When Dad spoke, everyone listened. It happened without fail. All he’d said was one word, and we’d stopped. Even as he brought the cigar to his lips, inhaled, held, and exhaled, we waited.
The people at the cotillion today? They were rich because Dad had made them rich. Everyone in town—with or without money—invested in the Winthrop name. The richer we became, the richer they became.
The detectives knew of Dad. They shared a glance, not a complaint on their lips as he took his damn time. He lowered his cigar. The smoke clouded the living room, bringing the warmth it lacked.
The pitter-patter of rain against the roof filled the silence. At one point, I’d loved the noise until Mother caught me and Reed dancing in the rain, and I’d come down with a cold that lasted three weeks because she had refused to get me medicine until I promised I had learned my lesson.
My dad had returned from a business trip a week into my cold. By then, my tenth birthday had been a week away, and I’d feared he’d make me stay home from our Disneyland trip if I told him I’d gotten sick.
Dad had rented out the park, and I’d spent the entire night on Space Mountain with Reed, pretending I didn’t need to throw up every time the ride lurched to a stop.
Mother knew, but she’d pulled me aside and said, “Punishment is the backbone of this country. Being sick is not your punishment; it’s suffering in silence.”
“I’m sure we can figure this out.” Dad stepped closer, looking at ease despite the tension in the room.
He still possessed a head full of dark hair, graying at the temples in a way that made him look distinguished rather than old. He’d once joked that I’d gotten my gray eye from him and my blue eye from Mama.
As soon as he’d said it, my gray eye had become my favorite, because that was Gideon Winthrop. He had the ability to make everything better, including this.
“Mr. Winthrop.” The detective with the man bun swiped at his baby hairs, transferring sweat from his forehead to his fingertips. “With all due respect…” He trailed off when Dad interrupted him.
“With all due respect, you are in my house at midnight without a warrant.” Dad held the cigar in front of his lips as he finished, “I am telling you we can figure this out, and you will listen.” He drew the cigar to his lips and pulled.
“Mr. Winthrop, someone is getting arrested tonight.” The detective glanced at Reed’s shirt, coughing a bit when Dad exhaled the cigar smoke in his direction. “A fifteen-year-old boy is in the hospital with a broken nose, rib, and leg; a separated collar bone; and a dislocated shoulder.”
Mother gasped, and it took everything in me not to.
Holy crap.
Reed had done that?
For me?
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
My cheeks flushed when I realized how fast the knowledge had my heart beating. I pulled my arms tighter across my chest as if they could protect me from my feelings. They couldn’t. Nothing could.
This would be our fate—childhood naivety repaved by darkness.
“His father, Eric Cartwright, is my attorney—” Dad stopped as soon as he’d caught my wince at the mention of Able’s dad. “Emery…” Wrathful eyes dipped to where my arms met my shirt. He lowered the cigar and stepped toward me. “What does your shirt say?”
I backed up a step and considered the cost of moving to Eritrea and opening up a seawater farm. Somewhere no one in this room but Reed could find me. We’d live on white-leg shrimp and milkfish and would probably die of mercury poisoning before twenty, but it would be a better way to go than death by mortification.
“Dad.” I almost shrugged but dug my crisscrossed arms tighter to my chest. At this rate, I’d never grow boobs because I’d suffocated the cells before they could grow. “It’s no big deal.”
“Emery.”
“Please.”
“Emery.”
Another step back, and my heel hit a wall because, apparently, I didn’t know how to walk a straight line out of here. Truth was, I didn’t even need to show him.
He knew.
No way did the fury in his eyes escape anyone’s notice. My arms shook. I succumbed to inevitability and lowered them. Not that I was ashamed of what had happened to me. I didn’t want it to follow me.
Once one person knew, the whole town knew. That was how Eastridge worked. And people always, always blamed the girl. Since everyone from Eastridge would undoubtedly go to Duke with me and Reed, they would forever remember me as the girl who’d fucked up Reed’s and maybe Able’s future.
My burden and mine alone.
Dad was a good person. Most times judicious, and sometimes even rational in a way most blue bloods weren’t. He wouldn’t blame me. Reed wouldn’t blame me. Neither would Hank nor Betty. Hell, I even knew Nash wouldn’t stoop so low. But Mother? The two detectives I’d just met?
I felt vulnerable as I laid my secrets on the table without speaking a word. I should have said something or explained that nothing had happened; instead, I appreciated the silence, because I knew it’d be the last time I heard it before my dad blew his lid and destroyed the Cartwrights and possibly Eastridge with them.
The two detectives glanced down at my shirt, piecing things together before Reed and Nash stepped in front of me in tandem. I peeked around the brothers but let them cover most of me.
Dad pulled out his phone and dialed. “Eric. My home office. Now.”
Classic Dad.
Always standing up for me.
I wanted to grab his hands, drag him to the Harry Potter World theme park, and drink ginger beer with him. Or dance in the rain with no music as I replaced my memories of Able with his ridiculous eighties moves.
Dad turned to Hank and Betty, tossed the cigar on the floor, smashed it with his heel, and ignored Mother’s irritated gasp. “Eric Cartwright is on his way. As far as I am concerned, your son did nothing wrong, and Eric will agree with me. No charges will be pressed.” He said it with such certainty, I believed him. That, and he was Gideon Winthrop, and that meant everything in Eastridge.
The detectives didn’t even argue as he asked them to un-cuff Reed and wait in his office. Satisfaction unfurled in my belly. I had no plans on telling Dad what had happened because I had no plans on giving it more attention than Able deserved, but revenge felt good at my fingertips. They burned with the urge to raze, dismantle, devastate.
I wondered if this was how Nash felt as he blazed his own path, doing as he pleased with no concern over consequences. When he’d played football for Eastridge Prep, he’d start fights with the players, the mascots, the refs without considering the consequences. Or perhaps he had considered them and simply didn’t care.
He’d ditch school, to be found behind the gym with his hands up a senior’s shirt. And I’d never forget those nights in the kitchen, a spoonful of ice cream in my mouth, watching blood drip from his fists onto the floor as he tried and failed to ebb the flow with ice and towels.
“Honey…” Mother placed a palm on Dad’s shoulder, hard enough that his shirt bunched at her touch. “Gideon, don’t be silly. Think about this.” She ran her palms across his shoulders and down the length of his arms. All six carats of her engagement ring winked at me, sandwiched between two diamond-encrusted wedding bands. “The Cartwrights are great people. What about Winthrop Textiles? Eric Cartwright knows all our company secrets.”