Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I was nearly positive I was dreaming.
That was the only way to explain the situation, the way I felt. My vest felt too tight around me, stealing my breath and crushing me. Why, Sumner is Aaron’s best friend .
For a moment, my eyes were unseeing as I stared at the tablecloth. I could feel my mind racing, struggling to absorb the shock of his words. Surely he was mistaken; perhaps there was another man named Sumner. Perhaps—perhaps?—
I closed my eyes, my world spinning.
“How did he end up being her secretary?” Malcolm asked with clear confusion. “He—he’s supposed to be visiting his father in New York, I thought?”
He’d directed this last bit toward his wife, whose brow knitted. “Who hired him?” she asked.
“We did,” my mother responded, her damage control voice on. “Your son—Aaron asked us to hire him, and—well.”
Sumner’s voice was soft in my head. I came highly recommended . The few peckings I’d taken from my food in front of me threatened to make a reappearance.
Vivienne’s accent caused her words to sound sharper. “You hired him to help my son spy on your own daughter?”
“Heavens, no!” my mother rushed in. I wanted to look over and see her expression, because we both knew it was a lie. If there was anything my mother did, it was attempt to brainwash me. “We hired him on Aaron’s suggestion, with no other intention in mind.”
I tried to keep my breathing calm through it all, the first potent emotion I’d felt in days beginning to seep through the bare numbness: rage. It was the sort of rush of anger that caused my head to swim, and before I knew it, I pushed to my feet.
My mother tried to catch my arm. “Margot, sit back down?—”
This time, I followed through on my earlier thought and tore out of her grip. “Do not touch me,” I snapped at her, my voice loud enough to cause a few heads from surrounding tables to turn. I couldn’t care less who eavesdropped. Faceless . I stared into her chocolate eyes, and I wondered what she saw. I couldn’t quite feel my expression on my cheeks, but I only knew that I felt hollow. It had to be reflected on my face. “You, unfortunately, picked a very bad day to get me to listen to you.”
Horror scrawled across her face, predicting my moves before I made them. But still, just a beat too late.
I stalked away from the table and to the hallway, no doubt with murder in my eyes. I found Sumner and Aaron in the hallway, Aaron holding his arm out to keep Sumner back. “—going to ruin everything, showing up here,” Aaron was saying. Sumner looked over Aaron’s shoulder, eyes widening when he saw me. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?—”
I grabbed a fistful of the back of Aaron’s dress shirt and turned him around. I relished in the shocked expression in his wide eyes, only for a moment before I slapped him.
I’d packed all of my force into the reel back, so as soon as my palm connected with his cheek, Aaron stumbled sideways like a drunkard. He pitched up against the country club’s wall, his shoes screeching against the floor as he caught himself.
“I don’t know if it’s clear,” I told him, ignoring the stinging pain in my hand, “but that’s my way of saying you can take your engagement ring and shove it up your ass.”
“I’d say she knows,” Aaron muttered while he held his cheek. “Margot, listen?—”
But I was beyond listening to him ever again. “You should go in there and try to save the situation with your parents.”
Aside from the red palm print on his cheek, Aaron blanched. “My—my parents know?”
I just stared at him.
He seemed to debate which took precedence, placating me or his parents, when the latter eventually won out. Aaron, still cradling his cheek, rushed back into the wedding venue, abandoning Sumner and me in the hall.
I was no stranger to being alone with Sumner, but in this moment, he was the one who felt like a stranger before me. Had it even been an hour since I stepped into the ballroom? An hour since I’d stepped from his arms? And yet it felt like it’d happened years ago. I could remember the embrace around me, but couldn’t remember the warmth. I only felt cold now.
Sumner took one tentative step toward me after several moments of silence. “Margot?—”
“This was the long conversation, wasn’t it? Not bad?” My voice shook, but it wasn’t with anger. “ Not bad? You being a spy for Aaron Astor this entire time is not bad ?”
I memorized the horror in Sumner’s expression, the panic of someone caught in their lie, their secrets found out. His beautiful lips parted, lips that I’d kissed earlier today. The pit in my stomach formed into a chasm now, empty and bottomless.
“That’s why you felt like you needed to get to know me. Because Aaron told you to.”
“No—”
“That’s why he knew everything about me,” I said in a flat voice. “Because you told him. Everything I told you in confidence, you told to Aaron.”
“Not—not everything.”
“He knew about my relationship with my parents, knew that I used to want to go to fashion school. He even knew I took my mashed potatoes without garlic butter, Sumner. What didn’t you tell him?”
A pained expression crossed Sumner’s face, but for the first time ever, I was hesitant to believe it. All this time, I thought he’d been an open book, when in reality, he’d been written in a different language. I thought of all the times in the past few weeks that I ignored what was right in front of me. Misunderstood.
“If I was Aaron’s spy, I wouldn’t have fallen for you,” Sumner insisted, taking a hesitant step closer. “And I did. You know I did. I?—”
“Stop, stop .” I held up a hand and was grateful he actually listened. Sumner fell silent, still.
I was so tired. So tired . The exhaustion ran deep into my bones. If I closed my eyes, it felt as if I’d instantly fall asleep. I was once more back at all the fundraisers and galas and parties, wishing I could be anywhere else in the world but here . The Alderton-Du Ponte Country Club felt cursed, almost laughably so. It was shallow and airless and draining.
Aaron had abandoned pleading his case in favor of appeasing his own parents, which, I knew, was him giving up in a way. It didn’t matter in the end, did it? I’d already told the Astors I would not be marrying Aaron. Everything was unraveling like a spool of thread, faster than I could latch onto any of it.
I closed my eyes, wanting nothing more than to sleep. “I have had quite possibly the worst day of my life today. I’m literally this close to losing my mind. If you want me to hear you out… you have to wait.”
Sumner drew in a shaky breath. “Promise,” he whispered, and it wasn’t just my voice that shook. “Promise you’ll hear me out.”
His eyes were red as I studied them. Years and years of being trapped in a life with fake expressions and false smiles always had me looking closely, searching for the truth. In Sumner’s eyes, I saw it now. The earnest. The desperation. It reminded me of the night he knelt before me in my bedroom, cleaning the cut on my leg, his worry blooming in his eyes like a flower. It was real.
I closed my eyes once more, not wanting to see it. “I promise.”
Whether or not that was a lie, in that moment, I didn’t know. I only knew that I couldn’t do any of this right now.
Instead of walking away from the ballroom, I returned to it, only to find my parents and the Astors absent from our table. My mother must’ve coerced them away from the prying eyes. Sumner, for what felt like the first time, did not trail after me, and the absence of him darkened everything around me. He was not my shadow, I realized. He was the light.
I stopped at the entrance of the ballroom, staring at it all for what would probably be the final time, taking in its grandeur and glory. The chandelier, the glass ceiling, the large windows. It screamed money, influence, power. It was a place Nancy had founded, but it lacked all traces of her now. I ventured past the tables and the wedding attendants, toward the open bar, ready to close my time here with one final drink. “A glass of champagne, please,” I said to the bartender, grabbing the hem of my vest and tugging it down, away from my chest, trying to lessen the pressure of it against my ribs.
I had no idea what would happen after tonight. It was my final night to sleep in my bed, to pack my things, because surely my parents would throw me out in the morning. I was too tired to speculate.
As I waited for the pour, my ears picked up on words I wished they hadn’t. “I wonder if she planned it,” someone whispered in a conspiratorial tone. I looked around, but I couldn’t tell which moving mouth spoke. “When you’re that old, can you plan your death?”
Someone else gasped. “What, like an assisted suicide?”
“Could’ve happened.” There was a pause, and though the whisper dropped lower, I could still hear it. “That girl was with her the day she passed. Maybe she gave Nancy something to help her go, if you know what I mean.”
My world darkened at the edges of my vision, rage simmering through the numbness that’d been clinging to me all day. As they continued to run their mouths, I imagined turning around and throwing my glass at whatever table the gossips sat at. I imagined marching over and grabbing a fistful of whosever hair and yanking it backward. I pictured it all in my head, relishing in the imaginary screams. My body vibrated from the barely restrained desire to act the fantasy out.
But I couldn’t find the source of the voice. It was only the words, ones that felt like they were coming from inside my head. It felt like, in that moment, that I could’ve screamed at the top of my lungs and no one would’ve noticed. That they’d assume it was part of the music, if they even heard it at all. How could my life be falling apart and everyone else’s be perfectly fine? How could not a single person blink twice on a day like today?
“Your champagne,” the bartender said, setting the small flute on the bar. They immediately turned to the next customer, as if I had never existed.
“It’s been hanging over our heads for months,” a new voice added to the gossip. “God forgive me, but thank goodness it’s finally over with.”
“All those trips to and from her house. With nothing to do! Oh, I thought I was going to die at times. Of boredom!”
Everyone gave a tittering laugh.
I closed my eyes to shut out the voices, the sounds, but they were everywhere. The words swirled around in my head, a choking fog. The few bits of food I’d choked down twisted in my stomach, as if I was on the verge of throwing it all back up.
“Margot?”
I closed my eyes, as if the action alone could shut out the voice and the impending person accompanying. I had no patience left to stretch; I was a wet towel wrung dry.
A hand curved along my back and up to my shoulder, and when I opened my eyes, I found Yvette coming around to face me. She had a painted smile on her lips, makeup that was far too heavy for her middle-aged features. She looked like a child who’d gotten into their mother’s beauty cabinet. “I’m surprised you’re here,” she said in a deceptively soft voice.
“It must be quite the day for you,” I said, swallowing down the bile that had risen in my throat. “Your daughter getting married and your friend’s funeral on the same day. Not that you showed up for the latter.”
“I’m sure Nancy would’ve understood,” Yvette said as she nodded, reassuring herself. “It’s just a whirlwind, getting prepared for a wedding. I’m sure there was quite a turnout without me there.”
She’d said it with a twist to her lips, without looking me in the eye. She knew no one went, and judging by the look in her gaze, she thought it was funny . My chest began rising and falling a bit quicker, a tremor working its way through me. “If it was any other day, you would’ve attended?”
“But it wasn’t, was it? And I’m sure you had a hand in the day the funeral was held, didn’t you?” Yvette gave an unkind smile. “Out of all the days the funeral could’ve fallen on, it had to be today? Anything to ruin someone else’s happiness.”
I had nothing to do with deciding the funeral date, but I didn’t tell Yvette that. “I’m sure you’re only upset that Nancy couldn’t make it to the wedding because you won’t get her wedding gift.” My fingers dented into my cup more firmly. “What a shame. Your ass kissing didn’t even get you a penny in the end.”
Yvette lost her smile.
Once I’d started, there was no stopping. My chest rose and fell faster, and so did my words. “I’m sure you’re happy she’s dead, just like every other pathetic bloodsucker that’d been hanging off her these past few months. Happy you don’t have to waste your own time anymore, trying to steal an old lady’s fortune. You might not have gotten the money you wanted, but at least you don’t have to play nursemaid.”
“Give me a break, Margot. You’re acting all high and mighty, as if you weren’t doing the same.” Yvette looked around briefly before taking a half-step closer. “Don’t pretend like you cared about Nancy in the slightest. We both know you’re just a selfish black hole. Have you even cried for Ms. Nancy?”
I didn’t even blink, though her words were a strangling blow. I hadn’t cried. Not once.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I doubt it. You have to have emotions to cry. So don’t pretend as if you’re better than me. Better than any of us. You aren’t. And given the fact that your mother escorted the Astors out, with angry expressions all around, it seems my prediction was true, hmm? You truly weren’t good enough for a family like them.”
The flute of champagne in my hand was slippery, as if it could’ve fallen from my grip any moment. I let the mental image play out, me tossing its sparkling contents onto Yvette’s mother-of-the-bride dress. It’d be an improvement on the ugly blue fabric, that was for sure. She’d screech, and her scream would be one everyone would hear. Everyone would’ve blocked out mine if I screamed, but they’d answer the call of one of their own.
My parents would be humiliated. It most likely would’ve gotten caught by the wandering camera crew.
Perhaps this was my opportunity to go out with a bang.
Yvette seemed to realize I had a drink in my hand, because she took a large step away from me, her heels clicking on the floors. She darted away before I could follow through on the fantasy I’d built in my head, taking my opportunity to let everything out.
I wandered away from the bar, feet taking me toward the desserts. The cupcake table, like every other square inch of the ballroom, was elegant, of course. The table itself was draped with a golden satin tablecloth with pearls littering the surface to catch the eye. I wondered if they were real. Probably. The cupcakes themselves had golden frosting with glitter shining atop, stretched in tiers throughout the dessert table. At the center of the table, though, sat the large, seven-tiered wedding cake, all white and gold with icing flowers cascading in a waterfall down the fondant.
I swiped my index finger through a flower, ruining its blooming image. I touched the frosting to my tongue. Sweet. Too sweet. It turned my stomach.
Everyone was too busy dancing, mingling, gossiping, drinking, to notice the lone girl at the table. It was a Margot Massey specialty, being overlooked while she stood in a corner. Perhaps people purposefully ignored me. Perhaps they didn’t notice me at all. I didn’t know where Destelle was. I didn’t care.
I ran my hand along the table’s edge, feeling the hard plastic hidden beneath the silk tablecloth. I caressed the edge, lifting ever so slightly, testing the weight. For a seven-tiered cake and dozens of cupcakes, it wasn’t as heavy as I thought it’d be. I lifted the table an inch, staring at the flower I’d swiped my finger through.
The day felt like it’d been five years long. Never-ending. Too much to think about. Nancy, Sumner, Aaron, Vivienne, my mother, Yvette, Annalise. I couldn’t focus on a single one of them; they were too scattered in my head. Everything from the day bombarded my senses—the funeral, the wedding, the betrayal. My head pounded with it all, a jackknifing pressure that drove me mad.
I pictured lifting the dessert table up by more than an inch. In my pounding mind, I pictured flipping it over, sending decorations and icing and cake everywhere. The pearls would scatter. I pictured the surprised shrieks that would’ve surely erupted by the sudden sound, and then Yvette’s scream as she realized the seven-tiered wedding cake of her dreams—ahem, her daughter’s dreams —was reduced to something to be scraped into the trash.
The gold icing rose was ruined, and the sugar burned my tongue.
I pictured Yvette’s face as she would gasp at what I did. I pictured my mother’s face.
And I flipped the table.