Poppy hesitates, a battle playing out across her face.
“What?”
“It’s nothing.” She shakes her head.
Poppy is a great friend, but a terrible liar. When she tries to lie, I half-expect her nose to grow like the old fairytale. She’s that bad at it. “Spill.”
“He did come back.” The confession bursts out of her.
The waiter arrives with our wine to find us sitting in stunned silence. Well, to find me sitting in stunned silence. Poppy looks like she’s about to throw up.
“What do you mean he came back?” I ask softly after a minute.
“After you left for Cambridge,” she confesses. “He was only here for a few days. I didn’t see him.”
“How do you know he came back?”
“Cyrus told me.”
I close my eyes and let myself ask the one question that I’ve tortured myself with for the last four years. “Did he say why?”
“He said he came to get his things before he shipped out. Cyrus said he gave him your letter.”
That didn’t explain anything. It only hurt more. Sterling had returned to Valmont. He had the letter. Cyrus told me he gave it to him, but he failed to mention it was in person. I thought it had been years since Sterling set foot in Tennessee. I was wrong.
“Well, then he didn’t come back for me.” It’s the harsh truth. Because even if I hadn’t been gone, even if he had known where I was—if he read that letter, he should have come after me.
“I promised Cyrus I wouldn’t tell you,” Poppy says, still looking queasy. “I didn’t want to hurt you. You’d moved on—left for London…”
“I did move on,” I lie. It’s so easy to lie about London now that even I’m starting to believe I was happy there.
It isn’t her fault that Sterling came back then—or now. It’s no one’s fault.
“What are you going to do?” Poppy asks.
“Live my life?” I shrug, wishing that idea rolled off my shoulders instead of landing like a lead yoke around them. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Hunt him down,” she says, “and demand he tells you why he ignored your letter.”
“He ignored my letter because he didn’t care.” I need to come to grips with that. I’ve had four years to let go of him. Seeing him successful and indifferent is the final blow.
Poppy clearly doesn’t share this revelation, because she slams a fist on the table. “Okay, hunt him down and cut off his balls.”
The group of older women next to us falls silent at her explosion, casting disapproving looks in our direction before getting up and moving across the café.
“Sorry,” Poppy calls, her British half getting the best of her. Under her breath, she adds, “Nosy old birds.”
“At least, they’ll have something to talk about,” I say dryly.
Some things don’t change. Sterling Ford and I have always been something to talk about.
11
Sterling
Windfall has shed its mourning garb, welcoming life and spring back to its tree-lined drive and manicured gardens. The guard is back on duty at the gate. He steps from the security booth, hitching up his belt with his hands as he scans my car. He can’t be more than a year or two out of high school. He has that wet behind his overly-prominent ears quality. No one’s told him that, though. Maybe it’s the gun in his holster boosting his confidence, but he leans down to the window and waves his hand.
“Can I see your identification?”
I’ve no doubt Malcolm informed the guards of my invitation, but this kid isn’t going to let me go without checking off his entire list. He takes my driver’s license and studies it carefully. “New York, huh?”
“Yes.” Thank God, he can read.
“Old picture. You musta been what? Eighteen?” He says this like there’s a huge gap between my eighteen and his nineteen.
I tilt my Ray-Bans to stare at him. Am I on Magnolia Lane or Memory fucking Lane? “Does that matter?”
“It’s about to expire is all. Have a nice evening.” He waves me through the wrought iron gates and closes them behind my car.
The sky ebbs into dusky purple as I near the house. There are still a handful of gardeners out, using up the last few moments of twilight to finish their work for the day. Adair once told me it took dozens of staff to keep the property looking like a private resort. It’s ironic, really. Angus MacLaine nearly lost everything before he died, but he’d managed to cling to appearances until the very end—a tradition his children have chosen to keep alive, by the looks of it.
At the funeral I’d seen a number of new faces among the house staff, but an old, familiar one greets me at the door. Felix betrays no recognition as he opens the door to the house. The man was ancient when I first met him and the years have left their mark. There’s a tremor in his step as he moves to the side to allow entrance.
“I’m expected,” I say coolly, wondering if his memory is going along with his body.
“Yes, Mr. Malcolm, pardon me, sir, Mr. MacLaine, is in the sitting room,” he corrects himself. It must be hard to give an old dog a new master. “He asked that you join him for a drink before dinner.”
It’s impossible to judge whether his ignorance of me is deliberate or not. Butlers have a peculiar sense of decorum even with old friends, and truth be told, I always liked the old butler. I have no idea how he puts up with the lot of them. But loyalty is a tricky thing. Sometimes it’s only habit. Sometimes you don’t know better. Like any relationship, sometimes you stay when you should go.
He shows me to the sitting room, which I could find on my own. Like most of Windfall, nothing’s changed. An oil painting of the family hangs over a carved Italian marble hearth. Despite the warm weather outside, a gentle fire burns in its grates. The room’s
