by Jess Bentley
“So that’s it?” Liam pipes in. “Just like that, we are all alive again? We can do whatever we want?”
I glance at Carty, who is sitting on the sofa, concentrating on a glass that is half full with a dark liquor.
“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” I shrug. “Welcome to your new life.”
“Man, that’s so weird!” Kill marvels. “I mean, it’s been so long. What should we do first? Where should we go?”
“I dunno… Los Angeles? New York?” Liam suggests. “I mean… Anywhere? Everywhere? Sailing? Flying? I wouldn’t mind riding a horse, to tell you the truth.”
“Picking up a basketball game with people who can beat us!” Kill grins. “That will be fun, right? People who don’t know your moves inside and out?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Liam rolls his eyes. “You don’t know all my moves.”
“Yes I do!”
“Do you think Lola will come with us?” Timothy pipes in, asking the question we were all somehow afraid to ask.
“That’s going to be up to her,” I answer softly.
A silence falls across the room. This was definitely a strange night. Definitely something we knew would come eventually, but didn’t expect so soon. In the back of our minds we always knew that, someday, Carty was going to change his mind. We were going to have to face the music eventually.
But there he is, sulking on the sofa. I’m not sure if he doesn’t hear us, or if he is simply pretending we don’t exist.
“We will just have to ask her,” I suggest. “Now that she has the book deal, I imagine she’s got a lot of work to do. She offered to do interviews, too, so we wouldn’t have to. But that’s going to mean a lot of time, a lot of dedication…”
“I wouldn’t mind doing an interview,” Liam shrugs. “I’ve got a lot to say. People don’t even know. I got some deep thoughts.”
“You don’t have any deep thoughts,” Kill sighs dramatically. “You have just been alone for so long you don’t know what thoughts are anymore. Give me a break.”
“Hey, where is Lola, anyway?” Liam asks.
I glance toward the bathroom. “In there.”
“Wow, she’s been in there really long time,” Timothy observes.
Shrugging, I walk over to the sofa and sit next to Carty.
“Are you okay?” I ask him in a low voice.
He holds his drink up in his fingers, turning it halfway as he stares into its depths.
“Thanks for everything you did,” he says in a low voice.
“I didn’t do anything,” I shrug. “Lola arranged this whole thing. Or Nance did, maybe. Didn’t have anything to do with me.”
He glances at me sidelong. “No… I mean everything. Thank you for everything,” he reiterates. “You’ve got to believe me that I thought I was doing the right thing for us. For all of us.”
“Oh, that…” My voice trails off.
I am not entirely sure what to say to him. The truth is, we all believed he was right. Though we didn’t know the extent of the plan—that we would be dropping off the face of the earth entirely—we knew that Carty needed to be protected. We knew that Whitney was bad news. And we knew, overall, that money was the least important thing about us. As long as we were together, money could come and go.
“You know we would do anything for you,” I sigh. “There was never any question.”
“I’m a very lucky man,” he scowls, staring at his drink.
Somehow, I don’t think he believes it. But he is. We all are. Even though Whitney made an appearance to remind us of how dangerous outsiders can be, she’s just one person. She didn’t break us.
The bathroom door opens and we all turn around automatically, smiling as Lola’s shadow fills the door. But when she comes into the room, her expression is nothing for us to smile about.
“Are you okay?” Liam asks automatically.
She walks over to the marble-topped table in the middle of the room and drops an armful of plastic wands onto it. They clatter and slide, falling in a messy pile.
“That’s every one they had at the gift shop,” she explains.
“What are you talking about?” I ask as I walk over. My heart freezes in my chest when I see what they are. I pick one up and stare at it. It’s a pregnancy test, one of about three dozen. Every single one has a tiny little plus mark on it, or a double line.
“Did you… take all of these?” Kill asks her gently.
“I had to be sure,” she replies in a trembling voice.
Carty pushes himself up from the sofa and comes over, his expression a mask of confusion.
“What are these? Are you? Did you…”
Finally she nods tightly, her fingers fluttering up to press at her lips.
“I’m pregnant, you guys,” she whispers.
“Well, that’s awesome!” Timothy announces. "I mean, isn’t it? Guys! Tell her it’s awesome!”
“I want to go home,” she whispers.
Carty slides his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder. “Timothy can’t fly the helicopter at night,” he explains again. “We will leave first thing in the morning. It’s just one night. But we’re still together.”
“No… I mean I want to go home,” she says again. “Sacramento. To my home.”
“Yeah, Sacramento isn’t far,” Timothy shrugs uncertainly. “I mean, we can go there too. We’re all gassed up and everything.”
She backs away, putting her hands up. Though she’s clearly limping again, no one wants to say anything to her about it.
“Alone,” she whispers, stricken. Her eyes are wide and fearful, her cheeks pale.
“Lola, let’s talk about this,” Carty half whispers, the emotion plain in his voice.
She shakes her head tightly. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says in as strong a voice as she can muster. “I’ve made up my mind. I want to be alone. Please don’t follow me.”
We all stand there, helplessly watching as she limps toward the penthouse elevator and pushes the button. No one says a word as the doors open and she climbs inside, her shoulders shaking, her shoes in her hand.
After the doors close, we all stare at each other and at the pile of pregnancy tests on the table, wondering just how everything went so horribly wrong.
Chapter 19
Carty
Though it is late October, our corner of the mountain has gotten much more popular. From my vantage point in the study, I can see frequent helicopters buzzing by and even the occasional boat on the lake with a photographer sporting those extra-long-range lenses.
Ever since we came back to the house in the mountains, people can’t seem to leave us alone. Timothy even stopped going online because mentions of our family and our story are everywhere.
Last week, a pair of reporters in cross-country skis had the audacity to show up at our front door. Liam and Kill chased them off, but I am sure they won’t be the last.
I hope the bad weather sets in soon. That should at least give us a few months of peace and quiet.
How long has it been since Lola left us? I’m not sure. Weeks, certainly. Perhaps a month.
No one wants to talk about it.
For three years or so, we lived here together without any contact from the outside world. Sure, Jake would go out for supplies, but on his own he was hard to recognize. I was the one who had been in all of the newspapers and TV shows when things with Whitney got very heated. Though Jake and I look quite a bit alike, he can blend better. He’s a quiet person, and doesn’t really stand out unless you’re looking for him. I mean, other than the fact he’s six foot four, he really blends in quite nicely with the other local mountain people.
But after one night in Lake Tahoe to promote Lola’s story, all of a sudden everything changed again. Now that people know where we are, they can’t seem to leave us alone. Lola’s story has reignited all kinds of interest, not just in recent events, but in our family history going back a hundred fifty years. They’ve even started rereleasing ot
her movies about the gold rush, since that is so much a part of our story. I guess the miniseries about the Donner party—those unfortunate people who starved to death up here about two miles away when trying to get to California—has also been on the History Channel a few times.
I don’t know how to feel about this.
When everyone thought we were dead, I felt alive. I felt safe. Whitney broke my heart, and I am not ashamed to say it. So retreating was a welcome rest. It was a time to heal.
And now, that time is over.
But something else has changed, too. When Jake went to the cabin for what we thought was just a few days, just to get a break from the rest of us as he sometimes did, we had no idea what he would bring back with him. No one could have anticipated that Lola would be tossed into his arms by fate. And no one could have anticipated how she would have changed our lives.
It’s no mistake that we had a bedroom ready for her. At some point, I vaguely knew that a woman would enter our lives again. This house has thirteen bedrooms… I mean, it wasn’t much of a struggle to keep one ready, just in case. Timothy used to even joke about how he was setting up accommodations for “Little Red Riding Hood” in case she ever showed up.
But who would have thought that Little Red Riding Hood was going to be a red-haired, irresistible siren of woman? Someone who challenged every preconception I had about affection, and patience, and yes… even love.
Jake joins me in the study as he often does, silently pacing the perimeter of the room, looking out at the reporters who are not so subtle about trying to look in. He seems to have adjusted completely to our new lifestyle. No longer thought to be dead, now we are merely the weird billionaires who prefer to be recluses. It is not lost on me that we could have been that all along. Now that we have the liberty to go anywhere, we haven’t gone anywhere at all.
“Winter is coming,” he observes, squinting down at the surface of the lake. There are only two boats on the water right now. It gets cold quickly here, with a very short summer, abbreviated fall, and a long, long winter to come.
“Happens every year,” I observe.
“Do you want to stay here?” he asks. The words hang in the air.
“Jake, is there somewhere else you want to go?”
He turns to look at me, his brow knotted together. He raises his hands and then lets them drop to his thighs.
“If we stay here, we’ll be here all winter,” he says reasonably.
“Yes, that’s the way it’s always been,” I answer.
He begins to pace, his heels hard on the slate floor. Finally he turns to me again, clearly exasperated.
“If we stay here all winter,” he begins again, “we will miss all of it.”
I just stare back at him. I know exactly what he means. We will miss all of the pregnancy. She’s due in early summer, by my calculation.
“Jake, if she wanted us there, she would’ve told us.”
He points at the air between us, stabbing with his fingers. “You don’t know that! What if there were some reason… What if she felt like she couldn’t ask us?”
I shrug and sit down behind the big desk, dropping my chin into my palms.
“It’s up to her, isn’t it? She said she wanted to leave. What else could we do?”
“Fight for her!” he bellows. His voice echoes off the windows and back. “We could fight for her, Carty! How can you just sit there? Isn’t it just killing you?”
Breathing deeply, I try to settle my thoughts. It has been a struggle to not obsess on her every waking moment of the day.
“Jake, what if she doesn’t want to have anything to do with this? What if she hates us for some reason? Or what if she’s just busy? What if she’s forgotten?”
Jake arches his back, dragging his fingers through his hair and moaning in frustration.
“Carty, you’re my brother, and you know that I love you, right? But when it comes down to it, man, sometimes you are just a fucking coward!”
I stand up from the desk, leaning forward on my knuckles. “You don’t know!” I exclaim. “You don’t know how hard this is for me! That’s our child! I’m just trying to respect her wishes!”
“Fuck her wishes!” he yells, his voice so loud I can almost hear the dust sifting down from the rafters. “Carty, we are going. Whatever it takes, we are going. Tim has made all the arrangements, and you better be coming. I’ll see you on the helipad in fifteen minutes.”
As Jake storms from the room, I see Liam, Kill, and Timothy by the doorway with their arms crossed. They each shrug and nod as if to say, “Yep, that’s what’s going down.”
And yet, I have to say that the thing I feel now is relief. He’s right, and I know it. And he’s right that I was a coward, too.
We have to do this.
Chapter 20
Lola
“Lunch meeting in twenty, you ready?” Nance says, leaning in the doorway to my office.
I close my laptop, folding my hands over it protectively before smiling at her.
“Absolutely. Where are we going? Or is Frank bringing sandwiches again? Those are pretty good.”
Nance takes a couple of steps into my office and crosses her arms in challenge. She raises her eyebrows.
“Thai food,” she says slowly, watching my face for reaction. “Is that okay with you? Do you like it? Thai food, I mean?”
I swallow, determined not to show any reaction.
“I love it!” I lie. “Can’t get enough of it. In fact, I have already had it four times this week. But that doesn’t bother me! Love to have it for lunch too.”
Nance sighs in frustration and drops into the chair in front of my desk, swinging her knees over the arm and crossing her ankles. She’s wearing cute mint-green pedal pushers and ballet flats with tiny green cats. Over the last month since I’ve been back, she has really upped her fashion game.
But what she’s trying to do—and what I refuse to let her do—is figure out whether or not I really, truly, actually am pregnant. She keeps dropping hints and leaving highly aromatic objects in my office, hoping to provoke some kind of reaction. Fortunately, my morning sickness has been minimal. I’ve been lucky that way. And since I can only be seven or eight weeks along at this point, I’m not even showing.
Why don’t I want her to know? I’m not even entirely sure at this point. In a few months, there won’t be any denying it. But for right now, I like having my privacy. I guess the guys kind of rubbed off on me that way.
“You look very dainty today,” I observe.
Nance looks down at her outfit, smoothing her shirttails over her flat stomach.
“Do I? I have a date after work with Alice, who owns that little gallery on Oak Street. She’s nice. I like her.”
“What are you up to now?” I inquire politely, knowing that she would much rather talk about herself than my waistline anyway.
She starts ticking off on her fingers vaguely as she stares at the ceiling. “Well, there was Phoebe, Ashley, Zoe, Miranda, Nicolette, Zamira, the other Zoe, and now Alice. What is that, five?”
“Eight, actually.”
She raises her eyebrows and stares at me. “Eight, really? Wow, I am a very good lesbian.”
“Or, you are a really terrible lesbian,” I observe pointedly. “Have you considered that?”
She shrugs, the way she does with all things. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Nance has never been in love. Not even once, not in her whole life. We met in middle school. In all that time, she has dated hundreds of people and has been in love exactly zero times.
She would hate for people to know that about her. Rightly, she knows that’s very strange. It’s not for lack of trying, and it’s not for lack of exposure. She is the last person to be described as a wallflower or somebody who holds back in any way.
I used to think it was because Nance had incredibly high standards. She’s a really unique person, and it would take someone really unique to get through to her, to touch her heart. Of co
urse, all the fairytales tell us that person is definitely worth waiting for. For a long time, I sort of admired the way she was waiting for exactly the right person.
But now, my opinion has changed. I think the reason Nance has never been in love is because Nance has no love to give. There is no there, there. She is just a very pretty facsimile of a person, and not much else.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” she says suddenly, kicking her legs to the ground and whipping out her cell phone. She taps at the face urgently, then finally turns it around to show me. Squinting, I can barely make out the title of the article, but when I do, I take the phone away from her and expand the screen so I can absorb every word.
Money-Grubbing Divorcee Gets What’s Coming To Her.
Back in the old days, the tabloids were rife with stories of vengeance and just desserts. These days, those stories are rare. It seems like no matter how terrible a person you are, there is no justice in the world anymore.
Unless, of course, you are Whitney Carruthers.
You will remember, dear reader, the tale of Whitney, the woman who swooped into the Carruthers family, marrying one brother while attempting to seduce the other four. While her feminine mystique was tremendous, rumors have it that the brothers declined her lascivious invitation, preferring their own family loyalty to her tender temptations.
“Oh my God, who wrote this?” I cringe. “Mark Twain? Was it written in the 1800s?”
Nance bounces in her seat and points excitedly at the cell phone. “Just keep reading!” she insists. “It gets better!”
In any case, the Carruthers family strategy, recently uncovered by intrepid reporter Lola Grace, was to shed poor Whitney like a bad habit by divorcing her, and then faking their own deaths. They hid away in the wild mountains of the Sierra Nevada until recently rejoining society with the help of the healing attentions of the aforementioned journalist, Ms. Grace.
And what now, you may ask, dear reader? What does the future have in store for Whitney, who so ignominiously enriched herself at the cost of the handsome Carruthers brothers?
