution like this, it was hard for people to resist making tourists of themselves.
“I don’t think I saw them with you earlier. ”
“Just look for the ones that look like they’re part of the Addams family.”
“Lucas,” Lisa said chidingly, in the overly self-conscious tone of someone trying not to laugh themselves.
Cal folded his arms over his black robes, side-stepping an older woman with a camera. He moved too quickly and she did a double-take that nearly had her tripping over her own heels in her haste to get out of his way.
“Sorry.” The woman was still staring at him. Cal shot her a tense smile before turning back to his fellow graduates. “My sister’s over there. My brother’s on his honeymoon with his wife.”
Lucas goggled at Odessa, who was wearing a corset dress with a tiered skirt and knee-high black boots. Lisa did too, plucking at her antique strand of pearls as she took in his sister’s indecently low neckline with a frown. “And your parents?”
“They’re busy.”
“Wow. They couldn’t even be bothered to make time for your graduation? Harsh.” Her eyes filled with sympathy . . . and something else. Something that had his hackles rising. It was desire: to both save and be saved. “Do you and your sister want to come to dinner with us?”
It would be so easy, that dark voice inside of him whispered.
“No,” he said, a little repulsed. “Thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Take a hint, Lisa,” Lucas said. “You’ve been amicus curiaed.”
“My sister and I already have plans,” he said, turning his body away. “There’s a bar she wants to go to.”
“A bar?” she asked incredulously.
“She collects matchbooks.” Among other things.
His eyes slid to Odessa, who appeared to be clutching a bunch of hellebore.
In Victorian times, the plant was used to indicate scandalous behavior.
She waved them at him, drawing disapproving stares from the Cape Cod set as black petals scattered from the mangled blooms. He wondered how she’d managed to get that eyesore of a bouquet on and off the plane.
“I imagine we’ll go there and have a drink or two before we get back on the road,” he murmured, staring at the flowers. “It’s a long drive to California.”
“You’re not celebrating with us?” Lisa asked, just as Lucas said, “You’re driving back to California?”
“I don’t really care for planes. My family is a little eccentric.”
“Ah, old money,” Lucas said in a loud stage whisper.
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “All right.”
He managed to avoid any further conversation before the graduation ceremony began.
Then he picked up his cap from where he’d tossed it and made his way to his sister, while everyone was taking pictures.
Cal had never liked having his taken and wanted to leave before he could be asked to be part of any groups.
Odessa waited by a stately tree, ruthlessly landscaped. He plucked the hellebore from his sister, giving them a castigating shake. “These are a skin irritant.”
“You’re taking this Jury Doctoring thing way too seriously. Who’s the girl?”
“Juris doctor. And she’s no one.” He stuffed the flowers into a trash can. “How are Ben and his wife?”
“Ugh, so boring. All Ben does is sit around and mope, and Noelle doesn’t want to do anything.”
Cal paused in the process of reaching for his keys to the car, already packed with his belongings. He was that eager to leave. Or had been. “I thought they were on honeymoon.”
“Well, they came back early. Lucky us.” Odessa scoffed at one of the well-manicured maples. “I bet the sex was bad.”
“Did something happen?”
“How would I know? Do I look like his diary?”
“You have your finger on the pulse of this family. You know I can’t hold everything together while I’m gone.”
Odessa gave him a bitter smirk. “Nobody asked you to play the martyr, Baby Cal. That’s what the sparrows are for.”
Is it, though? He frowned deeply, remembering Noelle’s uncomplicated sweetness.
And her sister’s—
No.
That was none of his concern. She had chosen, and the rest was done and dusted.
Now it was up to Ben to shield her with his wings.
Flying would have been faster but Cal did not want to ship his car and driving allowed him a certain degree of freedom, even if it meant that it would take them the better part of a week to return home.
They stayed in motels with green pools and peeling stucco that were happy to take cash in exchange for keeping secrets.
“What if it was always like this?” Odessa said, examining the cracked medicine cabinet with a look of curiosity.
“The cabinet? I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“No.” She slammed it closed, emphatically. “Us—this. What if we never had to go back?”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Cal told her.
“I know.” Odessa gave him an enigmatic grin. “That’s why I do, Baby Cal.”
He stayed up late into the night, picking at takeout and scrolling through law firms while Odessa sampled the local flavor.
“You could come with me,” she said, hovering by the door.
She was wearing a flapper-like slip dress and so many bracelets that her wrists jingled like Christmas bells every time her arms moved. “It wouldn’t hurt you to have fun.”
He looked up from his phone, stretching out his long legs until he ran out of bed to stretch on and the splintery wooden frame of the twin was rubbing up against the backs of his calves. “I don’t think they’d enjoy my kind of fun.”
“That little blonde looked like she was considering it.”
“No.” A reluctant smile tugged at his lips, which he quickly worked to hide. What if it was always like this? He sat up, propping up a knee to rest his phone against, to conceal the sudden weakness in his grip. “Go terrorize the town without me.”
Her bracelets chimed in reproof as she raised her hand to flip him off. “You’re such a stick-in-the-mud.”
The silence that followed sucked at him like a drain.
Despite all her bold talk, he suspected Odessa was just as troubled by their situation.
It was there in how she picked up men who were drawn to her dark light like moths to combustive flame, quick to worship and eager to please, as far removed from a Cullraven patriarch as a daisy from a redwood.
She played with a different matchbook every morning as she fidgeted over her coffee, designer sunglasses covering her bloodshot eyes. They spilled out of her purse and onto the seat when she pulled out an old iPod and plugged the buds into her ears.
“Still having fun?” he asked, chuckling when she gave him the finger. The waitress set down their plates, her eyes lingering for a beat longer than was strictly polite.
“Why don’t you look like hot shit?”
“Because I sleep at night.”
Odessa snorted and pulled a flask out of her jacket pocket, tipping it into her coffee. She knew their parents would not approve of her behavior. Cullraven women did not dally. They remained in the background: part of the hunt, yes, but never the victor who brought the trophy home.
“You used to know how to have a good time,” she grumbled, stirring a heaping tablespoon of sugar into her mug.
“Yes, and how did that turn out for me?” His voice came out sharper than he’d wanted, the emotions too revealing.
She gave him a grim, knowing smile that made her mouth look bruised where the prior night’s lipstick had caked into her dry lips.
“You were too serious. That’s your problem, Baby Cal.
You’re a romantic. If you let yourself go once in a while, at least then you wouldn’t mope around with that hangdog face all the time.
Can’t we stop for milkshakes after this? I’m hungover.”
“We’re not stopping again until we make it through the mountains.”
She sulked as he paid, while their waitress hovered over the bill. A romantic, he thought. Why? Because he believed love was final? So was a death sentence.
His thoughts were dark as the clouds cresting along the slopes of the Sierras, some of them still capped with snow. As they rounded the sharp curves of iron-rich granite, Cal felt the piercing lance of something too dark to be nostalgia but achingly familiar nonetheless.
They were home.
Ben’s car was in the drive. He and his wife apparently had returned prematurely. Odessa rolled her eyes at it, and at him, before making her way to the staircase. “I’m taking a bath, someone else can get my shit,” she announced to no one, leaving her luggage in a pile for the staff to deal with.
His brother, drawn by the commotion, leaned against the doorway. “So,” he said, looking him up and down derisively. “The prodigal children return.”
“And so does my father’s golden calf.” Cal sneered. “How was your honeymoon? Fruitful and multiplicitous? Or sterile and pointlessly erect, much like your preferred style of architecture?”
Ben twitched. “I suggest you dress for dinner and concern yourself with your own affairs.”
That was far from reassuring. If there was one thing his brother liked to do, it was gloat. Ben’s coldness and premature return did indeed suggest something was wrong.
His suspicions were confirmed at dinner that night.
Noelle was a shadow of her former glory, with fresh lines on her pretty face.
Gone was the vivacious woman he remembered from the wedding, who had looked to Ben for his approval; in her stead was a staid trophy not unlike the antique stuffed sparrow that decorated its bureau beneath its pitted glass dome.
Like a hothouse flower, she had been quick to wither in these harshly mountainous climes. Cal had no doubt the townsfolk had given her a cold reception, but that would pale in comparison to the fate that awaited her in this house if she was failing to please Ben.