Page 1 of Beauty and the Beach

Phoenix

At approximately six-thirtyon the morning of May the second, Mavis Butterfield, the terminally ill matriarch and chairwoman of the Butterfield business dynasty, sent an email to all four of her children and all six of her grandchildren.

The subject line:READ IT AND WEEP, PROGENY,written in all caps and followed by one skull emoji and one poop emoji, the latter of which her secretary and her assistant both failed to talk her out of.

The contents: a link to a live document containing Mavis’s last will and testament.

My mother, the eldest of the aforementioned Butterfield progeny, did indeed read the will. She read it before I even saw the email, because it was a Sunday, and I was still fast asleep in my California king after a sixty-hour work week. Then she called me—you guessed it—weeping.

It should be noted that my mother was not weeping because Mavis was terminally ill. Mavis might be my grandmother and my boss, but she is widely regarded as the most wicked human being alive, so most of us had eagerly made our peace with her impending death. The doctors had given her three months to live, much to the dismay of her children and grandchildren; I think I’m one of the few that wouldn’thave preferred to hear three weeks instead. My dislike stops just short of wishing her dead.

“I’ve been staring at the doc for forty-five minutes, baby boy,” my mother said in a blubbering voice that, over the phone, was nearly unintelligible. “She keeps changing things, right in front of my eyes.”

“I’m thirty,” I told her, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. “Stop calling me that.” Then, despite knowing perfectly well that Mavis Butterfield has not one single humorous bone in her decrepit old body, I added, “And don’t worry about it. It’s probably a prank.”

It was not a prank.

It was perfectly real—and perfectly brutal. Mavis continued to change things in the will at her questionable discretion, developments my family followed more closely than the stock market in the weeks that followed. Usually the changes were minor and petty—altered percentages or bequeathments. Sometimes the changes were less minor, though equally as petty—like when Mavis got drunk and removed entire sections.

Perfectly real. Perfectly brutal. And perfectly legally binding, according to the company’s lawyer when I ferried over to the mainland to see him several days after the first instance of intoxicated deletions. Since Mavis kept her drunk changes after she’d sobered up and reviewed them, they were considered valid. I went into that meeting expecting a lengthy discussion full of explanations and technical jargon. But the lawyer just collapsed into his ergonomic chair, pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache, and then told me he needed a better benefits package so he could afford to see his therapist more often. “Insurance only covers once a week,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I told him, my eyes lingering onhis shiny, sweat-beaded cue ball head. Anyone who works closely with Mavis should have access to mental health care and as many coping mechanisms as possible.

It was my most tried and true coping mechanism—denial, firm and absolute—that allowed me to handle these developments as the month wore on. I suffered through phone calls with tearful aunts and disgusted uncles, texts from cousins, and even a series of formal meetings with the matriarch herself, all by telling myself over and over again that these changes were not going to last. No matter what Mavis put in that document today or tomorrow or three weeks from now, when all was said and done, I would inherit Butterfield. I knew I was the best candidate. Mavis knew that too.

But at the end of the month, one tiny little text changed everything.

It was from my personal assistant, Wyatt, one of the few people in this world I actually trust, and it was only five words:She added a new paragraph.

Despite the fact that it was the middle of my day and I was neck deep in paperwork, meetings, and phone conferences, I pulled up the live doc on my desktop and began to search for the change, skimming the contents until I finally found the new section at the very end. I read it once, then twice, then three times. Then I picked up my phone, asked Wyatt to cancel my one o’clock, and hung up again, leaning back in my chair with just as much exhaustion as the lawyer had collapsed into his.

Married.

Married.

Mavis Butterfield was now requiring that her inheritor be legally and lawfully wed.

So I did the only thing I could do: I set out to find a wife…until Mavis’s death do us part.

Phoenix ?

I may be a single man,and I may be in possession of a good fortune. No matter what universal acknowledgment says, however, I have never been in want of a wife.

I spent most of my life happily focusing on topics other than marriage. I figured it would happen when it happened, if at all. There are plenty of other things to occupy my time.

Leave it to Mavis to throw a wrench in my plans—or my lack of plans.

After receiving the unwelcome news that my grandmother expects me to marry if I want to inherit the family company, I spend the first two weeks of June trying to figure out how to find a wife. And as it turns out, there are a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about who I should marry and when.

My mother would love for me to choose someone beautiful from a wealthy background, someone who can be her informant on the inner life of her son—someone who’ll be happy to provide for my mother financially. A trophy wife, devoted to me but equally devoted to my mother; that’s what she wants for me. The number of women she’s tried to put on my radar exceeds the number of women I have the mental space to keep track of.

My uncle Clarence and his sonLawrence, on the other hand, would prefer for me not to get married at all. I’ve seen them a handful of times since Mavis’s marriage decree, and they both look a little meaner than usual now that a new stipulation is in the works. Lawrence has an on-again, off-again woman—I don’t think I can accurately call her a girlfriend, because that implies a degree of monogamy I know Lawrence to be incapable of—that he’ll probably end up marrying so he can try to inherit instead of me. Neither he nor Clarence are above scare tactics and dirty hands to get what they want, so I have to keep an eye out for them.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’m much different. As callous as it may sound, right now I care more about inheriting Butterfield Paper and Sanitary than I do about finding a wife I love. Because I’ll have time for romance later—but this is likely the only chance I’ll get to take over the company. Mavis has been in and out of the hospital for months; I just visited her there, as a matter of fact. She was sleeping, thank goodness, but at least I can say I’ve done my duty as her grandson.

Once again, it may sound callous, but any moment could be her last.

So I need to get married quickly. Now.Yesterday.

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