My eyes filled with tears. Someone had done this to honor me and my twin, Dad’s firstborn children. None of his other kids had flower names.
I buried my nose in the nearest bouquet of irises and breathed deep. I knew they wouldn’t have a fragrance, but it’s a lifelong habit of mine to sniff my namesake flower. I’ve always wished they smelled as pretty as roses, and I guess a part of me believes that persistence should be enough to get what you want in this world.
As I was sniffing the odorless irises, being rewarded only with the smell of death, the door swooshed open behind me. I looked around. A cloth was draped over the trolley beneath the coffin, and it reached the floor. It was the only place to hide. I ducked under.
Just in time. I stiffened at the clack of stilettos. Mum always wore flat shoes. Who was this?
The intruder approached the casket and stood silent. I couldn’t breathe.
Now the door opened again, and I heard a soft tread. “Francine,” came my mother’s voice. “I apologize. They told me Ridge was alone.”
Francine and Annabeth had always been polite to each other. Too polite.
“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” said Francine. “I agreed to allow you this time, but when it came to it, I couldn’t bear them to put that . . . that lid on without seeing him again.”
“It was a small enough thing to ask,” said Annabeth. “Ten minutes alone with the father of my children. You could have given me that. Soon you’ll have everything that was mine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you think you could give me time to pack before you kick me out of my home?”
I was jammed against the wheels of the trolley. This space wasn’t big enough to hide my body, and the toe of one shoe was sticking out from under the cloth. I curled up tighter, tucking my feet in with infinite slowness. My fingernails dug into the skin of my arms.
Francine’s voice rose, her broad accent growing broader. “You can’t think I knew about the will. Of course I want the house, I’ve made no secret of that. Your children are nearly grown now, the girls anyway. You must see that you’re the winner here, Annabeth. Your twins will be married and pregnant at eighteen—one of them, at least—and then you’ll have everything. You’ve hit the jackpot. Virginia’s only six. What hope does she have of beating them to the money? You can afford to give me the house. It’s nothing compared with the millions coming your way. A hundred million, Annabeth.”
My body jerked, and I lost my balance and rocked back onto my heels with a thud. I froze, but the two women didn’t seem to have heard. My mother was speaking now, in a voice I had never heard before—a cold, flat voice.
“How dare you,” she said. “How dare you dream for one minute that I would prostitute my daughters for that money! My children deserve better than this. Francine, I promise you, Summer and Iris will never hear of this will. If you want to pimp your daughter out in her teens, you’re welcome to Ridge’s money, every cent of it. We’ll live on the crumbs he’s left us with our dignity intact. My girls will marry and have children when they are ready, when they make their own free choice unsullied by Ridge’s sick fantasies. No grandchild of mine will enter this world to win some filthy prize. To live out a dead man’s dreams.”
Francine’s shrill laugh made me shiver. “Nice speech, Annabeth,” she said. “How virtuous you sound. If you can keep silent, all power to you, but secrets this big have a way of getting out. I think my daughters deserve to know the truth. I trust them to do their best for their family . . . if your girls can keep their legs crossed long enough to give mine a chance. And now I’ll leave you alone with the father of your children.”
“No,” said my mother. “I’ve been here too long already.” Something in her voice—I could hear her eyes sweeping around the room—made me hold my breath, willing my body into a tighter ball.
And then both women were gone, and I was alone again with my father’s body.
The room whirled around me. My father was dead, and my mother had become a different person, hard-edged and sour.
We had to give up the beach house. That was my first thought. Marriage, pregnancy, babies—at fourteen I didn’t want to think about any of that. Annabeth had said she didn’t want to tell us, so I would pretend not to know.
Summer didn’t need to know.
I had always known Carmichael Brothers was a multimillion-dollar enterprise, and Uncle Colton was only the junior partner. Ridge owned the lion’s share. Had owned.
Now I knew what his estate was worth. The beach house, the penthouse, what my mother described as “crumbs,” and a hundred million dollars.
As we chanted our way through the funeral service, Annabeth’s and Francine’s words spooled through my head, and I counted the years. Eighteen was the legal age for marriage, less than four years away for me and Summer, but Ben wouldn’t be eighteen for eight years, and Virginia not for twelve. If Summer didn’t know about the will, there was no way she would get married and have a baby in her teens. She wasn’t that kind of girl. And Ben, well, Annabeth and Francine had treated Ben as out of the running. They hadn’t mentioned him, hadn’t questioned each other’s silence. All the adults seemed to know that Ben wouldn’t be fathering a child.
My father had known this, I realized. Dad’s frustration, his suppressed rage at my little brother, was somehow connected with this mystery.
Introverted and scholarly even at the age of ten, Ben was not like the rest of us. Although he was usually more obedient than Summer and me, I sensed that he was waiting till he was old enough to forge his own path. It was as though he rejected Dad’s values so completely that he couldn’t be bothered arguing. He was just waiting Dad out.
I had heard Dad muttering about “the Carmichael name dying out.” I couldn’t imagine how this was related to Ben’s rare acts of quiet rebellion, but this was the only part of the conversation that I didn’t understand. What I knew for sure was that Ridge Carmichael, the grand patriarch, had not left his fortune to his son. And he hadn’t split it seven ways. Like a medieval lord, he wanted it to stay together for as many generations as possible.
Dad had bequeathed his empire to the first of his seven children to marry and produce an heir.
Francine had been right about one thing. Secrets this big get out. Somehow or other, by the end of the funeral, Summer knew.
In the car on the way home, she whispered in my ear, “I’m not going to let Dad rule my life. I don’t care about his money. I’m not going to get married until I’m in love.”
And I thought, Good for you, sister. Take your sweet time.
For me, the race was on.
3
The Switch
It’s dark when I touch down at Phuket’s international airport. I step from the static cool air of the plane into the swampy Thai night, and the tropical moisture presses on my skin.
I’m yawning as I cross the tarmac. It’s been a long flight, and I haven’t even adjusted to Queensland time. My body clock is still set for New Zealand. I have other adjustments to make, too. I’ve come from the mountains to the tropics, from the lonely snow of alpine New Zealand to teeming touristy Thailand. I’m sweating in the humid heat.