The Bad-ass Heiress Returns After Divorce novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Engagement Party

Sophia walks into the Berriens' garden party under Eleanor's name and asks his mother, in front of eighty guests, who took the photo.

The Berriens had booked their garden party for months, so they simply put a new name on the banner.

CONGRATULATIONS TALBOT AND CAMILLE, it said, in gold script, over a hundred white roses.

I stood at the edge of the lawn in Alpharetta in a borrowed black dress, with Nathan Coldwell's hand at the small of my back.

"You can leave anytime," he said near my ear.

"I'm not leaving."

"Then I'll stand close and look bored. It's my best look."

"You have a best look?"

"Ask anyone at the board."

His thumb moved once against my spine, and I felt it all the way down.

I was twenty-eight, five weeks out of a hospital bed, and I was furious at my own body for noticing.

Eighty guests turned their heads when we crossed the grass.

Nathan had given Eleanor's name at the gate, and the Berriens did not turn away a Trezevant.

Talbot's mother saw me first.

She was holding a glass of white wine and a smile, and the smile fell off her face in pieces.

"You," she said, very low. "You have nerve."

"Hello, Mrs. Berrien."

"How did you get on the list?"

"Mrs. Trezevant sent me."

Her eyes went to Nathan, then to the roses, then to the little crowd of women from her league gathering behind her.

"Eleanor Trezevant does not know a girl like you," she said.

"She does now."

Camille floated up in pale blue chiffon with a ring on her left hand.

It was a large ring, and it was not the one I had worn.

"Sophie," she said warmly. "You came. I'm so glad. Everyone, this is Talbot's, um, this is a friend."

"A friend of the family," I said. "I'm glad I could come to the party."

I looked past her and found Talbot.

He stood at the far end of the terrace beside his father, in a navy suit, with a drink he was not touching.

He saw me and set the glass down so hard that it rang.

I turned back to his mother.

"I have one question, and then I'll go."

"This is not the place."

"It's the only place. You told me the photo was taken downtown in March."

"I said it was real."

"Would you read the date on it for these ladies?"

I opened my purse and took out the photograph.

I had kept it, folded in four, because I wanted proof in my own hand.

I handed it to the nearest woman in the crowd, an older lady in a straw hat.

She held it at arm's length and read it aloud.

"March ninth," she said. "A green dress."

"I donated that dress in January," I said. "I keep every receipt, because I'm a bookkeeper."

I held out a second sheet.

It was from the Goodwill on Ponce de Leon, dated January eleventh, with one line on it: women's wrap dress, green.

The older lady read that aloud too.

Somebody behind her said, "Oh, my."

"That means nothing," Talbot's mother said. "You could have bought it back."

"Back from whom?" the lady in the straw hat said.

Her friends murmured.

Talbot's mother put her wine down and stepped toward me.

"This is a vicious little stunt," she said, loud enough for the whole terrace. "She is a girl my family took in out of charity."

"Talbot carried the Goodwill bag to the car," I said.

Camille said, gently, "She's grieving. Talbot, tell them she's confused."

Everyone looked at Talbot.

He came down the terrace steps slowly, and I watched him count it up.

"I carried it," he said. "A paper bag, in January. There was a green belt hanging out of the top."

"Talbot, do not," his mother said.

"I carried it, Mom."

The silence across the lawn was so loud that a waiter dropped a tray.

Then a gate opened behind the garden wall, and a car door shut.

Eleanor Trezevant came across the grass on her cane in a cream suit and pearls.

She went directly to me and took my arm.

"Sophia is my guest," she said, in a voice that carried to the roses. "I would think very carefully before calling her anything else."

Talbot's mother lost her color.

Camille's ring hand curled tight at her side.

Eighty people watched Eleanor Trezevant walk me out of the Berrien garden by the arm.

Nobody said a word until we reached the drive.

Nathan went to bring the car.

Eleanor lowered herself onto the garden wall, breathing hard, and told me she needed a minute.

"You were very good," she said. "That was cruelty with a receipt."

"Is it a bad thing?"

"I thought it was the finest thing I have seen in a decade."

Footsteps crunched behind us on the gravel.

I turned around, and Talbot was there in his shirtsleeves, out of breath.

Eleanor looked at him, then at me, and went to wait by the car.

"Sophia," he said. "Please. One minute."

"You have one."

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and it shook.

"I never called the lab," he said. "I never even looked up the number."

"I know."

"Mom said the envelope was enough. I just believed the paper."

I looked at him, at the steady jaw and the blue eyes I had loved for three years.

"You believed a paper over me," I said. "I was in a bathroom on your parents' floor, Talbot."

He flinched.

"Then you should know what you did," I said. "I'm going to make sure everyone does."

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