One for the Money

When’s the last time anyone hugged me?

I can’t even remember.

Chapter Eleven

Eva

My heart squeezes for how alone he’s been.

Nothing is more isolating than a secret. I know that from experience, but at least I shared my shame with my brother. We took care of each other, Leo and me. He knows about my pain. I know about his. It created a deeper bond between siblings.

“Where is your brother?”

“Hemingway is at boarding school. It’s easier that way.”

“Easier for who?”

“He likes it there. They play lacrosse and eat ratatouille for lunch.”

I smile at the description of what I’m sure is a very expensive boarding school. Lisbetta graduated from a girls-only version, Worthington Academy, this spring. “Where’s your mother?”

Finn looks away. “She’s in Vail,” he says after a long moment.

“She’s skiing?”

“I doubt it. But she enjoys the view.”

“She’s separated from your father, then?”

He gives me a hard look. “They had an arranged marriage. My mother knew the details of the curse before they married. They married for the usual reasons. Money. Security. Children. It was my father’s unfortunate luck that he fell in love with his wife.”

My stomach turns. “No.”

“She had… some affection for him, maybe. Not love. It didn’t matter. There’s no way you can have a marriage with someone who can’t remember who you are.”

“He misses her.”

“She stayed after the first episode. And the second. And the third. The decline started slow and then hit him like a freight train. The last time she saw him, he was ranting about the temperature of his paella. He was eating cereal. He threw it across the kitchen. Rare marble was covered in soggy Fruit Loops. Milk splashed on her Dior pantsuit. It was too much for her. Now she travels to our many properties. Some outside the country. Some in New York City. But never here in Bishop’s Landing. She hasn’t stepped foot on this estate for over a decade.”

Bile rises in my throat. “What about your brother? What about you?”

“I’m an adult now.”

My relationship with Sarah Morelli is complicated, but we’re still close. I can’t imagine only seeing my mother when we arrange a lunch date. The Morelli family, for all its many flaws, is apparently tighter knit than Finn’s. “And your brother?”

“He visits her sometimes. I do, too.”

He stiffened when I first hugged him, as if maybe he didn’t want my touch. Didn’t want my comfort. But after a moment of frozen shock, his arms circled me. They rest casually around my shoulders. His thumb brushes the small of my back. It’s a small gesture that I’m not even sure he’s aware of. Whenever we’re touching, even if it’s innocent, he’s caressing me.

There’s still tension in his body.

He’s waiting for me to judge him. To condemn him.

To leave him the same way his mother left his father. That certainty lies in his bones. I can feel it in the loose clasp he has on me, the almost wistful way he looks into my eyes. Every second with Finn has felt like the sweetest goodbye.

There’s a knot in my throat. Uncertainty.

Whatever I say next matters to this man. The carefree facade has dropped. Whether it will be there tomorrow morning, I don’t know. In this moment it’s gone. I can see the real Finn Hughes—a strong, loyal man. A man who’s hurting.

He’s grieving the ongoing loss of his father.

He’s grieving the loss of his own identity and memories.

My father would probably say something about God’s will. My mother would think the temporary pleasures were worth the long-term pain. And Leo? He’d probably believe in the curse wholeheartedly. It has the ring of punishment that works for him.

“You’re a good man,” I tell him, reaching up to kiss him on the cheek.

Surprise crosses his expression before he masks it in that carefree insouciance. “Is this your version of it’s not you, it’s me?”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with this fake girlfriend.”

Amusement lightens those hazel eyes. “Is that so?”

“Listen, I know you told me your deep, dark secret, but honestly? You’re going to have to work harder than that if you want to horrify me. I’ve lived too long in the upper crust. Every family has secrets.”

Something flashes in his eyes. Recognition. “Like your father?”

Shame heats my cheeks.

He came upon us at a party once. Intervened, actually.

Finn saw my father’s hand around my wrist. He saw the crushing grip he used. It left a bruise the next day. Not the first one, which I’m sure Finn realized, the same way I recognized the frequency of the scene in his foyer.

My father is a powerful man. A smart man. And fundamentally, a broken man. Most of the world never sees that part of him. In public he’s by turns cruel and charismatic. At home he’s strict. He only gets violent when he drinks.

I know it’s not my fault that he does that. Intellectually, I know. But the psychology of kids who’ve been hit is encoded early on in our lives. It doesn’t flip when we turn eighteen.