Derek

“Don’t stay too late.” My legal secretary, Gladys, lingers in my doorway, her heavy purse weighing down her hunched shoulder. “Want me to pick you up some dinner and bring it back?”

She checks her watch, and I check mine.

Seven o’clock on a Friday night.

If it were my weekend with Haven, I’d have been long gone by now, rolling around on the living room floor with my favorite four-year-old, playing Barbies or her favorite Doc McStuffins matching game while we wait for our half-cheese, half-supreme pizza to arrive. It’s our Friday night tradition.

Well, every other Friday night.

I live for my weekends with Haven.

It’s probably why I work so much. Holing up at the law firm and burying myself in my career makes me forget about the sound of silence waiting for me at home most nights of the week.

“I’m just finishing up here.” I give her a tight-lipped nod, and she swipes her hand at me.

“Haven’t heard that one a million times.” She jingles her car keys and shuffles down the tiled hall. The clunk of the front door and clink of the lock echo through the empty building a moment later.

Serena Randall’s court order rests before me, along with the rest of her file. I’ve been poring over the details since I got back from Belcourt Manor this afternoon.

Upon first glance, she seems fine. A little fatigued. A little snippy. But that’s understandable. Most cases involving a conservator are a bit more extreme than hers. Generally, people who are mentally or physically incapacitated need conservators, not starchy heiresses with a flair for dramatic eyebrow arches and blunt honesty.

I rub my tired eyes and let the papers fall to my desk before pulling my laptop closer. Armed with nothing but time and Google, I intend on digging deep and piecing this entire thing together. I have a feeling getting information from her will be like pulling teeth. That’s nothing that can’t be remedied with some good, old-fashioned cyber stalking.

I start with a search on her stepmother, Veronica Kensington-Randall, and then it hits me. I have heard of her before. She was on some legal drama in the nineties. My father was obsessed with that show. He used to record it on VHS and watch the episodes over and over, quoting the characters every chance he got.

She was beautiful in her prime. Long, shapely legs. A California tan. Glossy, bleach-blonde locks. A beauty pageant smile.

According to Wikipedia, she’s been married four times, thrice divorced. Looks like she likes them old and ailing.

I click on “images” and pull up a slew of recent ones. It appears these days she’s combatting fifty with fillers and Spanx. Looks as though, until recently, she was rarely seen without her loving husband, Harold Randall, who is easily old enough to be her father.

Classic.

This is not uncommon, especially along the old-moneyed, blue-blooded coast of New England.

Older man takes a younger trophy wife. Children feel threatened. Wife wants to ensure her stake in the family estate. Legal drama ensues.

I smirk.

This’ll be easy.

As soon as Serena’s feeling one hundred percent, we’ll just have to prove she’s of sound mind, and then I’ll personally see to it that her stake in the family estate is still intact, all of her financials will be back in her control, and then I’ll be on my way. Estate law is a little hobby of mine anyway. Nothing pleases me more than seeing to it that greedy, selfish assholes do not persevere.

Money—or the fear of having none—can do horrible things to good people. I’ve witnessed it firsthand on many occasions.

My phone dings from my pocket, and I slip it out to read a text from one of my sisters.

DEMI: Hey, come over tonight and hang out with us. Royal wants to beat you in Battleship. He says you owe him a game.

ME: Yeah, from fifteen years ago. Tell him to let it go. It’s in the past.

DEMI: He says you’re just afraid to lose.

ME: I never lose.

DEMI: He wants to know if you’re forfeiting.

ME: Never. Give me an hour.

I set my phone aside and click through the overabundance of Veronica images flooding my screen. They’re all the same—her body angled, her hand on one bony hip, and her red lips drawn into a sly smile.

When I’ve had my fill, I close out of that tab and do a Google search on Serena, only I’m not prepared for the headlines that fill my screen.

“Jesus, Serena.” I muffle my words with the palm of my hand, raking my five o’clock shadow. I right click everything, opening up at least a dozen tabs, and prepare to inhale it all.

According to these articles, approximately ten weeks ago, Serena walked in on her fiancé in bed with not one but two other women. Friends of hers, no less. Later that week, she took a handful of pills and chased them down with a bottle of red and had her driver drop her off at JFK. While there, she requested a first-class ticket on the next flight to London’s Heathrow airport but was denied due to lack of identification. And her obvious inebriation.

Airport security was called, and Serena proceeded to physically resist them. She yelled profanities, caused a scene, and ripped out her hair extensions. Shortly thereafter, she was taken and placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold after threatening to harm herself, and her stepmother apparently rushed to be by her side.

A mental health evaluation was ordered and Serena was committed for eight days. Two days after being released, she drove her car off a century-old bridge in a small town north of the Belcourt estate. Apparently, the water beneath the bridge wasn’t deep enough to sweep her away, but the impact was enough to cause her to hit her head on the steering wheel and fall unconscious.

A local farmer passing by found her and saved her.

After a weeklong stay in an undisclosed, private psychiatric facility in upstate New York, she was released and sent to live at the family’s Belcourt residence, where she proceeded to make a slew of expensive purchases. Italian luxury cars. Diamonds. Couture. Offers to purchase real estate sight-unseen. She spent over eleven million dollars over the course of four days.

Her stepmother requested an emergency conservatorship, requesting to be Serena’s conservator and being denied due to unspecified allegations given on behalf of Serena by her attorney at the time.

The judge approved a conservator of her estate, someone to manage Serena’s trust fund and the allocation of funds for the maintenance and upkeep of Belcourt Manor during her tenure. Rosewood and Rosewood, LLP was referred by a judge who attended law school with my father, and the Randalls agreed.

I close the lid to my laptop and flip through the stack of papers on my desk, searching for her mental health evaluation. The doctor’s notes mention her suicidal ideation and refer to her “manic and reckless” behavior, but there’s no mention of a bipolar diagnosis. There’s a note referring to acute anxiety and the possibility of short-term, situational depression, but it clearly states Serena has no history of mental health diagnoses. It also looks like the doctor prescribed some run-of-the-mill antidepressants, prescription sleep aids, and benzos as needed.

No wonder she’s feeling out of her element these days.

My phone dings from my pocket once more, and I find another text from Demi.

DEMI: Are you coming or what? It’s been over an hour.

I pull in a long breath and exhale, checking the time. Shit. She’s right. It’s been over an hour, and I’ve been so immersed in these Serena articles I didn’t realize it.

I text her back, telling her I’m on my way and click off the banker’s lamp behind my laptop.

A minute later, I’m driving east of town, where my sister and her boyfriend live while he finishes law school. Twenty minutes later, I pull into the drive.

Demi greets me at the door before I have a chance to ring the bell, her arms wrapping around my shoulders as she pulls me inside.

“You act like you haven’t seen me in ages.” I step out of my shoes once I’m inside.

“It’s just makes me really, really happy when we’re all hanging out again. It’s just like old times.” She does a happy skip, and I follow her to the living room where my childhood best friend has two plastic Battleship boards set up and ready to go.

“What’s up with you lately?” Demi plops down on the sofa and tucks a leg beneath her. “Any exciting trials I should know about?”

I simper. “If there were any ongoing cases, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything, but nowadays, everything is settled out of court. Less expense that way. There’s not a huge demand for trial lawyers in Rixton County, believe it or not.”

Once upon a time, our father was a county prosecutor, but the grueling hours stole him away from his family, so over the years, he established Rosewood, LLP, and I joined on after law school. Now we do a little bit of everything, but his reputation from his days in the courtroom has solidified his reputation as one of the most sought-after trial lawyers in the state. I tend to get the cases that trickle down, the ones he can’t be bothered with. And I accept them with a smile on my face, because that’s how you deal with Robert Rosewood. You get what you get, and you don’t complain until you’ve earned the privilege.

It’s how Serena’s file landed in my lap.

“So what do you do to pass the time?” Demi asks.

“I take on some side projects. Estate law. Family law. Nothing terribly exciting.” I take a seat across from Royal.

“Ready to get your ass kicked?” Royal pushes my half of the Battleship game across the coffee table.

“I can promise you that won’t be happening tonight.” I take a seat on the floor across from him.

Demi hops up, running to the kitchen, and returns with two Heinekens and her Us Weekly.

“You still read those things?” I tease.

She deposits our bottles on the table and curls up on the sofa again, flipping to the middle of her magazine because God forbid she starts from the beginning of something for once in her life.

“Only God can judge me.” She hides her face behind the splayed cover, and a photo in the corner catches my eye.

“Hey, let me see that,” I say.

Demi lowers the glossy rag and arches an eyebrow. “This?”

“Yeah.” I swipe it from her hand and examine the headline.

“Do you know her?” I point to the picture on the cover of a tearful Serena, quite possibly the saddest-looking woman I’ve ever seen.

“Do I know her? Um, no.” Demi razzes. “Do I know about her? Yeah. Who doesn’t?”

“I don’t,” Royal says. “Never heard of her.”

“What do you know about her?” I ask.

Demi sets the magazine aside and repositions herself, leaning in and grinning like we’re about to talk shop. By day, she teaches kindergarteners. By night, she’s a celebrity gossip aficionado. Nothing wrong with wide-ranging interests, I suppose.

“Well,” she begins. “She’s this beautiful heiress. I think her dad owns some big steel corporation? Or maybe it’s a tire manufacturer? I don’t know. Something industrial. Multi-multi-multi-millionaire. She’s an only child, and her mom died when she was little. Anyway, she was engaged to Keir Montgomery, as in the youngest son of the President of the United States. It was this whirlwind romance. Happened super-fast. The gossip bloggers went nuts. The paparazzi ate it up. They were adorable together. Picture perfect. She’d never been so in love, and everyone thought she was going to be the one to change his womanizing ways. He softened for her, you know? Everyone thought she was going to be the one to make him settle down and change his ways. And in that same vein, he changed her too. She was notorious for never dating or settling down. And she was completely smitten with him. Head over heels. But then she caught him in bed with two of her best friends. I’m talking her best friends from childhood. That’s got to hurt, you know? At first, she handled it as best she could, but then, people started gossiping and writing about her and making the whole situation worse than it already was. She was publicly humiliated and she didn’t even do anything wrong. All she did was give her heart to the wrong guy.”

Demi places her hand across her heart, and I feel a twinge of sympathetic tightness in my chest. The articles online sensationalized everything, but Demi’s rendition humanizes it.

“Anyway, all she wanted to do was get out of town for a bit. Let the media frenzy cool down. Give people time to move on to the next hot story. But then I guess she showed up to the airport all intoxicated and forgot her wallet and they wouldn’t let her on the plane, and it all went downhill from there.” Her shoulders slump and her eyes scrunch. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense?”

“Serena Randall was never like that. She was never dramatic. She was the epitome of class. She was never one to cause a scene. I mean, she was trying to get away from all that. Why would she make things worse for herself?” Demi’s face is as twisted as a question mark.

“People make bad decisions all the time. Temporary lapse in judgement,” I say. “Maybe she was hurt and desperate.”

“I don’t know.” My sister slumps back and pulls her magazine into her lap, chewing on the inner corner of her lip. “It just doesn’t add up to me. But what do I know?”

Royal clears his throat. “Anyway. C4.”

“Miss,” I say. “A1.”

“Hit.” Royal groans, and I grin. Seven years later, and he still puts his ships in the corner spots. Some things never change.

I play the game, calling out an abundance of hits with some misses peppered in, but my mind is elsewhere.

By the time I’ve sunk three of Royal’s ships, I’m mostly going through the motions, my head busy assembling this Serena Randall puzzle.

“If you’re bored, we don’t have to keep playing,” Royal says.

I shake my head, yawning and dragging in a renewing breath. “You’re just saying that because you’re losing. Come on, let’s keep going.”

“D5,” he says.

“Hit.” I place a red peg in my battleship and watch my opponent gloat. “Yeah, yeah. E7.”

A few more moves, and I’ve won the game, as promised.

“I’m going to bed, you guys.” Demi stands, stretching, and tosses her magazine on the arm of the sofa.

“Yeah, I should get going. I’m seeing a client in the morning.” I rise.

“You’re working on a Saturday?” Royal asks.

“Yeah, it’s nothing. Not even charging them.”

“Don’t tell Dad that.”

Royal stands, moving toward Demi’s side and placing his hand on the small of her back. She nuzzles her cheek against his chest and hums with this sickeningly dreamy look on her face. It’s too fucking cute, and it’s my sister and my childhood best friend, and I don’t need to see this.

“I’ll show myself out,” I say, reaching down and swiping the gossip rag. “Thanks for this.”

“Hey,” Demi says.

But it’s too late. I’m taking it. I won’t be caught dead buying one of these in public.

“I’ll bring it back,” I promise as I pull the front door closed. As soon as I’m in my car, I flip the light on and find Serena’s article.

It’s a two-page spread, the left side showing her in better days and the right side showing her being lead away from JFK airport in handcuffs, her hair a fiery, knotted mess and streaks of wet mascara beneath her eyes. The commentary below summarizes the reported events leading up to that fateful night, and several “sources” are quoted as saying “Serena hasn’t been herself ever since” or they’re “worried about the heiress” or they’re “hoping she’s able to come back from this stronger than ever.”

Which is funny, because I distinctly recall Serena mentioning that none of her old friends had been by to see her since things took a turn for the worse.

I toss the magazine aside like the garbage it is and back out of the driveway. Demi needs to find better things to do in her spare time.

Those things are nothing but lies anyway, and I’m not interested in that.

I’m only interested in the truth.