The Bad-ass Heiress Returns After Divorce novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Buckhead

Eleanor Trezevant confirms the swap, Camille calls her sister through her teeth, and Sophia names her price; then the Berrien engagement notice lands.

The Trezevant house sat behind iron gates on West Paces Ferry, and it looked like a hotel that had never needed guests.

Nathan Coldwell drove, and Rhona sat beside me in the back seat holding my cold hand.

"I want to see her face when she says it," I had told Nathan in the lobby.

Eleanor Trezevant was waiting in a glass conservatory full of orchids.

She was seventy-four, with a silver bob and a cane she was plainly ashamed of.

She stood when I came in, and the cane shook once against the tile.

For a long moment she only looked at me.

"You have my son's chin," she said.

"I have a scar on it from a grill."

"Charles had one just like it, from a boat cleat."

Her voice was steady, but her eyes were wet.

"Sit down, Sophia. Please. Your friend too."

Rhona sat. I stayed standing.

"Tell me how you know," I said.

She told it plainly, and I will give her that.

A month ago, the lawyers for the Trezevant family trust had asked for fresh blood work from every heir.

Camille's did not match.

They ran it twice, and then they pulled the old records from Grady Memorial.

Two baby girls had been born in the same hour, twenty-eight years ago, and a night nurse had switched their bracelets after a spilled tray.

"One went home to a diner in Decatur," Eleanor said. "One went home to me."

"Did you know she wasn't yours?" Rhona asked.

"Not until last month."

I watched her hands as she said it, and they did not move.

"Where's my mother's name in that paper?" I asked.

"Rose Bulloch," Eleanor said. "I am sorry I never met her."

It was the first time anyone had said my mother's name to me in a month without pity in it.

I sat down.

She took my hands across the arm of the chair, and her fingers were very light.

"Your father drowned six years ago," she said. "He would have been so proud of you. I want you in this house."

"Why?"

"Because it is yours."

"I don't want your house, Mrs. Trezevant."

"What do you want?"

I had thought about this on the drive, with my face against the glass.

"I want every person who put that photo in my lap in one room," I said.

"And I want the whole city watching when I do it."

Eleanor sat very still.

"That is not a wish for a house," she said.

"No."

"It is a wish for a reckoning."

"Call it that."

Her mouth moved, and for a second I could not tell if she was smiling.

"Done," she said. "On one condition. You wait for a good room."

"How long?"

"Not long. Camille will do most of it for you. She never knows when to stop."

Nathan was standing by the door with his arms crossed, and he met my eyes when I looked at him.

He did not look away, and he did not look sorry for it.

I liked him for that, God help me, on the worst day of my life.

Dinner was at eight in a dining room built for twenty.

Five of us ate at one end of it.

Camille came in last, in a cream silk blouse, with her eyes bright and swollen.

She had been crying in the car, and she wanted it noticed.

"Grandmother told me," she said, and she crossed the room and hugged me.

She smelled of white tea and expensive hair spray.

"We're sisters," she whispered. "Isn't that unbelievable? I always wanted one."

Her fingers dug into my shoulder blades as she said it.

I let her hold me for exactly as long as it took to count to three.

Then I stepped back, and I smiled at her, because Eleanor had asked me to wait.

"Camille," I said. "Last night you told Talbot's mother the photograph was real."

"I was only repeating what I'd heard."

"You stood at my hospital bed this morning with a cup of tea."

"Sophia," Eleanor said mildly.

"I'm eating," I said, and I picked up my fork.

Camille sat across from me, and the whole meal she watched my mouth.

Rhona kicked my ankle under the table twice.

The soup had cooled by the time Nathan handed Eleanor her pills.

I excused myself to the guest suite on the second floor.

Eleanor's study was on the way, with the door half open.

I did not mean to look, but the lamp was on, and there was a framed photograph on the desk.

It was a small photo of a squat brick building with a red neon sign.

ROSE'S DINER, DECATUR, it said.

I stood very still in the doorway.

"She keeps photographs of places she means to buy," Nathan said behind me.

I had not heard him come up the stairs.

"My mother's place was never for sale."

"Then she must have wanted to see where you came from."

His voice was gentle, but he was watching my face too closely.

Before I could answer, Camille's phone began to buzz downstairs, again and again.

She came out of the dining room with her thumb on the screen and her mouth open.

"Oh," she said, in a little voice. "Oh, no."

She turned the phone around so I could read the headline from the Berrien Construction page.

It had been posted twenty minutes ago.

TALBOT BERRIEN AND CAMILLE TREZEVANT ANNOUNCE THEIR ENGAGEMENT.

I had signed the papers that morning.

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