day 1, night #3
Audrey looked at the submarine with a wistful sigh. “It’s such a shame you and Elias won’t get to use it,” she murmured.
“What?” Claire had thought they were too deep for the sun to reach, but it’d grown darker since they’d been down here, the little light that could penetrate the depths leaching away as night fully fell over the ocean.
Even with the recessed lamps and the gleam of the submarine, she had to squint to make out Audrey’s face.
Audrey’s mouth opened, but Ash spoke before she could.
“It’s the weird-ass cherry on the weird-ass Ashbury sundae.
” He stepped up next to Claire, gesturing with his now-empty whiskey bottle to the submarine.
“Forget about Cabo, every wedding night in this godforsaken family takes place on the Poseidon.” He grinned at her, eyes red rimmed.
“You into exhibitionism, Claire? You took the family joke so well, surely you’ll be into that, too—”
“Wellington.” The Ashbury patriarch’s voice wasn’t loud, but the timbre of it was designed to carry. “That is quite enough.”
“I’m just telling her what she escaped.” Ash lifted the bottle to his mouth, realized it was empty, and let it drop to the tiles. It didn’t break, instead beginning a slow, tinkling roll across the floor. “Thought she’d be grateful. Not everyone is willing to do exactly what they’re told.”
The Ashburys all froze, eyes darting from the eldest son to the patriarch. Dierdre’s cheeks were beet red beneath her dark hair, while Audrey’s were pale. Theo’s hand was tight around Greg’s forearm.
The whiskey bottle rolled across the floor to the Poseidon’s side. It clinked as it lightly hit the glass wall of the submarine, right next to the huge bed.
Elias hadn’t told her anything about this.
Surely he hadn’t planned to go along with this particular tradition; he knew how Claire felt about small spaces, about the ocean.
He probably hadn’t mentioned it for the same reasons Ash was—it was weird and invasive and not even remotely an option.
Hell, if he hadn’t died, they probably would have gone their whole lives barely seeing the Ashburys at all.
Claire’s plans for family reunification had been slow, easing Elias into it.
They might not have even invited them to their wedding, much less invited them to dictate their wedding night.
As much as Claire wanted to belong, this was too much, so bizarre that she couldn’t imagine her refusal being anything but expected.
Though the looks on Audrey’s and Dierdre’s and Theo’s faces said they’d followed the Ashbury traditions to the letter.
“So, you all…” It wasn’t a thing that could be asked politely, wasn’t something brought up in nice company. For all that they’d opened the can of worms, Claire still felt like the uncouth one for trying to scoop them out. “I mean…”
An excruciatingly awkward moment, then Dierdre laughed, big and full-throated. “It’s amazing, actually,” she said with a wide smile. “Like Wellington said, better than a five-star hotel. It was so nice to come back here instead of catching a flight to Rome right after the wedding.”
Right. Of course. She could follow that logic, mostly.
Still, Claire was extremely thankful, in a quick and shameful moment, that her inclusion in this family no longer hinged on marriage.
Elias wouldn’t have expected this of her, and now they weren’t getting married, so the point was moot.
Whatever weird traditions everyone else took part in were their own business.
Audrey joined Dierdre’s laughter with a demure giggle. “Most family weddings take place here at Harrow Point,” she said. “It’s nice to have somewhere to stay and get ready for travel the next day.”
“I’m sure,” Claire replied.
“Fuck me,” Ash muttered.
The day was catching up with her, and the weird reveal about the use of the Poseidon made her want off this dock even more than she had before.
Claire yawned, big and loud and obnoxiously.
“I’m so tired,” she said through the yawn, which somehow went from fake to real in the middle, making her jaw almost pop. “I think it’s time for me to turn in.”
“Of course.” Wellington stepped forward, and the rest of the Ashburys seemed almost to shrink back, giving him the floor. “It’s been a long day.”
He made his way toward the elevator. The other Ashburys followed. All except Ash.
Elias’s half brother looked at her with his eyes narrowed, hands shoved deep in his pockets. With his face made wan by alcohol and the low light of the dock, something about his focused attention made Claire shiver.
She pushed past him, headed to the elevator with the rest of the Ashburys.
Inside the elevator, Wellington’s phone rang. He frowned down at the caller ID before putting it to his ear. “What?”
The voice on the other end was muffled. Claire couldn’t make it out, even in the close space of the elevator.
But Patrick seemed to recognize it. He shifted on his feet, a slight, anxious hunch rising in his shoulders.
“Tasers, but only if you have to,” Wellington said. “They’re restless. Another feeding should help.” A pause. “Have you heard from Rhodes? Everything going according to plan?” Another, longer pause. Claire was shocked that he had reception in here. “Good. No hiccups, then, just like I said.”
The voice on the other end took over the conversation. Wellington nodded. “I’ll be there in fifteen.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
“News from Rhodes and Hodge?” Patrick asked.
“Everything is fine, just as we knew it would be.” Wellington looked at him as he slipped the phone in his breast pocket. “I’m headed to the barns. You should come, too.”
“Cows acting up?” Claire asked, falsely bright, lent energy by the fact they were finally leaving the dock.
She didn’t particularly like the idea of using a Taser on a cow, but she knew that the huge commercial farms probably did worse.
It wouldn’t be odd for the Ashburys to have their hands in one of those, too—maybe there was a particular market for island-raised beef.
And there was all that shit about diversifying your financial portfolio.
She guessed Rhodes and Hodge were business associates, maybe in livestock.
Wellington gave her a tight smile. “Something like that.”
○ ○ 3. ○ ○
She’d said she was turning in, but as Claire stepped off the elevator and back into the open room of the lower house, she suddenly needed air.
All her deferred, blunted panic from before was coming back tenfold, and she wanted to be under a sky instead of water, instead of miles of gothic stone.
Not to leave—she was decidedly staying—but just to take a deep breath that didn’t smell like rock and salt.
“I might go up to the top for a minute,” she said, and her voice sounded casual, even though her stomach was climbing her esophagus. “Before bed.”
Audrey, who’d exited the elevator right after her, paused, her blue eyes wide. She glanced at Wellington. Her husband gave her a brief, truncated nod. “Of course,” Audrey said with a smile. “Ash? Would you take Claire up to the castle?”
There was a hint of steel in her voice. Claire shook her head. “I’ll be totally fine—”
“No reason to go alone,” Audrey interrupted, and Claire shut her mouth. She didn’t want to argue.
Audrey softened, as if recognizing that her tone had been too harsh. “The upper house can be disorienting,” she said. “So large, and the hallways all look so similar. Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”
“Right,” Claire replied. The idea of wandering around those dark hallways alone was not appealing, and she felt another rush of gratitude for Audrey Ashbury, who always seemed to be looking out for her.
Ash stared at his stepmother with red-rimmed eyes. Then he laughed, rubbing at them with thumb and forefinger. “Yeah. Why the fuck not.”
Which was how Claire found herself standing on the deep porch and breathing in Ash’s smoke rather than the clean night air.
She crossed her arms and leaned against the pillar, away from him, mouth clamped tightly shut.
Her panic was forgotten in annoyance, and she guessed she should be grateful for that.
Ash smoked down his cigarette and pulled out the pack to get another.
He offered it to her, and she shook her head. He shrugged, lit up.
“Why did you do it?” Claire asked.
“The nicotine, mostly. Though it has the added benefit of making me look very cool.”
“Not smoking, dumbass. Why did you leave?” Her nails clenched on her bare arms. The temperature had dropped significantly since this afternoon, and a cold wind blew her hair to tickle against her cheek, like ant legs.
“Why did you make him take care of all your shit, if you just ended up coming back?”
Ash blew a plume of smoke into the black sky. It wove around the pillars, an aimless ghost. “Because family dynamics are complicated, C. You know that.” He arched a brow. “Or maybe you don’t. That’s why you’re here.”
“Fuck you.”
He bowed and held out his hand, as if conceding a point. But when he straightened, his forehead was furrowed, his jaw tense. “Do you know where he went, those years he had to work for Marinography?”
“Audrey said it was an island,” Claire answered.
Ash froze, his cigarette dangling from his fingers. He blinked. “Is that all she told you?”
“That it was off the coast of this island, a smaller one. A lab, or something.” She wrinkled her nose. “Why, what does it matter?”
His hand twitched toward his middle, spilling smoke. Ash glanced away, toward the rolling yard, toward the moon like a hooked claw in the sky. “I didn’t want to go there,” he said finally. “To the island. The lab.”
“That’s a shitty reason.”
“But it is a reason.”
“I’m sure Elias didn’t want to go, either,” Claire said. “But he sucked it up.”
“Guess he was just braver than me,” Ash replied. “Or something.”