by Staci Hart
I huffed, knowing he would. “Because I’m too busy to date,” I lied.
“And you’re looooonely,” he cooed.
“This is why I didn’t tell you,” I said coolly as I stood, buttoning my suit coat.
“Too bad the garden club girls are off the table,” he lamented. “Those girls are easy and convenient.”
“Please, I was off the table the second my money was no longer liquid. And if I’m not careful, what’s left will potentially end up in Evelyn Bower’s hands. I doubt she’d take kindly to any of her cronies consorting with the enemy.”
Especially not the crony I wanted to consort with.
“But see, that’s what makes them so perfect—you wouldn’t want to settle down with any of them.”
I rolled my eyes.
“God, you’re such a baby. Just get on Bumble like everybody else.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said pointedly as I walked past.
“Anytime. Let me know if you need any help setting up an account,” he called after me as I exited the study.
I trotted down the stairs and into the kitchen where my mother hadn’t even put the kettle on in an obvious attempt to stall. So I gave her a temporary stay of execution by postponing our preparations until after dinner. You’d think I’d told her she’d actually been acquitted of a murder sentence, as relieved as she was. And with a kiss on her cheek, I left.
The day was crisp, the trees finally budding after a long, bare winter. It was one of those days where a jacket was only needed until the sun peeked out, but I’d forgone it, shoving my hands in my pockets to keep them warm on the short walk to my place.
My brownstone was just down Bleecker, next to Blanche’s, the coffee shop with featherlight donuts and pastries that my siblings and I had practically grown up in. The upside was that my house always smelled sweet—not enough to be cloying. Just enough that a delicate, sugary scent hung in the air, welcoming me home.
I dropped my keys in the dish next to the door, heading for my room. I hadn’t seen the value of paying someone money to help me furnish my own home, so instead, I’d spent a long time browsing the internet to build a repository of furnishings. Curtains and couches, dressers and sideboards, everything had a purpose and a place. It was neat and tidy, cleaned and dusted weekly by a maid simply because I didn’t have the time to do it myself. Especially not now that the fate of our family rested firmly on my shoulders.
Familiar fear rose in my chest at the thought of my failure. We would lose it all if I made a single misstep. For all my planning and all my organization, I had precious little control. And there was only one way out.
Through.
So I’d do what I always did. I’d rise to that challenge and look my fear in the eye. And then I’d beat it before it could beat me. There was no other choice. In the battle of fight and flight, I would go down swinging every single time before exposing my back to the thing, to leave a target for a knife.
Again, Maisie flittered into my thoughts, the thing I couldn’t fight for. The only thing I couldn’t look in the eye and conquer. I couldn’t even try. Instead, I ran. And oh, how I hated to run.
Maybe one day, I’d forget I had to.
But I doubted it.
8
Snares
MAISIE
Tess glared at my mother’s lawyer with the fire of a thousand suns. That look was so hot, I was surprised steam wasn’t climbing from his collar. But he was cool as a cucumber. Or a snake, more like, with predatory eyes and body coiled in preparatory stillness to strike.
“And would you say that Rosemary Bennet was reliable?”
“How exactly do you mean?” she asked, her voice tight and angry.
“In your general opinion, would Rosemary Bennet ever be described as reliable?”
“In my definition of the word, yes.”
“Merriam-Webster states, Consistently in good quality or performance. Would you say that Rosemary Bennet was consistently in good performance?”
“Yes, I would.” Tess swallowed, belying her confidence.
And the lawyer knew it.
“What about on the twelfth of March when she failed to open the shop at its appointed time?”
“I don’t recall that.”
“Hmm,” he said to the papers in front of him, shuffling through them in show. “How about the sixteenth of March? The twenty-second? How about last week on the fourth of April? Might you recall that?”
Discomfort slithered through me with every serpentine word.
Tess stiffened, her face a mask. “I opened the shop those days.”
“Might I remind you, Ms. Monroe, that you are under oath.”
“But I did open the shop those days,” she insisted.
He gave her a condescending look. “On time? Or because Rosemary Bennet failed to open it herself?”
The room fell silent, all eyes on Tess as she simmered in her seat, grappling for a suitable answer but finding none. Because she answered, “The shop did not open on time.”
“Because Rosemary Bennet failed to open the doors.”
“Yes,” she ground out.
He smiled. “Thank you, Ms. Monroe. I think we have all we need.”
The room exhaled, some with pleasure and some with pain, as Tess rose, her eyes finally releasing the lawyer—whose name I’d chosen not to remember—in order to throw a savage look at my mother and an objectionable look at me. But when she turned to her side of the table, her fury abated instantly, and the regret on her face when she locked gazes with Marcus was total.
He was still, so still as Tess exited the room. His lawyer leaned in to speak to him, and whatever he said tightened Marcus’s face, darkened him to shadows.
“I told you this would be easy,” my mother said, smiling as she slipped her hand into her stupid, flashy purse to retrieve a tube of red lipstick and a compact I was almost positive was solid gold. “She shouldn’t have been so stupid as to sign a contract with me. I’d call it dumb luck, but there was no luck involved. Only dumb.”
I swallowed, shifting in my seat, fighting the urge to either shove her or run out of this room like I was on fire. I said nothing.
“I mean, really. That she didn’t realize I put a leash on her is the most naive thing she’s ever done.”
“You’re awful,” I said, soft and still.
Her compact snapped shut. “I’m resourceful, Margaret. And you’d do well to pay attention. Someday, you’ll be sitting right here, just like me, unless you’re as naive as poor, softheaded Rosemary.”
Never, I screamed in my mind. I will never be like you.
“Why am I here?” I asked again.
Something in her tightened, hardened. “Opposition to the Bennets is a bone-deep Bower credo. And until you embrace that, you’ll witness every step I take toward their downfall.”
“Why won’t you admit that they’re no threat to you? Why won’t you just own up to the fact that you’re petty and that this whole thing is outrageous?”
She turned, laying the full weight of her gaze on me, and I struggled not to buckle beneath it. “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Either way, I will finish what my mother started and erase them. And should they somehow rise again, you will do the same. I’ll bend you until you break, Margaret. Because this is just one of many things you were born to do.”
Dissent rumbled up my throat, heading straight for her, but we were interrupted by the entry of the next Bennet. And once again, the room stilled, all but my mother, who leaned forward like her lunch had just arrived.
Rosemary Bennet was a small woman with apple cheeks and creases on her face etched from joy. Her hair was big and wavy, cut short and brushing her chin, a shade of graphite framing creamy skin. She wore those brilliant blue eyes of Marcus’s, or he wore hers, and though she didn’t have a stitch of makeup on, no one could possibly call her plain. She was a light, a soft and shining light that was felt by every heart in the room, my mother and her lawyer excluded.
They didn’t have hearts to begin with.
Though you could see she generally wore a smile, she had misplaced it today. When she reached to pull out the chair, her gnarled, knobby hands came into view, applying force in an unconventional way to make do with what she had.
Something in my chest ached and sank at the sight. I’d known she’d had to stop working at the shop for her arthritis, but never had I imagined it was so bad as that.
Those big blue eyes of hers didn’t chance a look in our direction, and I hoped to God they wouldn’t. Because my mother was poised to devour her, and I wanted to throw myself in front of Mrs. Bennet like a human shield to stop it. She seemed too gentle for this place, for this room.
My mother might as well have licked her lips when she smiled and said under her breath, “Now, here we go.”
* * *
MARCUS
The second my mother walked in, the room held its breath.
My impassive mask was belied only by my eyes, tethering me to her.
It’s going to be all right. We prepared for this. Don’t let them win. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
She folded her hands in her lap and sat up straight, putting on the best smile she could muster. It was brave, that smile.
After the way today had gone, I knew only one thing.
They were about to decimate her, and there wasn’t one fucking thing I could do to stop it.
“Please state your name for the record,” Thompson, their lawyer, said to his notepad as he scribbled what I suspected was nothing more than doodles. A show of tedium to lure her into letting her guard down.
“Rosemary Bennet,” she said with a sturdy voice, her eyes darting to me.
I offered an encouraging smile.
“And you owned the Longbourne Flower Shop and greenhouse. Is that correct?”
“Yes.” She relaxed a hair at the question. “For twenty years.”
“And in August 2019, you sold that business to your son Marcus Bennet.”
“Yes.”
He flipped the pages of his notebook back like he didn’t know exactly what he was going to ask. “In February 2019, you were approached by a lawyer from Bower with an offer to purchase flowers from your greenhouse. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Describe to me your understanding of the terms.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Bower would purchase a minimum of five thousand dollars monthly in wholesale flowers for five years.”
“And what was your understanding of the clauses in the contract?”
“That they were legal mumbo jumbo to support that basic term.”
“Did you read the contract yourself, Mrs. Bennet?”
Color crept up her neck to settle on her cheeks. “No.”
“Did you have a legal representative read it?”
“No.”
“Did anyone read it before you signed?”
“No, but—”
“It seems outrageously irresponsible for you not to have read a contract that you entered your business into, but you have a history of irresponsibility, don’t you, Mrs. Bennet?”
I straightened up, propelled by my fury, which had nowhere to go.
“I don’t know that I’d say that,” she started, trailing off.
Thompson gave her a small, sarcastic smile. “For instance, we were just talking to Tess Monroe about your inability to open the store on time. She thought it irresponsible.”
Mom jerked like she’d been struck.
Don’t take the bait, I willed, drilling a hole in her with my eyes. Don’t listen to them.
He smiled, having hit his mark. “But that’s just one example among many of your mismanagement of Longbourne. We also have the tax issues. The misplacement of money. The absence of bookkeeping, no financial investments, and the lack of business to even fund your upkeep, driving you deeper into debt with every year. Can you tell me what you did to address any of this?”
“I … well, I …” She looked to me for an answer, but I had none to give.
“Yes, that’s what I found too,” Thompson said. “You allowed your shop, which has been in your family for a hundred seventy-one years to fail. And along the way, you ruined any possibility of a future for your business. So when Bower reached out, would you say it was a lifeline?”
“I w-would.”
“And how did you feel when you signed that contract?”
“Relieved.”
“And yet you are contesting the terms of that very agreement. Is it the fault of my client that you failed to read the contract that you signed?”
“No.”
“Would you say that it’s another example of your irresponsibility?”
Her anger flared. “Now, wait just a minute—”
“Mrs. Bennet, do you deny that you failed to file your taxes on time for ten of the twenty years you owned your business?”
“But that wasn’t me, it was my accountant!”
“Whom you hired, correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you deny that you held contracts with various distributors that never delivered to you?”
“Well, no, but I just didn’t realize—” she rambled, crumbling.
“Do you deny that you do not keep regular hours?” he charged, voice rising. “Do you deny that your staff has consistently been delivered late paychecks? Do you deny that in your twenty years of running Longbourne, you have bankrupted it? Do you?”
“That’s enough,” I spat, ready to fight.
“It’s only the truth, Marcus,” Evelyn said, and I gnashed at my name on her lips.
“The truth is that you trapped her into the agreement in the hopes that we’d end up right here.”
A slash of a smile. “You know as well as I do that she has hammered every nail into the coffin herself.”
“And you handed her the last one,” I bit.
Her eyes lit with gratification. “I was trying to help her.”
“Bullshit. You were trying to ruin her.”
Ben laid a hand on my arm and whispered my name, but I shook him off.
“Why should I try to ruin her when she does such an admirable job on her own?” Evelyn cooed.
“Evelyn Bower,” Mom said, drawing the room’s attention, “do not pretend you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“And don’t pretend as if you didn’t know this was coming,” she shot back.
“Mother,” Maisie said, her worried eyes pleading, “please. Let it go.”
“You are meant to be an observer only, Margaret,” she warned. “I suggest you leave this to me.”
“I think it’s been left to you long enough,” Maisie answered.
Thompson said, “Ladies, if we could—”
Screws tightened in Evelyn as she laid a disdainful look on her daughter. “Now is not the time—”
“It feels like exactly the right time.” Trembling rage wafted off Maisie. “You have done enough to this family. The least you can do is keep your thoughts to yourself while you destroy them.”
For a handful of heartbeats, Evelyn Bower was silent and stock-still. When she stood, it was with a calculated grace that left her looming over her daughter like a vengeful god.
“That is nowhere near the least I can do,” Evelyn said, her tone even and deadly. “You will shut your mouth, Margaret Bower, and you will shut it right now. If you don’t, she won’t be the only one I ruin.”
Maisie’s cheeks were crimson, her eyes shining, jaw tightening with her small fists by her side. The only other motion was the shallow rise and fall of her chest as she looked for a refusal and found none.
Maisie’s color rose a shade as she turned to face forward again, her shining eyes staring a hole in the wall.
An inexplicable, unbound rage rumbled through me, a stampede of fury at the sight of Maisie being restrained, at the sight of her pain, at the sound of Evelyn’s noose sliding around Maisie’s neck.
My hands trembled with defiance, stayed only by some well of self-control I hadn’t known I possessed.
“Now, where were we?” Evelyn said, smiling as she lowered herself into her chair with grace she shouldn’t be allowed.
My mother sat across from us, lips pinned between her teeth and chin bent. “What has happened to you, Evelyn? You have always been cruel, but I didn’t know you’d be so horrible to your own child.”
“And I always knew you were this stupid,” she snapped. “Bovine and soft and chewing cud, not realizing you’re going to slaughter.”
Mom shook her head, her voice tight with emotion. “You sound just like your mother. And I am so sorry for that.”
Evelyn shot out of her seat, and the room erupted in noise once more—Evelyn’s lawyer trying to stop her, Maisie yelling at her to let it go, Mom yelling at Evelyn with tears in her eyes, Ben calling for me to calm down. I realized then that his arms circled my chest, and I relaxed enough that he let me go.
I rushed around the table and put myself between Mom and everyone. Held her face, forced her to look me in the eye. “I’m here. It’s all right, I’m here.”
She choked on a sob, sinking into my arms, and I folded her up, shielding her as best I could. I threw Ben a look over my shoulder.
He answered with a dark nod, “That’s enough for today. These circumstances are untenable, Thompson. My office will call to reschedule, and in the meantime, I suggest you leash your client.”
Thompson breathed a sharp sigh. “I recommend you do the same.”
I didn’t hear anything else that was said, only my thundering heart as I ushered my mother out. Kash, Luke, and Tess popped out of their seats and rushed toward us, asking over each other what happened.
“We’re rescheduling,” was all I said, moving us out of the common area in the hopes of avoiding Evelyn Bower and whatever poison waited on her lips.