Chapter 16: Margo Knows

Tate came into the guest house swaying, with the glass still in his hand.

He looked at Linnea and at me, and his eyes went to the open viola case and the pill bottle on the table.

"Look at that," he said. "A little party."

"Get out," Linnea said.

It was the first time I'd heard her use a loud voice.

He grinned.

"Say it again, sweetheart. I like it. I haven't heard it in a while."

"Tate," I said, "walk back out the door."

"Or what?"

"Or I scream, and your father's house is two hundred feet from here."

"My father's asleep." He drank. "And I've got something much better than a scream."

He turned his head and called over his shoulder, easy and loud.

"Margo! Bring the keys!"

I stopped breathing.

Lights came on across the lawn, one after another.

Margo came down the back steps in a silk robe with her phone in her hand, walking fast, and the housekeeper behind her.

She stopped in the doorway and took us in.

"What is this?"

"Sister," said Tate. "I have news. You're going to want to sit."

"Tate, you're drunk."

"Your boyfriend," he said, "is her brother."

He pointed his glass at Linnea.

"Jerome Stradley. Linnea Stradley. Same family. Same blue eyes, if you ever looked."

"My father's people found out a week ago. I've been saving it."

Margo didn't move.

I watched her face as it went through the fourteen months, one by one.

The dinners. The Sundays. The way he'd looked at the guest house from the dining room window.

"Say that again," she said.

"He's been in your bed for a year to get to her. You were the key."

Margo laughed once, a hard little bark.

Then she stopped, and she put her hand flat on her own sternum.

For a moment, a real moment, she looked as hurt as anyone I had ever seen.

"I loved him," she said.

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