“Everything is fine, Mother. Just fine.”

“You were always such a wonderful businessman. You take after my father, you know.”

“That is quite a compliment.”

“It is meant to be.”

Her blue eyes were paler than he remembered, although perhaps that was because they didn’t really focus. And her Queen Elizabeth–coiffed hair wasn’t as thick. And her skin seemed as thin as a sheet of paper and as translucent as fine silk.

She looked eighty-five, not sixty-five.

“Mother?” he said.

“Yes, darling?”

“My father is dead. You know that, right? I told you.”

Her brows drew together, but no lines appeared and not because she’d had Botox. On the contrary, she’d been raised in an era when young ladies had been urged not to go in the sun—not because the dangers of skin cancer had been fully known back then, and not because of any worry about the ozone layer being depleted. But rather because both parasols and liesure had been stylish accessories for the daughters of the rich.

The sixties in the wealthy South had been more analogous to the forties everywhere else.

“My husband …”

“Yes, Father has died, not Grandfather.”

“It is hard for me to … time is hard for me now.” She smiled in a way that gave him no clue whether she was feeling anything or whether what he was saying was sinking in at all. “But I shall adjust. Bradfords always adjust. Oh, Maxwell, darling, you came.”

As she extended her hand and looked up, he wondered who in the hell she thought had arrived.

When he turned around, he nearly spilled his drink. “Maxwell?”

“Yes, through there, please. And out to the mudroom.”

Lizzie pointed a waiter holding a flat of unused, rented club glasses toward the kitchen. Then she went back to shifting the last of the unopened bottles of white wine into the sleeves of a liquor box on the floor. Thank God there was something to clean up. If she had to stand around all those empty rooms for any longer, she was going to lose her mind.

Lane hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other that essentially nobody came, but God …

Bending down, she hefted the box up and walked from behind the linen-strewn table. Proceeding out of the dining room through the flap door, she put the box with the other three in the staff hall. Maybe they could return them because the bottles were unopened?

“Every little bit helps,” she said to herself.

Figuring that she’d start on the bar out on the terrace, she hesitated at one of the approved staff doors, even though if she used it, she would have to walk all the way around to the other side of the house.

At Easterly, family were allowed to come and go in any fashion at any time. Staff, on the other hand, were regimented.

Then again …

“Screw that.”

She was not making this effort because she was an employee, but because the man she loved was having a really shitty day and it was killing her to watch it happen and she needed to improve some kind of situation, even if it was just the set-up for an event that had never happened.

Heading through the back rooms, she went out the library’s French doors and paused. This was the terrace that faced the river and the big drop down to River Road, and all of the old-fashioned wrought-iron furniture and glass-topped tables had been moved to the periphery to accommodate all the people who had not come.

The bartender who had been stationed out there had left his post, and she went over and lifted the bar’s linen skirting. Underneath, empty crates for the stemware and boxes for the bourbon and wine were lined up neatly, and she dragged a couple of them out.

It was right when she was about to get packing, literally, when she noticed the person sitting still and quiet right by one of the windows, their focus into the house, not at the view.

“Gary?”

As she spoke, the head groundskeeper jumped up so fast, the metal chair he’d been in squeaked across the flagstone.

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” She laughed. “I think everyone’s on edge today.”

Gary was in a fresh pair of overalls and his workboots had been hosed off, no dirt or debris on them. His old beat-up Momma’s Mustard, Pickles & BBQ baseball cap was in his hand, and he quickly shoved it back on his head.

“You don’t have to leave,” she said as she began transferring rocks glasses into a crate upside down.

“I wasn’t gonna come. Just when I seen …”

“No cars, right. When you saw no one was coming.”

“Rich people got a weird sense of priority.”

“Amen to that.”

“Well, back to work. Lest you be needin’ anything?”

“No, I’m just giving myself something to do. And if you help me, I might finish faster.”

“So it’s like that, huh.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

He grunted and went off the far lip of the terrace, taking the path that led down around the base of the stone bulwark that kept the mansion’s house lot from falling off its lofty perch.

Later, much later, Lizzie would wonder why she felt compelled to step out from behind the bar and walk across to where the man had been sitting and staring so intently. But for some reason, the urge was undeniable. Then again, Gary was rarely still, and he’d been looking curiously deflated.

Leaning into the old glass … she saw Lane’s mother perched, as beautiful as a queen, on that silk sofa.

THIRTY

Lane got to his feet and walked forward to his brother Maxwell. He wanted to hug the guy, but he had no idea what kind of reception he was going to get.

Max’s pale gray eyes narrowed. “Hey, brother.”

Still taller and broader than he or Edward, but now even more so. And there was a beard covering the lower half of that face. Jeans were so well washed they hung like a breeze, and the jacket had been made of leather at some point, but most of the hide had been worn off. The hand that extended was callused and the fingernails had dirt or oil underneath them. A tattoo emerged from the cuff on the back of the wrist.

The formal gesture of greeting was a throwback, Lane supposed, to the way they had grown up.

“Welcome back,” Lane heard himself say as they shook.

His eyes couldn’t stop roaming as he tried to divine from physical clues where his brother had been and what he had been doing these past few years. Car mechanic? Garbageman? Road crew? Something involving physical labor for sure, given how big he was.