Page 36 of The Charade

"Well, if the inside is even half as impressive as the outside, I may need to rethink my wardrobe choices for tonight because I forgot to bring my prom dress."

Nash chuckled as he climbed out of his side of the car and came around to open my door. "Seeing as how I forgot to have the maid take my tuxedo to the cleaners after our family dinner last night, I'm sure whatever you brought is perfect."

I paused, glancing at Nash and then at Cambrielle behind me. "You wear a tuxedo to your family dinners?"

"Maybe we should call Scarlett and ask her to bring something else for us to change into," Elyse said at the same time.

The siblings both laughed. Nash said, "I was joking. If we haven't already changed out of our school uniforms before dinner, we're lucky to wear anything fancier than a T-shirt and sweatpants."

"So you guys aren't like one of those crazy, weird, super rich families?" I asked.

"We're as normal as any other family," Cambrielle answered.

But as we got out of the car and walked through the huge double doors and into a foyer with white marble floors, a huge chandelier, and a grand staircase with the most intricately designed handrail I'd ever seen, I couldn't help but think that the Hastings family's definition of "normal" was a lot different from my definition of the word.

13

Ava

"Doyou want a tour of the place before we get all dressed up for the party?" Cambrielle turned to look at Elyse and me.

"Um, of course," Elyse said. "That would be awesome."

"How about we start upstairs so you can leave your backpacks in my room?" Cambrielle suggested.

"Sounds good to me." From the size of the house, I had a feeling the tour might take a while and my backpack was already heavy with all the things I'd packed in it.

"How about I catch you guys after the tour?" Nash asked as Cambrielle started leading Elyse and me up the stairs. "The guys said they were going to start their basketball game around four, so I'm gonna join them."

"Sure," Cambrielle said with a shrug. "I can take it from here."

Nash, who was already wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt, disappeared around the corner and the three of us girls went upstairs.

"So, this is where all of our bedrooms are," Cambrielle said at the top of the stairs. "My parents’ suite is that way." She pointed to the left toward large, white double doors that were closed. "And mine and my brothers’ rooms are this way." She led us to the right, down a long hall where gigantic family photos hung on the wall space that was separated every so often with a door.

I glanced at the family portraits, curious what the rest of the Hastings family looked like. The first portrait we came to looked like it must have been taken fairly recently based on the fact that Nash, Cambrielle, and Carter all looked pretty similar to what they looked like now. The photo had been taken outside, with a beautiful purple and pink sky behind them. And despite what Nash had said about them wearing loungewear to dinner, the boys were all dressed in designer suits while Cambrielle and her mother—a beautiful woman with dark-brown hair, green eyes, tan skin, and an hourglass shape similar to Cambrielle's—wore designer gowns.

"Is that your older brother?" I asked Cambrielle, pointing to the guy in the photo beside Carter whom I hadn't seen before. He had darker hair than his brothers—closer to the same color as Mrs. Hastings and Cambrielle’s hair. And instead of the bright blue eyes that the younger three siblings must have gotten from Mr. Hastings—a tall man with light blond hair and aqua-blue eyes himself—the older boy's eyes were brown.

"Yeah, that's Ian," she said. "He just graduated from Yale last spring."

If he'd recently graduated from college, then he must be at least four or five years older than us.

Did that mean Mr. Hastings had already been married to Mrs. Hastings when he'd had his relationship with Carter's mom in Guatemala? Because that probably would have caused a lot of drama if she hadn't known about the affair and Mr. Hastings suddenly came home from a later trip with an eight-year-old he'd fathered.

Cambrielle must have seen the confusion on my face because she said, "Ian is from my mom's first marriage. She and Dad met when he was, like, five."

"So Nash is your only full-blooded sibling?" Elyse asked, as if trying to piece everything together.

"Technically, yes," Cambrielle said. "But we don't call each other half siblings or anything like that. We're just brother and sister. And even though my mom isn't Carter's biological mom, and my dad isn't Ian's biological dad, they still just call them Mom and Dad."

"That's cool," I said.

I studied the family in the photo for a moment longer, interested in the family dynamic that they had. I knew a photo was just a snapshot of one moment in time, but in this one at least, they seemed like they were a happy family. And from the few interactions I'd had with Carter, Nash, and Cambrielle so far at school, they seemed like they were each other's best friends.

I loved that Elyse and I were so close, and that we shared a special bond with our mother. But as someone who’d always dreamed of what it would be like to have a bigger family with a dad and maybe another sibling or two, I couldn't help but feel envious of this picture-perfect family in front of me. As I studied the way Mr. Hastings had his arm around his wife and the other around Cambrielle, the longing for a father figure burned stronger in my chest than usual.

But like I did every time I came across a big family, I pushed the longing away because it didn't do any good to wish for something that I'd never have.

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