Page 23 of These Summer Storms

Alice couldn’t help the breath she sucked in when Jack said it, as though her father was just in the other room, or stuck in the city at a shareholder meeting but would be along in a few hours.

He said it without preamble, as though he’d stood in front of tougher crowds than this and said stranger things. Alice realized they’d all assumed their usual defensive positions around the front room of Storm Manor, the walls of which were choked with enough twentieth-century art to rival a MoMA gallery.

Elisabeth was in the high wingback she’d picked up for a song in a Paris flea market. Greta and Emily were unmatched bookends on either side of the tawny velvet love seat draped with a handwoven Turkish throw—Greta had changed her clothes and was now in black cigarette pants and an oversized pale blue button-down. She was all angles, straight spine, hips and knees at ninety degrees, a perfect replica of Elisabeth and the opposite of Emily—in lotus pose, bare feet tucked under her,one hand fiddling with the base of the Rodin study on the lacquered end table beside her.

Sam somehow took up two squares of the enormous couch, leaving the third for Alice. Surrendering to the inevitable, she headed for the spot that had been hers for decades, tucking one leg beneath her as she settled into the soft leather, turning her back to the Eames chair nearby. The one that sat empty. The one everyone else was studiously avoiding.

Instead, they focused on Jack.

Jack, who had sat next to her on the train, and hadn’t said a word. Who had followed her out into the night. Who’d kissed her in the dark and stepped up to protect her and then taken her to bed…pretending to be a good guy, all the while having been sent by her dead father for whatever this was about to become.

A game, no doubt. Franklin loved a game.

“Where is Arthur?” Elisabeth interrupted, before Jack could say more. Arthur Settlesworth, Franklin’s forever lawyer, who came from a long line of estate lawyers if his name was any indication.

Jack paused, letting the question hang in the thick summer air, as though he knew more than he was willing to say. Which of course he did. “He’s in New York.”

“And Lauren?” Greta asked, tightly. Lauren Peabody, the head of Storm Inc. communications, no doubt somewhere close, figuring out the best way to spin Franklin’s death into a higher stock price.

“Also at headquarters.” Jack crouched and unzipped the backpack at his feet. The one he’d slung over his shoulder the night before, when he’d punched a photographer and stolen some SD cards for her.

Not for her, though. For her father.

“Evelyn?” Emily plaintively requested Franklin’s longtime assistant—the woman they’d all called to temperature-check their father when they needed money, or a lifeline, or both.

“At headquarters,” he said, sounding a touch kinder when speaking to Emily.

“The Men?” Sam said, his usually unbothered tone now clipped.

Mark Houseman, Larry Manford, and Adam Grossman, a trio ofboard members her father had known since what seemed like birth, and whom he collectively referred to as The Men.

Jack produced a stack of plain white envelopes from the bag. She could hear a thread of irritation in his voice as he said, “It’s just me. Franklin sentme.”

“Whoareyou?”

Everyone in the room turned to Alice, their surprise palpable.

“What?” Now Elisabeth sounded irritated.

“I’ve never seen this man before,” Alice said, hesitating for a heartbeat—less—instantly aware of the lie in the words. Except it wasn’t a lie, really. She hadn’t ever seen this version of the man—shirtsleeves rolled down, carrying some kind of final message from her father. The man she’d seen the night before had been a different one altogether.

Hadn’t he?

She didn’t have time to think on that. Not when Elisabeth said, in that way mothers do, “Alice. You know Jack.”

“I swear to you I don’t,” Alice retorted, looking to him again, finding his gaze calm and unwavering, as though everything were completely normal. As though her thoughts weren’t at sea, desperate for something to cling to. As though she hadn’t clung to him the night before.When he’d clearly known exactly who she was.

She let her frustration slide into anger and repeated herself. “Whoareyou?”

Another man might have cleared his throat. Or shifted his weight from one long leg to the other. Not him. “I’m Jack Dean. I work”—a pause—“worked for your father.”

Sam huffed a derisive laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”

Alice looked to him. “Mildly how?”

“You know how they say every parent has a favorite child?” Her brother pointed to Jack. “There’s Dad’s. Jack Dean, the golden boy. Managing director.”

While Sam spoke, Jack studiously avoided her, sorting through his envelopes.

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