The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) (32 page)

Lane hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other that essentially nobody came, but God …

Bending down, she hefted the box up and walked from behind the linen-strewn table. Proceeding out of the dining room through the flap door, she put the box with the other three in the staff hall. Maybe they could return them because the bottles were unopened?

“Every little bit helps,” she said to herself.

Figuring that she’d start on the bar out on the terrace, she hesitated at one of the approved staff doors, even though if she used it, she would have to walk all the way around to the other side of the house.

At Easterly, family were allowed to come and go in any fashion at any time. Staff, on the other hand, were regimented.

Then again …

“Screw that.”

She was not making this effort because she was an employee, but because the man she loved was having a really shitty day and it was killing her to watch it happen and she needed to improve some kind of situation, even if it was just the set-up for an event that had never happened.

Heading through the back rooms, she went out the library’s French doors and paused. This was the terrace that faced the river and the big drop down to River Road, and all of the old-fashioned wrought-iron furniture and glass-topped tables had been moved to the periphery to accommodate all the people who had not come.

The bartender who had been stationed out there had left his post, and she went over and lifted the bar’s linen skirting. Underneath, empty crates for the stemware and boxes for the bourbon and wine were lined up neatly, and she dragged a couple of them out.

It was right when she was about to get packing, literally, when she noticed the person sitting still and quiet right by one of the windows, their focus into the house, not at the view.

“Gary?”

As
she spoke, the head groundskeeper jumped up so fast, the metal chair he’d been in squeaked across the flagstone.

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” She laughed. “I think everyone’s on edge today.”

Gary was in a fresh pair of overalls and his workboots had been hosed off, no dirt or debris on them. His old beat-up Momma’s Mustard, Pickles & BBQ baseball cap was in his hand, and he quickly shoved it back on his head.

“You don’t have to leave,” she said as she began transferring rocks glasses into a crate upside down.

“I wasn’t gonna come. Just when I seen …”

“No cars, right. When you saw no one was coming.”

“Rich people got a weird sense of priority.”

“Amen to that.”

“Well, back to work. Lest you be needin’ anything?”

“No, I’m just giving myself something to do. And if you help me, I might finish faster.”

“So it’s like that, huh.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

He grunted and went off the far lip of the terrace, taking the path that led down around the base of the stone bulwark that kept the mansion’s house lot from falling off its lofty perch.

Later, much later, Lizzie would wonder why she felt compelled to step out from behind the bar and walk across to where the man had been sitting and staring so intently. But for some reason, the urge was undeniable. Then again, Gary was rarely still, and he’d been looking curiously deflated.

Leaning into the old glass … she saw Lane’s mother perched, as beautiful as a queen, on that silk sofa.

L
ane
got to his feet and walked forward to his brother Maxwell. He wanted to hug the guy, but he had no idea what kind of reception he was going to get.

Max’s pale gray eyes narrowed. “Hey, brother.”

Still taller and broader than he or Edward, but now even more so. And there was a beard covering the lower half of that face. Jeans were so well washed they hung like a breeze, and the jacket had been made of leather at some point, but most of the hide had been worn off. The hand that extended was callused and the fingernails had dirt or oil underneath them. A tattoo emerged from the cuff on the back of the wrist.

The formal gesture of greeting was a throwback, Lane supposed, to the way they had grown up.

“Welcome back,” Lane heard himself say as they shook.

His eyes couldn’t stop roaming as he tried to divine from physical clues where his brother had been and what he had been doing these past few years. Car mechanic? Garbageman? Road crew? Something involving physical labor for sure, given how big he was.

The
physical contact between their palms lasted only a moment and then Max stepped back and looked to their mother.

She was smiling in that vacant way of hers, her eyes softly focused. “And who might you be?”

Even though she’d just seemed to recognize the man?

“Ah, it’s Maxwell, Mother,” Lane said before he could stop himself. “This is Maxwell.”

As he put his hand on that heavy shoulder, like he was a QVC host highlighting a toaster for sale, Little V.E. blinked a couple of times. “But of course. However are you, Maxwell? Are you here for long?”

Now, she didn’t seem to recognize that Maxwell was her son—and not only because he had gone lumber-sexual with the facial hair, but because even the name didn’t seem to register as significant.

Max seemed to take a deep breath. And then he went over. “I am well. Thank you.”

“Perhaps a shower for you, yes? And a shave. We dress for dinner here at Easterly. Are you a close friend of Edward’s then?”

“Ah, yes,” he said remotely. “I am.”

“That’s a good boy.”

As Max looked back like he was searching for a life raft, Lane cleared his throat and nodded to the archway. “Let me show you to your room.”

Even though the guy no doubt hadn’t forgotten where it was.

Lane nodded to the nurse who was hovering in the corner to take over, and then he drew Max into the foyer. “Surprise, surprise, brother.”

“I read about it in the newspaper.”

“I didn’t think we announced the visitation in the
CCJ
.”

“No, the death.”

“Ah.”

And then there was only silence. Max was looking around, and Lane gave him a second to soak it all in, thinking back to when he himself had returned here after two years. Nothing had changed at Easterly, and maybe that was part of what was so disarming when you returned after
an exile: The memories were too sharp because the stage sets had remained unaltered. And, too, except for Edward, the actors were also exactly as you had left them.

“So are you staying?” Lane asked.

“I don’t know.” Max glanced over at the stairwell. Then nodded to the ratty duffel bag he’d obviously just dropped by the open door. “If I do, it won’t be here.”

“I can get you a hotel.”

“Is it true we’re going bankrupt?”

“We’re out of money. The bankruptcy depends on what happens next.”

“So he jumped off a bridge?”

“Maybe. There are some extenuating circumstances.”

“Oh.”

Now Max was once again staring into the parlor, at their mother who was smiling pleasantly up at her nurse as the woman delivered her a seltzer water.

“Is she dying, too?” Max asked.

“Might as well be.”

“And, ah, when does the event start?”

“I’m closing it down.” Lane smoothed his tie. “A reversal of fortune is a social disease with no inoculation. Nobody came.”

“Pity—”

“Where the
hell
have you been, Max?” Lane interjected. “We tried to find you.”

Max’s eyes swung around, and he seemed to notice Lane for the first time. “You know, you look older.”

“No, shit, Max. It’s been three years.”

“You look a decade older.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m finally growing up. Meanwhile, clearly your goal of turning into a hedge is proceeding apace.”

At that moment, a car pulled up to the front of the mansion, and at first, Lane was too busy thinking of throat punching his brother for disappearing
to notice who it was. But as an elegant African-American man got out, Lane had to smile a little.

“Well, well, well, timing is everything.”

Max squinted into the fading sunlight. Instant recollection had his eyes peeling wide, and he actually stepped back as if from a physical blow.

There was nowhere to run, though.

The Reverend Nyce had seen the man who had broken his daughter’s heart into a thousand pieces. And the preacher might have been a godly man, but even Lane, as a disinterested third party, wanted to get out of the way as the guy focused on the degenerate drifter who had come home to roost.

“I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Lane murmured as he headed back for the parlor.

A
s Edward arrived at the visitation, he didn’t go in the front door. No, he took Shelby’s truck up the back way and parked behind the kitchen wing just as he had the day before. Getting out, he tucked his T-shirt into his khakis, smoothed his hair and was glad he’d bothered to shave. But his bad ankle made him feel like he had an iron ball tethered to his leg, and his heart was beating funny. The good news, though, was that the two draws off a gin bottle before he’d left the Red & Black had evened out his DTs nicely, and although he had a hip flask full of the stuff, he hadn’t needed to hit it yet.

His heart slowed into a more productive rhythm as he approached Easterly’s rear kitchen door, and as the screen creaked when he opened the thing, he caught a whiff of the telltale sweet/bready/spicy smell that took him right back to childhood. Inside, Miss Aurora was sitting at the counter, her heels wedged into the bottom rung of a stool, her apron pulled up to her thighs. She looked old and tired, and he hated her disease with a passion at that moment.

Glancing away so he didn’t get emotional, he saw stacks upon stacks of one-use aluminum pans with fitted tops, the packed-up food evidently ready to be taken to St. Vincent de Paul to feed the homeless and sheltered.

“A
lot of no-shows?” he said, going over and taking a peak under one of the lids.

His stomach growled at the scent of her lamb
empanadas
.

“Is that the way you say hello,” she snapped. “Where are your manners, boy.”

“I’m sorry.” He turned and bowed to her. “How are you?”

When she just grunted, he straightened and looked at her properly. Yes, he thought, she knew why he’d come.

Then again, he might not have been her favorite—Lane held that spot in the woman’s heart—but she had always been one of the few people to read him like a book.

“You want tea?” she said. “It’s over there.”

He limped across to the glass pitcher she pointed at. It was the same one he’d used as a child, the square-bottomed, thin-necked one with the yellow-and-orange flower pattern from the seventies that was getting worn off.

“You leave this glass out special for me?” he said as he poured himself some.

“I don’t want you involved in my business.”

“Too late.”

He added ice from the plain bucket next to her pitcher using the plastic tongs. Taking a test sip, he closed his eyes.

“Still tastes the same.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

He hobbled over and took the stool next to her. “Where are all your waiters?”

“Your brother told ’em to go home, and he was right to.”

Edward frowned and looked to the flap doors. “So truly, no one came.”

“Nope.”

He had to laugh. “I hope there is a heaven and my father sees this. Or that there’s a telescope in hell.”

“I don’t have the energy to tell you to not speak ill of the dead.”

“So how much longer do you have?” he said without any preamble. “And I won’t tell Lane, I promise.”

Miss Aurora’s eyes narrowed on him. To the point where he could feel his
butt twitch. “You watch yourself, Edward. I still got my spoon, and I may have the cancer, but you are not as fast as you used to be, either.”

“True enough. Now answer the question, and know if you lie to me, I’ll find out.”

Miss Aurora splayed her strong hands out over the counter. The dark skin was still beautiful and smooth, the clipped nails and lack of rings a constant because of her job.

In the silence that followed, he knew she was trying out a scenario where she did lie to him. He also knew, ultimately, she wasn’t going to fudge it. She was going to want someone to prepare Lane, and she was going to assume the truth: that for all of Edward’s withdrawal from the family, there were at least two things that he would not pull out of.

“I stopped the treatment,” she said eventually. “Too many side effects, and it wasn’t working anyway. And that’s why I mean it when I say you shouldn’t get involved in this.”

“Time. How much time?”

“Does it matter?”

So it was that little, he thought. “No, I guess it doesn’t, actually.”

“I’m not afraid, you know. My Savior will carry me in the palm of his hand.”

“Are you sure? Even now?”

Miss Aurora nodded and brought a hand up to her short weave of tight curls. “Especially now. I am ready for what is coming for me. I am prepared.”

Edward slowly shook his head back and forth—and then figured if she could be honest, so could he. In a voice that didn’t sound like his own, he heard himself say, “I really don’t want to get sucked into this family again. It nearly killed me once.”