Chapter 26
BECKETT
I left Laurel’s house with her laugh stuck in my head, her brother’s turkey sandwich in my stomach, and a new high I had no business taking home. Thirty minutes. That’s how long it took me to realize I could get addicted to the sound of her laughing in a home that doesn’t belong to me.
So I went home, showered, changed, and have spent the past hour sitting through the Heartland board call while six people discuss a transaction I’d normally control down to the comma placement.
Vale House is authorized to bid up to twenty-six million.
Jonah thinks we can close at twenty-three.
Mara has documented my recusal twice because lawyers enjoy paperwork almost as much as they enjoy charging for reading it.
By seven, I’m at my sister Lila’s house in Belle Meade because her son turns eight today, and I promised him two weeks ago I’d attend dinner unless there was a death in the family or Taylor Swift attempted a hostile takeover of the company.
Theo opens the door before I knock. He’s barefoot, one front tooth missing, the other loose enough to wobble when he talks, and there’s a red stain down the middle of his blue shirt that could be frosting, juice, or the aftermath of an incident no adult has discovered yet.
His eyes go straight past me to the driveway.
“Where is it?”
“I missed you too.”
“Hi, Uncle Beck.” He leans farther around me. “Where is it?”
“Your present?” He gives me the look children reserve for adults who have failed an extremely simple comprehension test. “In the car.”
He makes it three steps down the walkway before Lila calls, “Theodore. Shoes!”
“I’m only going to Uncle Beckett’s car.”
“And the pavement around his car is different from the rest of the pavement?”
Theo looks back at me for assistance.
“It isn’t one of the vehicle’s advertised features.”
He makes a noise under his breath and trudges back inside.
I follow him into a kitchen that looks almost exactly as it did the last time I was here except for the construction-paper birthday banner hanging crooked over the windows and a collection of gifts taking over one end of the breakfast nook.
Lila has one hand inside the oven and a glass of wine in the other.
Matt is at the island slicing bread. My mother sits at the table beside six-year-old Evie, supervising a bracelet made of plastic beads while contributing nothing except opinions.
Mom looks up. “You finally cut your hair.”
“You’ve been asking me to.”
“It looks good. You were starting to look older than Lila.”
Lila closes the oven. “He’s been here thirty seconds, Mom. Give the man a chance to disappoint you properly.”
“I said he looks good.”
“You told Matt he looked well last Christmas and followed it with, ‘Have you lost muscle?’”
Mom splays a hand over her chest. “Well, I was concerned. I wasn’t going to let the man walk around unaware.”
“He was wearing a sweater.”
Mom glances at Matt. “It wasn’t doing him any favors.”
Lila laughs. “He spent the rest of the week doing push-ups every time I walked into a room.”
Matt slides a bourbon across the island toward me, his expression solemn. “My condolences.”
I take the glass. “Appreciated.”
One of the reasons I approved of him marrying my sister. In this family, knowing when to stay out of the line of fire is a useful skill.
Evie looks up from her beads, hops off the chair and marches over with both hands planted on her waist. Her mouth is pinched into a pout she’s clearly worked very hard on.
“You missed my concert, Uncle Beck. We sang six songs. I had four whole lines by myself, and Mom said you were coming, so I kept looking at the door and you never came.”
The glass pauses halfway to my mouth. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“And Harper forgot part of her song, so I had to help her too. You missed that.” Her pout deepens. “Do you even know what we sang?”
I glance toward Lila for rescue, but she only raises her wine in silent salute and leaves me to die. “Something about rain?”
Evie’s eyes widen with triumph. “No. Butterflies. See? You don’t know because you weren’t there.”
“That was a trap.”
“It was a question.” She says it with enormous dignity, then adds, “Mom said work happened again, but your work happens too much.”
“I’m beginning to understand your mother has been briefing you.”
“She didn’t brift me.” Evie frowns, very serious about it. “She just said you think everything is a ’mergency when men start calling you.”
Lila takes another drink, and everyone makes a heroic effort not to laugh at Evie’s pronunciation. She might be six, but she’s every bit as terrifying as the rest of the women in this family.
I set my glass down and crouch in front of her. “When’s the next concert?”
“October seventeef at six, but you should come at five-thirty because parking was horrible and Mom said a bad word twice.”
Lila nearly chokes on her wine, and Matt coughs into his fist.
I pull out my phone. “October seventeenth. Five-thirty.”
Evie watches me put it in, her pout finally beginning to give up. “And you have to actually come this time.”
“I’ll be there.”
She studies my face for another second, decides I’ve passed whatever test she invented, and throws her arms around my neck. “Okay. I forgive you.”
“Generous.”
I catch her around the waist and dig my fingers lightly into her ribs. She squeals, twisting out of my reach with a laugh before darting back to the table and reclaiming her bracelet.
Lila waits until her daughter is occupied before she says, quietly, “She had a solo.”
I take a drink. “Send me the video.”
“I did.”
I find her message four days back, unopened beneath a parade of problems I’d decided were more pressing.
On-screen, Evie stands in the front row in her yellow dress, shoulders squared with fierce concentration as she sings all four lines of her solo in a small, clear voice.
She doesn’t miss a word. I watch it twice.
“Beckett.”
I glance up. Lila tips her chin toward the hallway just as Theo comes tearing into the kitchen in sneakers, my car keys clutched in one hand.
I stare at them. “Those were in my pocket.”
“No, they were on the table. I checked your pocket first.”
Matt coughs again, though by now he’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding the laugh in it.
I hold out my hand. “Give me the keys, criminal.”
“I’m not stealing the car. I just want my present.” A distinction he seems genuinely offended to have to make.
I take the keys and follow him outside.
Theo is already halfway down the walk, talking over his shoulder.
“Dad said you probably forgot what I asked for because you have people who buy your presents, but I told him you wouldn’t because I sent you the exact link.
And the black one was sold out, so if you got blue, that’s okay too. I like blue.”
“I appreciate the flexibility.”
He waits beside the SUV while I unlock it, bouncing once on the balls of his feet before catching himself, as though eight is far too mature for visible impatience.
The box takes up most of the cargo space.
Theo’s bouncing cuts off as the hatch rises, the soft whir the only sound between us. His eyes travel over the logo, widen, and shoot to mine.
“You got the Launch Pro.”
“I can still return it.”
“No, no, no.” He grabs my arm, grinning so wide the gap in his teeth shows. “Uncle Beck, this is the good one. It does ball speed and launch angle and carry distance, and Coach Bennett has one, but his is the older version. Dad said this one costs way too much.”
“He remains correct.”
Theo throws both arms around my waist and squeezes until my shirt wrinkles. Matt comes onto the porch as he pulls away. “For the record, I said no reasonable adult buys that for an eight-year-old.” Theo twists around, still hanging onto me. “Uncle Beck did.”
Lila steps out behind him, takes one look at the box and closes her eyes. “Beckett.”
I lower the hatch and shrug, fully aware I spend a frankly irresponsible amount of money on these kids. “It was on his list.”
“So was a puppy.”
Theo’s head snaps toward me. “Wait. I could’ve had a puppy?”
I put a hand on the back of his head and steer him inside. “You have a launch monitor. Go eat.”
Dinner starts with Theo informing the table that his new launch monitor is the same kind serious golfers use, which means referring to it as a toy is, in his words, “disrespectful.” Evie refuses a piece of chicken because a green bean touched “the wet side,” Mom replaces it over Lila’s objection, and Matt has the good sense to stay out of the dispute entirely—right up until Theo asks whether Grandpa would’ve bought him the Launch Pro.
“Without hesitation,” Mom says.
Matt looks wounded. “I could’ve used one person on my side.”
Lila reaches for the wine. “You married into the wrong family.”
Theo beams at the confirmation, and Mom adds that his grandfather once bought me a car after I made varsity golf, which is a generous retelling considering the thing was six years old and the passenger window needed both hands and a prayer to close.
Dad has been gone fifteen years. For the first few, his name could flatten a dinner conversation, but we’re past that now.
He gets to be funny again—difficult, generous, stubborn, full of shit when the occasion called for it.
The same man who built Vale House from three employees and a leased office also left me eight million dollars in debt and three executives who’d been siphoning company money for years.