Chapter 4 #2
“Hey, Breeze. Happy to see you in our neck of the woods.” Clay grins and slings an arm around my shoulders to give me a friendly side hug before Autumn demands his attention over at the dollhouse once again.
Norah joins Josie and me on the couch in a kind of girl-gab-pow-wow while the guys field the toddler. When there’s a lull in our conversation, Josie pulls a folded copy of a New York newspaper from her purse and hands it to her sister.
“I have something you need to see, Nore.”
“What is it?” Norah asks, but Josie just taps the front-page article with her index finger.
“Read it.”
I lean in slightly as Norah does just that, taking it in for myself and gritting my teeth at the headline. Ellis & Conrad Appeal Denied: Thirty-Year Sentences Stand.
Mug shots of Norah and Josie’s mother Eleanor Ellis and Norah’s ex-fiancé Thomas Michael Conrad waste ink and paper right below it.
It’s good news, but anytime these sweet women have to confront their past, my loins practically gird.
The article is clinical, but the reality isn’t.
Eleanor’s and Thomas’s crimes were ugly and tangled in the most disgusting things you can think of.
Honestly, whenever I think about what the two of them did, it still makes my stomach twist, and I don’t have the confusing pleasure of sharing DNA with one of them.
I can’t imagine how hard it is for Norah and Josie.
Norah’s face stays composed, but her voice is clipped. “I already heard. Carlton keeps me updated.”
Josie’s eyebrows jump upward, toward her own curly hairline. “I’m always shocked you keep in touch with our stepfather, even knowing you do.”
“Hey, he was always good to me.” Norah shrugs. “I keep in touch with Alexis too, and she hand-delivered the note that nuked my life in the first place.”
Oh, Alexis. The sweet, young girl who exposed Thomas and Eleanor’s whole sordid facade, even when the risk was so high she could’ve lost everything. She may have delivered the bomb, but she didn’t build it. They did. She was a victim, just like all the rest.
“How is she doing?” Josie asks.
“Good, actually,” Norah updates.
“I’m sure it’s easier for her to breathe with those two assholes behind bars.”
Norah snorts. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
Josie opens her mouth to say something else, but Autumn toddles back with her doll and plops it in my lap. “Dolly say hi, Bee!”
Bennett and Clay are no longer on toddler duty, having disappeared down the hall to tinker with something unknown.
I paste on a smile, grateful for the distraction, and kiss Autumn’s forehead. “Hi, Dolly. Nice to meet you.”
Her curls bounce as she nods and giggles. “Meets you! Dolly meets Bee!”
“Dolly is so pretty,” I say, but before Autumn can answer, Clay and Ben’s return formally announces itself with a remark from Clay.
“Not as pretty as me!” He picks up the princess crown and a little purse from the top of the dollhouse and dons them while we all look on.
“CayCay so pwetty!” Autumn exclaims as she runs back over toward Clay. “Smiles, CayCay!”
Clay flashes a full-toothed grin, and Autumn claps her hands.
“So pwetty!”
The princess crown ends up on Autumn’s little head but not before it makes the rounds on Bennett, Norah, and Josie first. Norah and Bennett take Princess Autumn into the kitchen to get her a snack, and Josie sits down beside me and places her hand gently on my knee.
“All in all, are you doing okay?” she whispers.
“As good as I can be.” I shrug. “I mean, being here with you guys is a nice distraction.”
Josie’s smile is soft. She knows about Dad’s death.
She knows about the will and the gallery betrayal.
She knows all there is to know up until about twenty-four hours ago.
In a weird way, Josie Harris is one of my closest friends, even though we don’t live in the same city.
When all of the drama and heartbreak was going down between her and Clay, I was her shoulder to cry on.
And now, even though it’s been mostly via phone, she’s been mine.
“Breeze, did you miss all the shit snow on your way into town this morning?” Clay asks, and I shake my head.
“Unfortunately, no. I was stuck driving in it last night.”
“You were driving last night in that blizzard?” Bennett asks, overhearing the conversation from the kitchen. He peeks around the oak doorjamb with a furrowed brow.
I sigh. “Yes, brother, I was. And yes, I know that was dumb and that, in the future, I should listen when you tell me not to do something.”
He smiles, waggling his eyebrows. “So long as we’re on the same page. Where did you end up staying?” he asks, undoubtedly assuming I ended up staying in a hotel off the highway when the conditions got too bad to continue.
Clearly, I’m a grown woman, fully capable of making my own decisions, but telling my brother I spent the night under the-sheep-farmer-next-door’s roof feels like signing up for an inquisition I do not have the energy for.
He’ll either laugh his head off and tease me relentlessly, or he’ll try to give me a lecture about safety. Neither one is on my short list of experiences I’d like to have.
“Just somewhere easy,” I say with a shrug, my words as lighthearted as my name. “No big deal.”
I don’t know if Bennett would have pushed the issue—his hands are a little busy scooping peanut butter and apple slices off the floor—but a knock at the front door saves me either way.
Bennett wipes his hands on a paper towel while Norah wrangles the toddler with another precarious plate. “I’ll get it, baby,” he offers, confirming all the things I know about my brother in his role as a spouse. With Norah, his hard turns soft, and his heart lives on his sleeve.
He heads from the kitchen to the foyer and opens the door, and from my vantage point on the couch, I get a perfectly clear view of the person on the other side as soon as he does.
It’s none other than Randy Hanson, the keys to my stranded car hanging on his finger. Whoops.
“Hey, Bennett,” Randy greets as he dusts snow off his boots on the front mat and holds up my car keys in the air. “Just bringing Breezy’s Rover over. She’s out front.”
Instantly, Bennett’s gaze whips from Randy to me, his brow arched, his mouth quirking in that way that says, Well, isn’t this something…
I’m a little upset with the universe for choosing right now, with a literal audience, of all times to bring Randy to Bennett’s door, but I am thankful for the fact that my car is here and, evidenced by Randy’s arrival with it, roadworthy.
“So…” Ben pauses, looking between me and Randy. “You didn’t drive here this morning?”
“She ended up—” Randy starts to chime in, but I’m very quick to cut him off, jumping up from the couch in a flash and snatching my keys from his outstretched hand.
“It’s no big deal, Ben. I had a little car trouble last night, but all’s well that ends well.” I turn directly to Randy, poising my palms together in prayer hands, my keys smashed in the middle. “Thank you, Randy. Again. Can’t say how much I appreciate it.”
“It wasn’t a problem at all, Breezy,” Randy says, and I’m grateful when he just tips his ball cap toward me and boot-scoots back down the steps and across the driveaway, headed in the direction of Tad’s on foot.
Thankfully, Randy is the broody, quiet Hanson brother and not talkative Tad, who I have a feeling would have spilled each and every single bean.
As I step inside and shut the front door, I don’t miss the way Bennett’s eyes narrow at me, and I don’t give the questions that will inevitably follow time to sprout either.
“I’m going to go lie down for a bit,” I say as I head toward the guest bedroom I always stay in when I’m at my brother’s house, exhaustion and the need for excuses commingling perfectly. “Got a headache.”
“A headache, huh?” Bennett says, and I can hear his footsteps following behind me. “You think it’s from partying with Randy Hanson last night?”
“Shut up, Bennett.” I flip him the middle finger over my shoulder.
“What? It’s an honest question. I mean, he just dropped off your car, Breezy.”
“Because he’s a nice man. Unlike you!” I snap, still walking.
“I’m nice!” Bennett refutes on a laugh. “I’m very nice. Doesn’t mean I show up to random women’s houses with their car keys in tow.”
“It’d better not mean that,” I hear Norah chastise as I close the door behind me, their voices only muffling slightly. “Leave her alone, Ben. Or else.”
“Or else what, Norah?”
“Or else I’m going to kick your a-s-s,” Norah retorts smartly, which is quickly followed by shrieky laughter and an “Oh my God, stop it, Ben!”
Maybe I should be embarrassed. Maybe I should be defensive or feel like I owe an explanation.
But my life is already in splinters. I’m jobless.
Directionless. And there are two suitcases in the back of my Range Rover with enough clothes to last me a good month because the thought of being in New York right now, near all my usual spots—near the galleries—makes me feel like crawling out of my own skin.
At this point, what’s it matter what my brother or anyone else thinks?
Bennett could think I got rip-roaring drunk with Randy Hanson and did a naked snow dance with his flock of sheep, and I don’t think I have it in me to care.
With my life at a standstill, I’ve got bigger things to worry about.