She pushed a button, and the large iron gate opened.
“I really care about Kaelynn, for what it’s worth.”
“I know you do.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
Millie pulled through the gate and stopped her SUV to look at me. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
IT FELT LIKE Millie drove forever before I finally saw the house come into view. “House” wasn’t really the right word.
Mansion.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, it’s a little . . . over the top.”
I turned to look at Millie. “Over the top? How big is that house?”
She shrugged. “Oh, almost fifty-thousand square feet. Maybe a little over that if you count the garage and storage areas.”
My eyes widened as she pulled into the roundabout in front of the house. A giant water feature was in front of the house but had been drained for the winter.
“I don’t know if I should be more impressed with the house or the mountains.”
Millie laughed, then pulled around and into a covered drive. The six garages sat on the left, with the house on the right and a covered carport connecting them.
“Well, if we’re going to do this, you’re getting the grand tour.”
“What about Kaelynn?”
“She isn’t home.”
“Where is she?” I asked, nervous Millie might have brought me out to the middle of nowhere to murder me and then hide my body in the mountains.
“Neighbors. She went over a bit ago to help her with setting up for a party. Our estate sits on over a hundred-and-fifty acres, I’ll hear her when she comes in. The front gate security beeps on my phone to alert me someone is coming in.”
“Of course it does.”
She laughed and pushed a button, opening the back tailgate again. I got out of the car, breathed in the cold air, and headed to the back of the car.
“Okay. So the inside is a bit grander than the outside. Just don’t judge, okay? I know it’s an obnoxious house and all, but it’s my folks’ place and where we all grew up.”
“Why do you think I’m going to judge your family?”
“Well, I’m not sure how much that background check you did on my sister told you.”
“I didn’t read it.”
She stopped walking and forced me to do the same. “What do you mean you didn’t read it?”
Lifting my shoulder up in a halfhearted shrug, I replied, “I told Blake, my friend, to not have it done. I had a feeling Kaelynn was going to tell me whatever secret it was she was hiding, and Blake went ahead with it anyway. He gave me the envelope, but I wasn’t going to look at it. Your sister happened to come across it before I could throw it out.”
A slow smile spread over her face, and she tilted her head as she regarded me. “Okay, I like you a little more now and don’t really want to grab you by the balls and twist them until you cry ‘uncle.’”
I crossed my legs and winced. Millie laughed, then started walking again. The front door opened as we walked up the steps.
“Ms. Whitaker, welcome home.”