“Are you sure you should be drinking?”
“My God, Carter, since when did you become such an insufferable Mr. Goody Two-Shoes?”
There’s no point arguing with her. Margot has self-destructive methods of dealing with reality. Every time I’ve tried to help her, it blew up in my face. I should know better by now.
“I’m driving, but you can have a drink for the both of us, sis.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she chuckles, then pours herself a double vodka on the rocks, swirling the crystalline poison around the tumbler. “My divorce should be finalized soon,” she says. “It should keep Emmanuel from trying to come back and get his paws on any of the family’s fortune.”
“I suppose he forfeited that privilege when he disappeared, right?”
“He abandoned me.”
I make myself comfortable in one of the leather armchairs facing the massive French windows. “I find your toxic relationship with the man quite fascinating,” I confess. “He married you for the money and the Lockwood prestige. You knew that from day one. I told you that you could do better, but you were so convinced that no one else would dare come near you.”
“And I was right.” Margot sighs and sits on the sofa, slowly sipping of her drink.
“Yet five years ago, you almost divorced him. Almost. What happened then?”
She gives me an annoyed look. “We’ve been over this before. Nothing happened. Emmanuel and I went through a rough patch like all couples do. We worked it out.”
“Margot, you’re my sister. We grew up together right here in this house. I know everything about you, just as you know everything about me. So why lie to me?”
“Youthinkyou know everything,” she flashes a grin.
“What happened five years ago?”
“A series of unfortunate events,” Margot sighs. “You lost one of your best friends, for starters.”
I give her a hard glare. “Stephan was your friend, too.”
“And not a day goes by that I don’t miss him,” she says sadly, her voice slightly trembling. Margot was always hanging around whenever Stephan and Clara came to visit. The girls didn’t really get along, but they didn’t hate each other either. Neither one has ever told me why there was such unspoken animosity between them. “I know Clara had something to do with it.”
“Bullshit; she was devastated.”
“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself? That Clara was devastated and that’s why she ran off? She left you and the guys to pick up the broken pieces. She couldn’t be bothered to even come to her own brother’s funeral.”
I shake my head slowly. “Nothing else makes sense, Margot.”
“People in town talked about it a lot in the days after Stephan died,” she says. “I heard the rumors. Hell, I saw Stephan and Clara arguing.”
“What about?”
“Damned if I know, I wasn’t close enough to hear. But I saw the anger on her face, the pain on his. There was something going on between those two, and I’m willing to bet my entire inheritance that his death had something to do with it.”
“Margot, Stephan drove his car off a bridge. On purpose. It was a clear night. It was a well-maintained road. There were no potholes, nothing to justify why he swerved,” I reply, trying hard not to relive the agony that followed after I got the sheriff’s call. “Whatever was going on with Stephan, that was howhechose to handle it. Don’t fault Clara. If anything, I reckon she left the way she did precisely because of how hard his death hit her.”
“Yes, you’ve been telling yourself that for five years now. Any luck in actually believing it?”
I stare at Margot for a hot second. How did we get to this point, so bitter and estranged, so quick to poke, prod, and hurt each other while our father continues with his plans and machinations.
Damn, she’s gotten really good at deflecting.
“What happened five years ago between you and Emmanuel?” I ask again.
“I told you; we hit a rough patch.” She looks at me with suspicion glowering in her gray eyes. “What is this about, Carter? I haven’t seen you in months and now you show up to drill me, yet again, about a man whose been gone for two years.”
“Don’t you find it odd that a man who stood to lose so much from leaving you would just drop off the face of the earth?”
