My Stepbrother's Regret novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Watch Your Wallets
Roarke accuses Hollyn of stealing his late mother's watch, she proves she didn't, her mother begs her to drop it, and after two days of his torment she bets him a public apology in front of forty guests; that night she finds the watch in her mother's makeup case, and her mother says they're almost done.
The day after Mom and I moved into the Gibbons house, my stepbrother dumped my purse out on the breakfast table.
My wallet hit the butter dish.
My lip balm rolled off the edge and under Myles's chair.
"Where is it?" Roarke said.
I had met him twice. Once at the courthouse, where he didn't smile in a single photo. Once last night, when he walked past my door without a word.
"Where is what?"
"My watch. Steel Carrera. Black face. It was on my dresser last night and it's gone this morning."
The housekeeper stopped pouring coffee.
Myles lowered his newspaper. "Roarke. Sit down."
"Six thousand dollars, Dad. Mom's watch." He didn't take his eyes off me. "And the first night they're in the house, it walks."
My mother put her hand to her chest.
I picked my wallet out of the butter.
"I fix watches for a living," I said. "If I wanted a Carrera, I'd know where to sell it. I wouldn't need yours."
"That's not the defense you think it is."
Some girls would have cried.
I'd moved through nine towns with my mother by the time I was eighteen. I'd been the new girl accused of things before.
I got up and went to the panel by the kitchen door.
Every door in this house had a keypad. Myles had shown us proudly on the tour. Every lock kept a log.
"Pull up the guest room," I said. "Mine."
Roarke stared at me.
Then he crossed the kitchen and tapped the screen himself.
GUEST SUITE. Locked 10:52 p.m. Unlocked 6:40 a.m.
Nothing in between.
"I went to bed at ten fifty," I said. "I came out at six forty to make coffee. Your housekeeper saw me. Now pull up the others. Pull up the front door. Pull up..."
My mother's hand closed around my arm.
Her nails dug in.
Her eyes were wet, the way they always got right before we left a town.
"Hollyn, please," she whispered. "Just let it go. For me."
"He just called me a thief in front of everybody."
"We've been married three weeks, baby. Three weeks. Don't do this to me."
Myles was watching us with his glasses pushed up on his head.
Roarke was watching only me.
I looked at my mother's face.
I let it go.
I picked up my lip balm off the floor, put everything back in my bag, and caught the 7:52 Metra into the city.
That should have been the end of it.
From that day on, Roarke had found a new hobby.
On Thursday he changed the Wi-Fi password and texted it to the whole house except me.
I sat at my laptop in the guest room until the housekeeper slipped it to me on a sticky note.
Mags texted me from her engraving counter next door to the watch shop where I work.
"Say the word and I'll engrave LOSER on his forehead. No charge. Block letters."
On Friday he counted the silverware.
Out loud. At dinner. While I was holding a fork.
"Twelve," he said, and looked at me. "Good. Still twelve."
Myles said, "That's enough."
My mother laughed.
I put the fork down and ate my salad with my fingers.
Roarke's mouth twitched.
He was twenty-nine and built like he still carried lumber for his father's stores. He had a close dark beard and hazel eyes, and a pale band on his left wrist where the watch used to sit.
He kept rubbing that pale band with his thumb.
On Saturday Myles threw us a welcome party on the back lawn.
Forty people. White tents. A string quartet by the lake.
My mother wore cream silk and cried a little during Myles's toast, beautifully, right on cue.
Then Roarke took the microphone.
"Welcome to the family, Charlene," he said. "And Hollyn."
He raised his glass toward me.
"Watch your wallets, everybody."
A few people laughed.
Most of them didn't.
A woman by the dessert table actually moved her purse to her other shoulder.
My mother squeezed Myles's hand and said nothing.
Something in me went very calm.
I walked across the grass, took the microphone out of Roarke's hand, and turned to face forty people I didn't know.
"Hi. I'm Hollyn. I'm twenty-four, I'm a watchmaker on Jewelers Row, and apparently I'm the thief."
Nobody laughed now.
"Roarke lost a steel Carrera on Tuesday night. Black dial. I didn't take it. The door logs say I didn't take it."
I turned to him.
He was close enough that I had to tip my head back.
"So here's a bet. I find your watch in seven days. Next Saturday, right here, you apologize to me in front of every one of these people."
"And if you don't find it?"
"I pay you six thousand dollars and I'm out of this house by Sunday."
My mother made a small sound behind me.
Roarke looked down at me for a long moment.
He smelled like cut grass and cedar.
"Deal," he said. "You've got a week, thief."
"Hollyn," I said, and handed him back the microphone.
The quartet started up again too fast.
That night I couldn't find my phone charger.
Mom had borrowed it on Tuesday and never given it back.
Her bedroom door was unlocked. Myles was downstairs with the last guests, and the shower was running in her bathroom.
The charger wasn't on her nightstand.
I tried her vanity. Her makeup case sat open, a big quilted thing she'd carried through every town I could remember.
I lifted out the top tray to check underneath.
The lining at the bottom sagged.
I pushed on it.
Something hard pushed back.
I peeled up the corner of the fabric.
A steel watch lay against the bottom, black dial up, the second hand still sweeping.
I turned it over.
The caseback was engraved. R. Keep time for me. Mom.
Tucked under the strap was a folded pink slip from a pawn shop in Waukegan.
The shower had stopped.
I hadn't heard it stop.
"Put that back, baby," my mother said from the bathroom doorway, wrapped in a towel, her voice soft as ever. "We're almost done here."
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