“We don’t have a choice.” I did my best to curb my impatience. “Her signature is on the contract.”
“How many months do you have to get her ready?” he joked.
“Depositions start next week,” I said anyway. “And hers is the name they’re waiting to destroy.”
He loosed a heavy sigh. “I can’t believe they’ve called everyone. Even Dean, and he only delivers supplies. Tess is freaking out. She’s had me drilling her for the last two days.”
“They didn’t stop there. A few women from the garden club are even on the list, and I can just about guarantee they won’t be there to support Mom. Not with Evelyn running the club and especially not after last week.”
A dark look touched Luke’s face. “God, I hate Evelyn Bower. Our grandma started that stupid garden club, so what right does Evelyn have to stage a coup?”
“To be fair, I’m surprised Evelyn didn’t oust Mom years ago.”
“The look on her face,” he said quietly, staring at nothing. “When she came home with that look on her face, I swear to God, Marcus. I could have burned that place to the ground so none of them could have it.”
“It’s been the bright spot in her life since she was a teenager. Damn Evelyn for taking that small joy from her too.”
“Can you imagine growing up in a house like that?” he mused. “That whole family must be a pack of wolves. They don’t eat turkey for Thanksgiving—they eat each other’s livers.”
My heart flinched at even the sidelong mention of Maisie. “Well, there’s no avoiding them. Her—Evelyn, that is. She’s on the hunt for our livers at present, and if we don’t get Mom in order, I may as well hand her a—”
“Bib with a lobster on the front?”
“I was going to say a knife, but that works too.”
“I heard Mom saying Evelyn was dragging Margaret around with her to all the legal happenings. Is that right? Have you seen her?”
I stilled all the way down to my veins. “Yes.”
Luke didn’t notice. “What’s she like? A little clone of Cruella? I bet she’s a toady, all Botoxed and superior and precious.”
“She’s …” I didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t think she’s anything like Evelyn.”
He frowned. “No? I don’t know how that’s possible with a mother like hers. She’s got all the warmth of a lizard. Think Evelyn is grooming her? Think Margaret wants to throttle her mom in her sleep, or does she have a shrine of Evelyn in her closet? And most importantly—is she cute?”
“Don’t ask me questions about her, Luke,” I snapped. “How the hell should I know?”
He made a face and held up his hands in surrender. “Jeez, sorry. I’m just curious, is all.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s fine,” I grumbled, taking my seat again and pretending to scan the questions on my notepad in an effort to avoid looking at him. “How’s Tess? Haven’t seen her around much lately.”
“She’s good, just busy working on her book. Plus, we got another editorial feature for Longbourne, and we’ve been working on designs for the windows. The rest of the time, she’s at home with her dad.”
Home wasn’t just Tess’s—Luke had moved in with Tess and her dad a few months ago. Other than a weekly family dinner and visiting them at the shop, we didn’t see much of him.
Luke wasn’t the only one. Kash had moved in with his girlfriend a few blocks away, and he was the one I’d thought would never leave home, having never left in the first place. The rest of us had left the roost after high school—Luke moved to California, Jett moved uptown, and Laney ended up in Texas of all places. But Kash had stayed right here, working alongside our father in the greenhouse. And when everyone had come back to help save Longbourne last summer, I was the only Bennet not under the roof.
Though I might have moved out, I didn’t go far, buying a brownstone a couple doors down. I ended up at the house for dinner almost every night under the pretense of duress. That my mother could be very convincing supported this pretense without question.
Of course, the real reason I hadn’t gone far was this—I worried over my parents, my mother especially. I’d spent my childhood taking care of her, from the smallest things, like having constant tabs on her keys, to the bigger ones, like sifting through the mail for bills I’d make sure to put directly in her hand. And so I had a deep-seated compulsion to make sure they were all right, so deep that I feared if I wasn’t close by, some disaster would strike that I could have stopped.
When I’d worked as a trader on Wall Street, I’d commuted downtown. I found a way to check on Mom every day, even when my day was eighteen hours strong. It was easier once I took my F-you money earned through investments and left Wall Street behind me, keeping my income steady and high. I had enough padding to get me comfortably through a jobless decade, and after a few years of day trading, I’d doubled my money and invested that too.
Laney and Jett were the only ones left at the house, but the two of them were an impenetrable unit. I figured it was a twin thing, the same sort of thing Luke and Kash had even though they were of the Irish variety. Jett spent his free time—which was sparse, considering he’d become Mom’s hands around the house—uptown at the book bar he managed, Wasted Words. And Laney … well, Laney made herself scarce whenever she could, on account of the sticky business of her inheritance.
A Bennet woman had run Longbourne for nearly a hundred seventy-five years, never taking their husbands’ names in order to pass the Bennet name down. Dad was so committed to the cause, he took her name. When Mom had a girl right off the bat, she’d been thrilled. But where the rest of us were happy in the greenhouse, cultivating green thumbs, Laney was in her room, fingers smudged with graphite and a sketchbook in her lap. It just wasn’t her thing, and to her credit, Mom didn’t push. She was a big proponent of letting us grow on our own, providing all the sunshine and water she could to allow us to do what we would.
But a quiet contention, though joked about and purportedly forgiven, was a very real shadow over them. And as such, Laney kept herself busy. When she wasn’t working on the marketing for Longbourne, she was running around with her old friends or skipping off with Jett to Wasted Words.
As much as I hated to admit it, now that all my family had come home, I’d miss them when they left again. There was a comfort in their chaos, a steadiness I found in anchoring them. I could be helpful, useful to the people I loved most in the world.
For the foreseeable future, the only people I loved in the world.
My last real girlfriend had been in college. Post that, my life was too busy to fit anyone in but the occasional date, usually with a convenient colleague, and my family. By the time I’d managed to slow down, I’d extricated myself from social circles for no other reason than lack of time. Any friends I had left were either still killing themselves in the Financial District or were married and having kids, and the only single guys I knew were related to me. Knew being the operative word. The only one left was Jett, and with Laney as his wingman, I had no practical use.
Mom used to set me up on dates with the daughters of her one-percenter garden club friends, and they foamed at the mouth for a shot. Not at me, I’d realized quickly, but at my money.