“You have a way with words, Bennett. You can be persuasive when you need to be.” The houses we pass grow bigger by the block. I don’t know that I’ve been to this part of Worthington Heights, but I’ve heard about it. “I guess I’d like to understand the dynamic between you and Errol better. I don’t understand why you couldn’t have just told him the truth? Or why you had to discuss me at all …”
“My brother and I have a complicated history, one rooted in jealousy and competition from a young age—mostly due to my father always pushing us to out-best one another. I was always the stronger one, the naturally athletic and agile one. He was always better at anything requiring attention to detail … drawing, sculpting, building computers, anything to do with his hands. Academically we were neck and neck until we got older and he became less focused on his studies and more focused on his extracurriculars …” Bennett flicks on his left turn signal and checks his rearview. “Anyway, when it came to choosing majors and colleges, my father pushed us both to attend Harvard and study business. It was expected that we were going to take over the corporation when we were older. My brother refused. He wanted to study art. My father didn’t like that, so he began shoveling all of his attention and affection—if you can even call it that—in my direction and more or less pretending my brother didn’t exist. After that, it was war. Anything my father gave me, any girl I was seeing, anything he remotely believed meant anything to me—he’d destroy it anyway he could.”
“Okay, he was a juvenile and petulant young adult. That was a lifetime ago. I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“Five years ago, our father died. Massive stroke. Came out of nowhere. At the reading of the will, we discovered that he left half of his estate to our mother—and the other half to me. Errol got nothing.” Bennett crawls to a stop outside a set of iron gates, and then he rolls down his window, punching in a six-digit code. The gates part and he pulls in, curving around a circle drive and coming to a complete stop in front of a massive limestone estate with deep-pitched roofing and intricate cast-iron crests. Double doors, glossy and black, with stainless steel lion’s head knockers, adorn the center of it all. A black marble fountain rests lifeless and winterized in the center of the drive.
Everything about this presentation is as cold as it is beautiful.
None of it feels like home.
“This is where I grew up,” he says. “Seventeen thousand square feet and eight acres of pure unadulterated hell.” Bennett takes another moment. “This is where I learned what family was. What family wasn’t. At least by Schoenbach standards. This is where my mother brought Larissa home for the first time and quickly realized she’d bitten off more than she could chew.”
I imagine being a young child, being told you’d been adopted by your forever family, driving up to this beautiful estate … only to realize you’d been placed with the worst kind of people.
“My entire life was one giant chess game. Everything was a move. Strategic. Manipulative. Sometimes I was the rook. Sometimes I was the king. Other times I was a pawn. We all had our turns.”
Without thinking, I reach for him, sliding my hand into his.
“Remember last week when I told you what my brother was planning to do once he got custody of Honor?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“Wednesday I got a call from my lawyer. Turns out the idiot filed the paternity suit. I called Errol, invited him over, showed him the transcripts of the text messages. I told him if he intended to continue with the suit, I’d ensure that everyone he knows would get a copy of those.” Bennett’s thumb grazes the top of my hand. “He knew he’d been backed into a corner, so then he started asking questions about you. He was trying to sniff out how I felt about you. I couldn’t let him think I cared about you because he would’ve found a way to exploit that, to leverage it against me.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know me. And I’ve got nothing to hide …” I haven’t a single skeleton in my closet, and I’ve never been embroiled in anything remotely scandalous. There’s nothing his brother could dig up on me.
“You don’t know Errol or what he’s capable of. He’s a sociopath. He has no moral compass. A skilled manipulator who feels he’s one step above the law. And my mother’s twice as bad. They make an awful team. There’s no telling what they’d do if it meant getting what they want—and they want Honor out of the picture.”
I glance at the house once more, and a chill runs through me. “Can we get out of here?”
“Of course.” He releases my hand and shifts into drive.
We’re a solid mile away before either of us speaks again.
“Do you understand why I had to say what I said?” he asks. “I had to protect Honor. I had to protect you.”
I nod. If what he’s saying is true … and my gut feeling is that it is … then it makes perfect sense.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that. And I’m sorry that you’ve spent the last several days doubting if what we have is real, but I swear to you, Astaire. It’s the realest thing I’ve ever felt. I can’t tell you how to feel, but it’s real for me.” We stop at a red light when he retrieves a large white envelope, folded in half, from the visor above. “This is for you.”
The envelope is blank on the outside. I peel it open and slide out a stack of papers, all of them with an attorney’s logo on top.
The first line says PURCHASE AGREEMENT.
“What is this?” I ask.
The light turns green, and we coast ahead.
“Just read it,” he says.
The paperwork is dated from this past Saturday.
I scan the legalese until I get to the line that clearly states the ELMHURST THEATRE is henceforth owned by ASTAIRE CARRARO.
“Oh my God.” I let the papers fall in my lap.
“You love that place,” he says. “You’d mentioned during the tour that the owners were thinking of selling, so I did some checking around with all my free time the last couple of weeks. Turns out they had a pocket listing on it with one interested buyer who had every intention of tearing it down and replacing it with condos.”
“You saved the Elmhurst …” I swipe away a single happy tear before interlacing my fingers with his. “You’re a saint. Really. You have no idea how much this means to me. But I don’t have the means to refurbish it … I don’t have the—”
“—I’ve set aside a trust that should generate enough in interest to cover the ongoing maintenance. I’ve also set aside an account to cover the refurbishments, current and unanticipated.”
It makes sense now why the owners didn’t send out an email. I bet Bennett asked them to keep it quiet because he wanted to be the one to tell me.
“Also, were you aware that the three floors above the theatre had been used as storage space for the past twenty years?” he asks.
“I guess? We never had any reason to go up there.”
“Honor and I toured the place last weekend, and we think it would make a wonderful place to live.”
“What …?”
“That neighborhood is in an up-and-coming area, family friendly, close to her school, plenty of parks …” he says. “She doesn’t need to grow up in a penthouse. She needs to grow up in a home. So we’re going to make it a home, and we’d be honored if you would join us in that process.”