Page 44 of Souls and Sorrows

I don’t really have to do much, except show up and spin some seeds of doubt, so I ignore Samuel’s dissatisfaction at my disinterest and meet my brother for lunch at some little seaside diner.

Except, when I get there, he isn’t alone.

Tucked away at a small booth in the back, Palmer sits across from our mother, looking out the window at the harbor as she slides a manicured finger down a laminated menu.

Gritting my teeth, I take a step back, intent on leaving the nautical-themed restaurant. A hostess notices me though from behind her black podium, and she grins, her red ponytail bouncing as she grabs another menu.

“Mr. Primrose! Your party has already been seated.” She nods at the table I’m clearly already focused on, and I bite back a retort that I’d see circulating online in the morning.

“When did my mother get in?”

The hostess frowns, gnawing on her bottom lip. “She showed up just as your brother arrived, sir. Ambushed him as he was coming in. I know you don’t like to be disturbed during these visits, but she threatened to report me to management if I didn’t seat her at the same table.”

I roll my eyes.Bitch.Though I’m not sure why I’d expect anything less. Rich and privileged, my mother spent the last three decades under my father’s dirty thumb without a single ounce of power to her name. She couldn’t even get him to leave his children alone, forcing them to endure abuse behind closed doors while she threw fundraising galas down the hall.

Being a raging cunt to service staff has always been her way of reclaiming some of the power he kept from her. At this point, I don’t think she knows any other way.

Taking the menu from the hostess, I tuck it under my arm and make my way to the back corner of the restaurant, ignoring the pull in my chest begging me to just leave.

This is, to my knowledge, the first she’s been back in the state since my father’s death, when she took her bequeathments from the will and hightailed it to Savannah. I should’ve known she’d return though and should’ve recognized the signs today—the sun’s been stuck behind gray clouds all afternoon.

Despite this being a casual place and it being about sixty degrees outside, my mother is wearing a black crocheted sweater with a fur collar and front panels. Always playing a fucking part, and right now, I suppose she wants to pretend she’s a poorly widow in mourning, as if that might garner even an ounce of sympathy from me.

I haven’t been avoiding her calls for a year for no reason.

The pair turns as I approach their table, and Palmer runs a hand through his shoulder-length hair, giving me an apologetic grimace. I wave him off, aware of the lengths this woman will go to in order to get her way.

It would be hypocritical of me to fault him for her presence when I wasn’t any better at evasion.

“Ah, I was beginning to wonder if you’d stood your poor brother up for lunch,” my mother says as I slide into the chair across from the booth they share. “He says you do that often, you know.”

Palmer glares at her. “I said he reschedules a lot because of work—”

“Oh, yes, that blasted work.” Her eyes slide slowly over me, disapproval lining her pinched gaze. “Does your assistant ever give you my messages? You never return my calls, so I have to assume she’s throwing them out.”

“She is.” I lean back in my metal chair, throwing my arm over the back of the one next to me. “I’ve specifically told her to.”

My mother’s lips twist up, and Palmer hides a smirk behind the sleeve of his striped cardigan.

She squints at the polished wooden table, forcing her bottom lip to quiver as she tries to produce a tear. I look at Palmer, who presses his mouth into a firm line, and looks out the window.

“Well, I don’t think that’s any way to treat your mother.”

“And I don’t think you can really call yourself that when you were checked out our entire childhood and then abandoned us when Dad died.”

“Oh, please, Cassius.Abandoned? The three of you were adults when I moved back home. You sound just like that ungrateful sister of yours.”

My fingers twitch against the silverware on the table. “I imagine she’d feel a lot more gratitude toward you if you’d believed her when she told you she was sexually assaulted by her ex and his friends.”

The words feel inappropriate as I push them off my tongue. It’s not my accusation to wield, and yet it feels wrong to allow the conversation to continue on without acknowledging why Lenny is the way that she is.

My sister was mistreated and disappointed by everyone she ever trusted a little over a year ago—our parents, her ex, the media. It was why she wound up getting involved with Jonas Wolfe in the first place, because she wanted to get back at our father for choosing business relations over his own blood, and it’s why we all pretend his death was natural.

If not for what she stood to lose if the truth leaked, I don’t think our mother would’ve agreed to the cover-up.

But you don’t get gratitude for doing the bare minimum. Especially when it’s only done for your own personal benefit.

She shifts in the booth seat. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

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