34. Sylvie #2
Wyatt promised they’d go easy on him, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first time he’s ever lied to my face.
I didn’t want to call, but that bubble bath never happened. I had a weird encounter with Bootsy at the farm and it kind of freaked me out. I didn’t want to say anything to Duke because you know him—he’d fly off the handle and insist on coming home.
Annie
Bootsy was at the house??
Lark
We’re already on the way.
Kate
Girls night in, here we come!
I smiled at my phone, my nerves already easing at the prospect of not being alone. I scrolled back up and read the text thread again. Even though Duke had tried to protect my relaxing night in, they’d planned to gather snacks and spend their free evening with me .
I quickly picked up the yarn blanket and attempted to drape it artfully across the chair. I fluffed my hair and planned to ditch Duke’s flannel, but his scent alone made me feel better, so I opted to keep it on.
True to their word, within minutes, car doors were closing, and laughter was floating up the porch steps. I opened after one loud knock, and they all filed inside, offering quick hugs as their voices overlapped one another.
Lark was last and gripped my shoulder. “Are you okay? Tell us everything.”
I smiled and scoffed. “It was probably nothing, but Ed was acting all agitated, and it turns out Duck was tangled up outside. But it was weird... the barn door was already open.”
Annie paused and lifted an eyebrow. She’d grown up with the Sullivans, so she was practically their adopted sister. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
I shook my head. “It’s not. Duke’s very careful with locking up his equipment. Then I saw a light or something... I figured I was about to catch one of my dumbass brothers mid-prank, so I went to check it out?—”
“Girl!” Kate’s eyes went wide. “Don’t you listen to true crime podcasts? Never go investigate!”
I laughed. “I know. I know . When I realized it wasn’t any of my brothers, I kind of panicked.”
“How did you get rid of him?” Annie’s blue eyes were wide as she worried her lip.
“I lied and said Duke was inside. Bootsy took off pretty quick after that.”
“Good thinking.” With snacks unloaded onto the table, they settled around the living room furniture.
Kate tucked her feet under herself as she sank into the couch. “Something similar happened when we were renovating Tootie’s house. I heard voices and someone even rattled the door handle.” She let an exaggerated shiver roll through her. “I didn’t want to be alone for weeks.”
“They never did figure out who that was, did they?” Lark opened a container of hummus and dragged a carrot through it.
Kate shook her head. “Nope. It was right after we found the speakeasy. General consensus was it was probably more nosy reporters, but I don’t know... that never really sat right with me.” Kate’s wary eyes moved over me.
“What?” I asked.
Kate hesitated before continuing, “Did Duke ever tell you about what we found down there?”
“The liquor bottle, right? The one with the King Liquor label on it? Yes, he did, but I didn’t really know anything about it besides what we’d talked about at the Bluebirds.”
Annie leaned forward. “No old family stories? Tales of bootlegging and intrigue?”
A dry, humorless laugh rolled out of me.
I grabbed a cookie before nibbling a bite.
Shame rose and settled into my chest. The Kings weren’t like the Sullivans.
We didn’t sit around and reminisce about old times or family stories that would make you laugh.
Mostly we spent our early years surviving under Russell King’s rule in our mother’s absence.
As an adult, I did what we could to stay off his radar.
I shrugged. “Nothing rings a bell. It certainly doesn’t add up to Bootsy Sinclair creeping around the barn...”
Annie sat up. “What did you say?”
I frowned at her. “What? That it was weird Bootsy was at the farm?”
Her hands ran down her black leggings. “No, no, no. The other part. His last name is Sinclair?”
I looked around as the Sullivan women stared at me. “Yes? Why is that a big deal? I thought everyone knew the Sinclair twins.”
“Dude...” Annie started flipping through her phone, and I looked at Kate and Lark.
Kate shrugged. “I had no idea what his last name was, and I’ve lived here my whole life.”
Lark shrugged. “I remember it being really odd that there wasn’t even a last name on anything related to Bowlegs’s funeral, either, but once I got to know this town...” Lark shrugged. “At the time, the quirkiness kind of tracked for around here.”
“Okay,” Annie interrupted. “So when Kate and Beckett found the speakeasy, there was a lockbox, and this was inside.” She turned her phone to me to reveal a black-and-white picture of two men and a woman in a friendly embrace, smiling at the camera.
“When I was digging into the whole King–Sullivan feud, I found out they are Philo Sullivan, James King, and Helen Sinclair.” Annie handed me her phone so I could take a closer look. “The families were friends for a long, long time. Like Miss Mabel said, Philo and Helen eventually got married.”
I grabbed her phone to take a closer look. “So what happened? How do they go from that to whatever this feud has become?”
Kate leaned in and lifted an eyebrow. “They were bootlegging together. We also found a ledger that documented deliveries. Some of the names I still recognize—families that still live in Outtatowner—who were getting regular deliveries. Then something went ass up.” She thought for a moment.
“But I find it very, very weirdly coincidental that Bootsy’s last name is Sinclair. It has to be related, right?”
A sick feeling settled in my stomach. “Sometimes my dad gives Bootsy money.” The women stared at me, urging me to continue. “Since I was little, he and Bowlegs would have these hushed, closed-door meetings with my dad, and once I was sneaking around and definitely saw an exchange of cash.”
“Hush money?” Lark asked, her eyes wide as we all leaned in.
Annie looked around our circle with anticipation.
“What if... what if Bootsy is from the same Sinclair family as Helen. Records I found said she had a brother. What if when Helen and Philo got married, they wanted to get out of the bootlegging business because it was unsafe, like Mabel had mentioned. They were starting a family or something?”
“The timeline would be about right. Birth records show the two started a family pretty quickly after marriage.” Kate shook her head in disbelief. “If the bootlegging was profitable, two-thirds of the group pulling out would be very bad for business.”
I scoffed. “If James King was anything like my father, that would be enough to ignite a feud.”
“Could James have teamed up with Helen’s mystery brother?” Lark asked.
Annie shrugged. “It’s possible. Money makes people do strange and stupid things.”
Lark leaned back and put her hands by her head, gesturing like her brain was exploding. “This is wild. I can’t believe we figured it out!”
“We don’t know for sure,” Annie said, tucking her phone back into the pocket of her leggings, “but it seems to make sense.”
I stared at my hands. “Generations of greed and mistrust could have easily morphed into families feuding and, over time, completely forgetting why. All because my family was powered by anger and money.”
Kate reached out to me. When my eyes met hers, there wasn’t pity, only kindness. “And you’re healing it with love. There’s beauty in that.”
I sighed. “I don’t know that I’m healing much of anything. Sure, things aren’t quite so heated, but our families are far from friends.”
Annie gave me a smile that hinted at our blossoming friendship, and my heart pinched with hopeful longing. “We’re here.”
That ember of warmth glowed in my chest. Annie was right, they were here for no other reason than to build our budding friendship.
I relaxed and smiled at them. Those women at the Bluebird Book Club were slowly becoming more than friendly faces that I wasn’t allowed to talk to outside the bookstore walls. They were women who showed up for you when you needed them and who didn’t hold the sins of your father against you.
They were the kind of women I strived to be. “Thank you for coming. I feel better not having to be here alone after the night I had. I’ve got some lemonade in the fridge. How about a shitty rom-com and more snacks?”
Lark lifted her glass with a hoot. “Cheers to snacks!”
I pushed myself to stand, and a gush of wetness poured down my leg and onto the hardwood floor.
Oh fuck . . .