Chapter 12
TWELVE
With the doubling of our bride’s night out, we had to take two cars into town.
I was one of the few who’d had no more than a sip of champagne, so I decided to play nice and offer to drive the Texas crew.
The fact that I could pepper them with questions on the fifteen-minute drive may or may not have been the primary motivator.
Not that I was particularly interested in their lives, but I was very interested in this weekend proceeding without any additional surprises from them.
Charlotte and Myrtis wordlessly took the back seats, their eyes locked on each other, communicating their distaste for my decades-old car. Despite my new standing as an heiress, I had yet to overhaul my entire life, car included, and I had no plans to change things up anytime soon.
With the cousins settled in the back, that left Bella up front with me. Good.
The CD player’s eject button hadn’t worked since Momma put in Coldplay in 2003, so it was either that or silence.
I turned up “Green Eyes” to put my companions at ease enough to disclose information I needed—namely, why exactly Patty and the Swanson clan wanted to stop this wedding.
It couldn’t be just because they liked Bella better, surely.
As we drove out of the gates of the estate, Bella reached out a hand and turned the volume down, startling me. When Aunt DeeDee had taught me to drive, she’d also taught me about the sanctity of the driver’s control of the music.
Bella must’ve noticed my expression because she touched her temple and gave an excuse. “I have a headache.”
Myrtis spoke up from the back. “Must’ve been the cheap champagne.”
Heat rose to my cheeks despite the cold. I really tried not to hate people, but these ladies weren’t making it easy. Turning to Bella, I decided to start with the most awkward question I could think of. “So, you and Anton in the bathtub, huh?”
“I call him Anthony,” Bella quipped back. “Always have. Anton is so…” She wrinkled her nose. “So abbreviated.”
“That’s how a nickname works.”
“He calls me Arabella,” Bella said, with an air of nostalgia that I neither appreciated nor believed. Every time he’d said this woman’s name in my presence, it had been “Bella”. Plain and simple.
“I love the name Arabella,” Myrtis fawned, leaning forward from the back seat. “Always have. The first time Anton brought you to that family dinner years ago, I told Charlotte, ‘Arabella is the perfect name.’ Didn’t I, Charlotte?”
Charlotte didn’t answer, staring out the window as if she was above all of this. I did think I saw her nudge Myrtis ever so slightly.
Myrtis scooted away from her cousin and situated her head like a bobbing balloon between the two of us in the front seat. “I know Aunt Patty and Uncle Michael would love to do more business with your family.”
I assumed Myrtis was referring to Patty Swanson and the man who must be her husband. Michael Swanson. Good to know.
“That’s entirely up to my father,” Bella answered, though she glanced over her shoulder quickly at Charlotte.
The tension in the car was humming with things unsaid, a history I couldn’t begin to unravel.
“But I thought this was a test run,” Myrtis said, all innocence.
Charlotte leaned into her cousin’s ear and whispered. I watched as Myrtis’s face went blank, her eyes wide, before she composed herself and nodded sharply.
A moment later, Charlotte deigned to speak. “We didn’t come here this weekend to talk business, much less conduct it. We’re here to celebrate Anton and…” She paused, as if she’d forgotten Lacy’s name, but I wasn’t about to help her.
“Lacy,” Bella offered.
“Yes, Anton and Lacy.” Charlotte smiled in a way that was much too fake, and then her eyes fixed on mine in the rearview mirror. “Are you here with anyone this weekend?”
Surely she’d seen me with Charlie in the Carriage House? But the way she asked the question seemed like she wanted me to admit to something more. I willingly took the bait this time.
“I’m dating a man named Charlie.”
Her head tilted, but her face remained unreadable. “The sheriff?”
“The very one,” I said lightly, even though I wondered how she knew this information. “Why? Do you need to confess to a crime?”
The car went silent at that and, for a moment, I relished it, feeling I’d gotten the upper hand. I decided to return to Myrtis’s earlier comment. “You said that this weekend was supposed to be a test run? For what?”
No one answered.
I tried again, this time with a different question. “Is Will working with your family on a project?”
Bella’s eyes went to the rearview mirror then, and I could almost feel the meeting of the minds in that car.
I wanted to scream at these three women, command them to tell me what they knew and why my best friend’s wedding was turning into some kind of hellish networking opportunity.
I pressed my lips together, trying to keep myself from overreacting.
“I know Will is from up north somewhere,” I said, trying to recall what Momma had once told me. “D.C.? New York? Boston?”
Bella lifted a shoulder, suddenly mum.
Now, at the most inopportune time, the three of them had decided to go for radio silence.
Frustration buzzed in my chest, and I had the urge to stop the car and demand that all three of them get out and go home—all the way back to Texas.
Instead, I tried to channel Aunt DeeDee’s desire never to cause a scene unless absolutely necessary, but Momma’s straight shooting was definitely winning out.
“Look, I have no idea what kind of business opportunities you’re talking about, but Anton has moved on from both his family’s expectations and from…
you,” I said, catching Bella’s eye as we took the road that would lead us to Main Street.
“He’s made a life with Lacy, here in Aubergine, and this weekend he’s getting married.
I get that moving on is hard, but it’s time. ”
Bella crossed her arms but didn’t say a word. Myrtis was suddenly tight-lipped as well, and I was beginning to get the sense that I’d originally misread the power dynamics at play here.
It wasn’t Bella on top. Though Myrtis still seemed eager to please Anton’s old flame, it was Cousin Charlotte deciding what could or couldn’t be said.
“I understand that Patty Swanson took you ring shopping and that mothers can be”—I struggled for the word—“they can be persuasive, but Anton literally left town to get away from you and his family.”
Bella spoke again. “How do you know about ring shopping?”
“Anton told me,” I said, my knuckles white as I gripped the steering wheel. “At the same time that he told me that it’s over between the two of you—and has been for more than two years.”
“It’s not over.” Bella shook her head, and when she spoke next, there was a quiver in her voice as if I’d broken through her hard outer shell for the first time. “It can’t be.”
“Watching someone marry someone else is a pretty surefire signal that they’re no longer interested,” I said more gently this time.
“We talk at least once a month,” Bella offered as a kind of defense.
That information did catch me off guard, as I was sure Bella expected that it would. Anton had failed to mention that tidbit, but it still didn’t mean that he was interested in her romantically.
“He never mentioned Lacy by name,” Bella said, her voice low. “I didn’t think it was serious. I thought that with all of the changes… I thought he would be back home any day now.”
“What changes?”
Myrtis leaned forward again, whispering conspiratorially. “Patty thinks that if Anton comes home, then the business will be more profitable. Then Uncle Michael will start behaving himself again.”
“Behaving himself?” I asked, recalling how Anton had mentioned his parents’ separation even while they continued living together.
“Aunt Patty told Uncle Michael to leave,” Myrtis added. “But he wouldn’t. Stayed put in the same house, and they basically all but drew a line down the middle. It was around the same time that Anton ran off and the ranch started bleeding money.”
This time Charlotte didn’t silence her cousin, but I did catch the look she shot at Myrtis. Be careful, it silently commanded. I had a feeling that Myrtis was now carefully choosing her words.
“Whether or not it’s true, in Aunt Patty’s mind, everything is connected,” Myrtis continued. “If Anton returns home like a good son, then Uncle Michael will stop running around, and he might even start making level-headed business decisions.”
“But Patty seems happy enough dating the priest,” I countered.
“Who?” Myrtis asked, clearly confused.
“Reverend Todd?” I reminded her.
“Oh, the priest, right,” Myrtis said with an uncharacteristic smile, though it seemed to be one of mockery more than anything else.
“Does the reverend also live with Patty back in Swanson?” I dared to ask, though I tried to sound like I was interested only for the sake of gossip, not because I was trying to put disparate pieces together in order to stay one step ahead of this bizarre family.
“Todd stays in the pool house,” Myrtis answered knowingly. “Uncle Michael doesn’t seem to mind too much since he’s found a way to work with him.”
Work with him? I sensed that I was getting closer to some key piece of information, but then Bella changed the subject.
She cleared her throat. “Anyway, Charlotte’s right. We shouldn’t talk business this weekend.”
I could tell I’d heard something that I shouldn’t know, so I swallowed back further questions, even though I planned to keep an even closer eye on this crew. It was beginning to sound like they’d brought more than an uninvited guest this weekend, and that meant trouble.
“That’s enough gossip too.” Charlotte spoke with the authority of someone who very much felt she was one of them. “Myrtis forgets herself when she talks too much, don’t you?”
We drove on in silence, the glow of the Christmas tree in the center of town coming into view. Such a festive atmosphere for a car full of family secrets.
Myrtis sat back in her seat, obeying Charlotte for whatever reason as Bella reached out a hand and turned up the music this time. We drove the last couple of minutes into town with Chris Martin’s raspy voice crowing “A Rush of Blood to the Head.”