I gave her my back, effectively finishing the conversation. I studied Emery, one seat over. She sat with her brows furrowed and hands on her lap, trying to unravel a Snicker’s mini without drawing attention to the contraband candy.
I wondered if she had any idea what her parents were up to.
Probably not.
Ma once told me that people are wired to do the right thing.
It’s human instinct, she’d say, for people to want to do right by others, to please others, to spread joy.
Sweet, naïve Betty Prescott.
The daughter of a pastor, she grew up spending her free time in bible study and married the altar boy. I lived in the real world, where rich assholes fucked the little guy—in the ass, without lube—and expected to be thanked after.
And Emery’s dad? He put up a good front. Charities, volunteer work, a sunny smile. I had thought Gideon was different. Look how wrong I’d been.
But Emery Winthrop… I considered what to do with the ledger in my pocket. She complicated things.
Not that I was particularly attached to her. I’d had maybe a handful of conversations with her over the past eight years, but I loved Reed, and Emery knew how to love Reed better than anyone else.
She’d spent her childhood sharing her lunch money with him and sitting through tutoring lessons she didn’t need. The shit school we’d transferred from had left Reed practically two grades behind. Even at seven, Emery understood the only way my brother could hire a tutor was if she pretended she was the one who needed it so her parents would pay for it.
Hurting Emery would hurt Reed. Simple math. And as jaded as I had become, as much as I hated Eastridge and the people inside this ballroom, I didn’t hate the girl who was fiercely loyal to the point of reckless, the girl with a thousand years’ worth of wisdom gained in only fifteen, the girl who loved my kid brother.
“Emery,” Basil began after I’d ignored whatever she had said. “I heard about your fail in Schnauzer’s class. Bummer.”
Schnauzer. Why did that name sound familiar?
Reed dipped close to Basil, his voice a low whisper everyone could hear. “That’s not nice, sweetheart.” His North Carolina accent was strong, and he’d somehow managed to make the situation worse.
“Do you hear that noise?” Emery tilted her head to the side. Her brows tipped together in mock concentration.
Able invaded Emery’s space. “What noise?”
“That annoying buzzing.”
“Sounds like a gnat,” I offered as I leaned over Cartwright, plucked the Snickers mini from Emery’s fingers, and popped it into my mouth.
“Nope, that’s not it.” She thanked me with a glimmer in her eyes. A fleeting salute to solidarity before they shifted to Basil. She went in for the kill. “Just Basil.”
Basil jerked forward as I realized who Schnauzer was and cut off whatever stupidity she’d intended on spewing. “Isn’t Dick Schnauzer that AP Chem teacher? The fucker who leverages blow jobs for As? And those who don’t, well…” I cocked a brow at Basil. “Hey, you got an A, right?”
Basil’s eyes turned to Reed. She waited for him to defend her. He looked between me, Basil, and Emery, a type of helpless that had me questioning if we were even related. But maybe he had a higher power looking out for him because Virginia chose that moment to intrude on our table.
Her eyes skimmed the uneaten cold fennel soups across the table like they were an affront to her skills as the chairwoman of the Eastridge Junior Society. Perhaps they were, because no sane person would look at a menu and say, “I’d love the chilled fennel soup, please.”
“Emery, honey.” She turned to her daughter and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Emery’s ear. Like a real-life sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Virginia had a team of stylists create Emery in her vision.
Before I left Eastridge for grad school, I had lived in my family’s cottage for years, from my year at Eastridge Prep to the four years I had spent commuting to a state college to save money.
Enough time for me to witness the sheer amount of hours devoted to plucking, prodding, and dyeing Emery into a body Virginia could inhabit… or whatever she had planned for her daughter. Death by Eastridge’s high society, probably.
“Yes, Mother?” Emery didn’t look at her mom with love. She looked at her with resignation. The stare you gave a cop when he pulled you over for driving five miles above the speed limit. Disdain cloaked in civility.
I swore, the only spine Reed possessed grew from years of proximity to Emery.
“Be a dear and run into the office for me?” Virginia licked her thumb and swiped at a stray hair on Emery’s forehead. “I need the tiara to crown the debutante of the year.”
Debutante of the year. As if that was a title someone wanted.
Emery’s eyes darted from Reed to Basil, so transparent I didn’t bother holding my laughter back. She leveled a scowl at me, then turned to Virginia. “Can’t you ask somebody on the wait staff to grab it?”
“Oh.” Virginia clutched at the pearls choking her neck. “Don’t be silly. As if I’d entrust a server with the code to the office’s safe.”
“But—”
“Emery, do I need to send you to Miss Chutney’s etiquette classes?”
Miss Chutney was the borderline abusive lady who’d trained Eastridge’s female population into the La-Perla-panties-up-their-asses women they were today. She didn’t leave bruises, but rumor had it, she walked around with a ruler she used to slap wrists, necks, and whatever sensitive flesh it could reach.
Able pulled out his chair. “I can grab it, Mrs. Winthrop.”
“That’s a wonderful idea!” Virginia cooed. “Able will escort you, Emery. Run along now.” Virginia’s face remained frozen, like someone had slipped plaster into her Botox.
Irritation dilated Emery’s eyes. The gray one darkened, and the blue one brightened. She muttered a few words I couldn’t make out, but they seemed angry. For a split second, I thought she would surprise me.
In fact, something in me needed her to surprise me to restore my faith in a world where people like Gideon could take advantage of the Hank and Betty Prescotts of the world.
Instead, Emery pushed her chair back and allowed Able to take her arm, as if we lived in the eighteen-hundreds and she required a damn escort to go places. The defiance in her eyes had fled.
In this moment, she looked nothing like the eight-year-old girl who punched Able in the face for stealing Reed’s lunch.
I watched with detached interest as Emery submitted to Virginia’s will.
She was just like the rest of fucking Eastridge.
Sometimes, I wondered if Eastridge wasn’t a small, affluent town in North Carolina, but a circle of Dante’s Inferno. Problem with that theory—Eastridgers didn’t limit themselves to one sin. We were voracious with our sinning.
Lust.
Gluttony.
Greed.
Anger.
Violence.
Fraud.
Treachery.
Even heresy, because let’s face it. Most Eastridgers might have called themselves Christians, but they sure didn’t act like it when they turned up their noses at helping the other half of Eastridge—the half that slept in houses still damaged by the hurricane two years ago as they used the salary from Dad’s textiles factory to pay for food.