Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“Welcome, welcome, my friends!” Ramone greeted, his voice warm and inviting as more people trickled into the ballroom.
I was pleasantly surprised when Augusta and Carl arrived—I’d missed them at dinner. Even more shocking was the appearance of Helena and Jasper. It was starting to feel like a main dining room reunion special.
At exactly six-thirty, Ramone had the ballroom doors closed and clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Tonight,” he announced with a flourish, “we will be learning the cha-cha! Now, tell me, does anyone here already know how to cha-cha?”
I nudged Ezra with my elbow. “Well, stud?” I teased. “Do you?”
After learning that he had done West Coast Swing in his twenties, I was both intrigued and annoyed that we hadn’t gone dancing before. The thought of watching him in action was more than a little exciting.
“Why don’t you show us how it’s done, Ezra?” I suggested, grinning.
Gilly caught on immediately. “Yeah, Easy,” she chimed in. “Why don’t you show us?”
Not to be left out, Pippa added, “Yeah, shake that groove thing!”
I shot her a look. For someone in her thirties, she had a real talent for sounding like a Gen X-er—or even a borderline Boomer—with the way she talked.
Ezra shook his head, smirking. “I don’t want to show up the teacher,” he said smoothly. “I’ll let him demonstrate.”
Ramone signaled to someone, and music with a lively, rhythmic beat filled the room.
With a microphone clipped to his lapel, he began his lesson.
“The cha-cha is danced to four beats,” he explained.
“You can count it as one, two, three—cha-cha. That’s three full beats and two half beats that make up the final four count.
And for those of you who are number-challenged,” he grinned, “and you know who you are, there’s a simpler way to count.
Think of it as slow, slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, slow, slow, quick-quick.
The slows are full beats, and the quick-quicks are half beats.
” He smacked his hands together as if dusting them off. “See? Nothing to it.”
There were a few laughs and murmurs in the crowd. Ramone was certainly charismatic. I could see why he was popular. I could even see why Callie had been drawn to him.
As he continued to count the beats, he moved his feet effortlessly, his hips swaying with a practiced grace.
“We’re going to take this nice and easy,” he assured us.
“You like it nice and easy, don’t you?” He cupped his ear, his feet cha-chaing for the gods, waiting for the crowd’s enthusiastic “Yes!”
I leaned against Ezra and murmured, “I’m pretty partial to nice and easy.”
He laughed.
Ramone clapped his hands twice at the side of his face like a flamenco dancer.
“Everybody now. We are going to go really slow. We’re going to do a sidestep to the left for one full beat, then forward one full beat, back on your opposite leg one full beat, then two quick half steps to the right for the final beat.
Don’t worry if you don’t get it right away, just watch my feet, not yours,” he added with a grin.
“And follow me. Slow, slow, slow, quick-quick. And don’t forget the hip action! ”
“Yeah, can’t forget the hip action,” I teased, exchanging a glance with Ezra.
Around the ballroom, guests attempted to follow Ramone’s lead with varying levels of success.
A few couples actually seemed to have a knack for it, gliding smoothly across the floor with confidence.
Others, however, were stumbling through the steps, their movements more frantic than fluid.
One woman in a floral maxi dress bumped into her partner and nearly took him down with her.
A man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts moved his feet like he was marching in place, his hips refusing to participate.
Poor Pippa wasn’t catching on very quickly either.
Unlike Shakira, I was pretty sure those hips were lying.
Ezra, on the other hand, was impressive. I mean, I already knew the man had good hip action, but damn. He was really good. He moved with an effortless rhythm, his steps crisp, his posture confident.
“Dang, Easy, get it!” Gilly hooted.
She wasn’t so bad herself. I knew she’d taken ballroom lessons for her wedding to Gio a hundred years ago, but my sister from another mister still had it going on. Watching Scott, who was not so graceful, throw caution to the wind and enjoy dancing with her made my angina-racked heart happy.
Augusta and Carl cha-cha’d their way over to us, their movements more steady than flashy.
“You all look so shiny and beautiful,” Augusta said, beaming. “Are you going out after the lesson?”
I laughed. “We thought there was a more formal dress code. I read the itinerary wrong.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said. “You all are the stars of the show.”
“We missed you at dinner,” I said.
“What?” she asked as the music swelled and the noise level in the room rose.
I leaned in close and repeated, “We missed you at dinner!”
“That’s so nice to hear.”
As she spoke, a familiar scent drifted toward me. I recognized it instantly. Vertiliance cologne. Callie had hidden the same men’s fragrance in her Chanel bag to remind her of her first husband.
Why was I smelling it on Augusta?
“No,” a woman softly cries as she stands near a closed coffin.
“Why? Lord, why?” She is wearing a black dress suit and a black hat with a lace fastener.
“This is my fault. My fault, my boy. If only I’d kept you.
I should’ve never let you go.” Her words drift off.
“If only.” The regret in her voice is so weighty I can feel it in my chest.
Another woman enters, wearing a tightly fitted black dress that hugs her body. She has long auburn hair. “Oh.” There is a hint of surprise in her tone. “Do I know you?” I recognize her voice. It’s Callie.
“No,” the other woman says. “But I wanted to come and pay my respects.”
“How did you know Billy?”
“I didn’t know him,” the woman with the hat says. “Not for a long, long time.” She turns to the woman in the fitted dress. “I’m so very sorry for your lo—” Her words are cut short by a choking sob as she rushes past the other woman and mutters, “It didn’t have to end this way. It’s all my fault.”
Callie doesn’t seem to take notice. She moves closer to the coffin and lays her head down on the smooth mahogany wood.
“You promised me,” she whispers. “You promised it would always be you and me.” She starts to cry, a soul-deep keening that says, My heart is broken into a thousand pieces, and even if it mends, there are some parts that will never be found again.
My knees buckled when the room came back into view, but Ezra caught me before I collapsed to the floor. My chest, along with my head and neck, felt painfully strained.
“My pills,” I managed to say, but Ezra was already digging them out of my clutch.
He placed a tablet under my tongue, and within a minute, the squeezing let up, and the pain faded.
I was crying again, but not because of the angina attack. It had been Billy Grant’s funeral, and I’d watched Callie break into pieces the same way my mother had when my dad died. The pain of their grief had been difficult to witness. I couldn’t imagine how impossible it was to bear.
“How are you doing?” Ezra asked.
“Fine,” I reassured him. “Better.”
“Oh, my dear,” Augusta said, kneeling next to me. “You scared me half to death.”
“Angina attack,” I explained. “Apparently, it’s my new party trick.”
She shook her head but smiled. “At least you still have your sense of humor.”
“Sometimes, it’s the only thing that gets you through it.”
Augusta nodded. “I know the feeling well.”
Gilly, Pippa, Scott, and Jordy gathered around me.
“Help her out of the ballroom so she can breathe,” Gilly ordered.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, though my legs had yet to fully recover.
“You’re fine when I tell you you’re fine,” she snapped.
Damn, I’d really scared her this time.
“I’m sorry, Gils. But, hey, I really am okay. My heart is still working.”
“If something happens to you...” She let the implication hang.
“Nothing’s going to happen to Nora,” Ezra said. “We’re not going to let it.” He put his arm under mine and looped it around my back for support. “Getting some air is a good idea, though.”
His agreeing with Gilly’s suggestion gave her a little vindication. I cast him a grateful look.
“What happened?” he asked once we were on the other side of the double doors. “You were talking to Augusta one minute, and the next...” He scrubbed his face. “I’ve never seen you shake during a vision before. Not like that.”
“I know how Augusta and Carl are tied to all this. And I think it might give them one of the biggest motives of all.”
I flashed to Gilly asking Augusta and Carl if they had any children, and Carl responding, Not in this lifetime. Because her child had been born in another lifetime...one where she’d given him up for adoption.
“Billy Grant was her son,” I told Ezra. “Her biological son. She as much as said so in the vision I had of his funeral.”
“Well, that wasn’t what I expected,” he said.
“Expected what?” Gilly asked in a hushed voice.
“That Billy is Augusta’s son,” Pippa whispered. I guess she’d been close enough to overhear. I looked around to make sure no casuals were nearby.
“What?” Gilly whisper-screamed. “Billy was her son?” She shook her head. “That is a serious motive. If something happened to Marco, God forbid,” she crossed herself, “I would straight-up murder that person without an ounce of remorse.”
“Agreed,” Pippa and Jordy said in unison.
Ezra nodded. “Same. I’d like to think I’d stick to the rule of law, but murder would be more satisfying.”
“But wouldn’t she blame Callie, not Sebastian?” Pippa mused. “The leaked fake recording was persuasive. Until Reese told me it was fake, I believed it.”
Jordy put his arm around her. “That’s how those deepfakes suck people in. You sell a lie often enough, and even smart people will believe it.”