“I was worried when I got to the hospital and you weren’t there. It wasn’t like you. Be safe, okay?”
The tenderness of his tone was almost her undoing. She choked out a reply and hung up the phone.
Seth glared out the windshield. “I can’t believe you took a call from him while you’re with me. I don’t care how many times you say the two of you are just friends, I don’t like it.”
Ivy blinked back tears. “Can you please take me home?”
Seth shook his head. “We don’t have time for you to change. You’re going to have to go in what you’re wearing.”
Ivy pressed her fingertips to the corners of her eyes. “Not to change. I need to get to Triune. My grandmother’s dying.”
His head tipped sideways. “Oh, that’s unfortunate.” Still darting the car in and out of traffic, he picked up his phone and began scrolling through his emails.
Ivy sniffled and clenched her jaw, willing the tears filling her eyes to recede. Mile markers passed and she strained her eyes for the next exit sign, their opportunity to turn around. But Seth didn’t change lanes as the exit loomed. “Aren’t you going to take the exit?”
“We are only five minutes away from the gala. Let’s just go for a little while, show our faces, and then we can leave.”
Is he serious? “I . . . I’m not exactly up for hobnobbing with strangers. I’d really rather not.”
“Honey, I know you’re hurting, but being seen at this event is a really big deal.”
“My family needs me.” Could he not understand that?
“They’re grown adults. They can manage without you for a little longer.”
“I need to tell her goodbye.”
Seth patted Ivy’s leg. “And you will. After we stop at the gala. Your family has had you drive back three different times to say goodbye to her over the last year. I’m sure this is just another one of those times. And if the worst happens and she passes before you get there, you know that woman has to know how much she means to you.”
Ivy sucked in a breath. “Seth, that’s my family you’re talking about. The people who raised me.” She twisted the ring on her finger, around and around, trying to soothe the unusual tightness. Her hands must have swelled. “You don’t understand. My uncle, he—”
“You’re right. I don’t understand. I know you all are close, but it’s strange how your family acts like you have to be at the center of everything. You’ve got to cut those apron strings sometime. Those ties will strangle us if you don’t.”
Ivy bit her lip and swallowed, the lump in her throat thick and heavy. “Mom has already been on edge lately, going on about how you’re trying to isolate me from them. She . . . she thinks the engagement was a mistake. If they find out I went to a party when I knew Grandma was dying . . .”
Seth’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Again, the needle on the speedometer crept upward. Ivy braced herself with the grab handle.
“These are the people you’re desperate to go see?” He zipped in and out of traffic, cutting across three lanes to take the exit.
She clamped her eyes shut, pressing down nausea. “Seth, please.”
“You’d think instead of hating me, they’d show a little appreciation. I saved you from the dead-end waitressing job you’d gotten yourself stuck in. Opened the door to a prestigious private school even though you had zero experience. Not just anybody could have pulled that off. Don’t they get that I’ll take care of you?”
Ivy’s jaw went slack. Sure, he’d boasted on several occasions that he’d helped make her job happen, but never had he been so outright demeaning. Had he? “Come with me, Seth. Let them get to know you better.” Prove them wrong.
He shook his head. “Can’t. I’m working on a major case.” Seth pulled into the lot of the enormous country club and up to the valet.
It seemed so easy for him to spew words like “cut ties.” How would he feel if she said those same words to him, about his family? At least her mother wasn’t trying to dress him and give him uninvited etiquette lessons.
Of course, Seth Aaron Walker III, Mr. Blood Is Thicker Than Water, didn’t understand her family. A family in which not a single pair of them was biologically connected. But she’d expected a little more understanding. Compassion. These were the people who’d raised her. Shaped her. Did he like that girl at all, or just the one he thought he could make her into?
Seth stood from the car as the attendant opened her door. She trailed after him, three steps behind no matter how fast she tried to walk in the high-heeled shoes that pinched her toes.
The doorman opened the tall door leading into the vast open room. Bright and shining, overflowing with elaborate decor and tuxedoed waiters balancing shimmering trays of champagne. Seth marched through the door without looking back. He found a group of his associates and melded into the room.
“Miss, may I take your sweater?”
Ivy jolted at the address and wrapped her outerwear tighter around her as though it could shield her from more than the evening chill. “No, thank you.”
She walked the perimeter of the room, surveying this world that did not belong to her. Wearing beige would’ve been better than sunflower yellow. At least then she could have blended in with the walls.
Ivy closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out her surroundings. She was eight years old again, sitting side by side with her grandmother on her porch swing. Belly full of homemade chocolate chip cookies and milk.
Grandma had brushed crumbs from Ivy’s cheek with her wrinkled thumb, smiling down at her. Ivy, do you have any idea how much joy you bring to the world just by being you?
Ivy blinked away the memory and cleared the tightness in her throat.
Minutes turned into an hour and still Seth mingled. She shot him pointed looks and he averted his eyes, refusing to acknowledge her presence in the room.
This wasn’t where she belonged. Especially not when a sleepy town in Tennessee called her name—where her family huddled around the hospital bed of a woman who’d spent her lifetime pouring out all the love she had to give.
She glanced at Seth, whose back was to her. He was deep in conversation, so Ivy found a quiet corner, pulled out her phone, and scheduled an Uber. Her pulse thrummed wildly as she exited the ballroom. When had her relationship started feeling like a hostage situation?
CHAPTER
FIVE
SEPTEMBER 8, 1994
Harvey blinked at the floor, the sudden light searing his eyes. Sweat dripped down his spine. He tuned his ears for the baby nestled in the bushes as he edged closer to the door. The symphony of cicadas and bullfrogs, muted before, now seemed a raucous commotion. “Sir, I’m sorry. The door was unlocked. I—”
“Think you’re entitled to anything behind unlocked doors?”
“No.” Harvey lowered his hands by inches and stole a glance to the darkened stairway.
The man appeared from the shadows as his polished black dress shoes left the bottom step. Dressed in a trim-cut suit with his tie loosened, top button undone, and red-rimmed eyes, he looked more like a melancholic city lawyer. Not the blustery country pastor fed on biscuits and fried chicken Harvey had envisioned haunting the place.