Chapter 1
Elizabeth
I strode through the now empty ballroom gripping a handful of past-due bills against my pounding chest. The sound of my four-inch heels hitting off the herringbone dance floor ricocheted back to me.
Wheezy snores shook my dad's meaty frame, which, after a night of excessive drinking with his cronies, lay slumped over an ash-strewn poker table. A fuming Queen of Hearts with bulging eyes glared at me accusingly from his clenched fist, and a half-empty bottle of whiskey sat within his reach. Before the belligerent Mr. Jekyll side of my dad woke up and guzzled more sense-stripping alcohol, I confiscated the bottle and sat it on the full-service liquor cart conveniently located by the table.
If the cheap ass hooch didn't smell like rancid cat vomit at the bottom of a fish barrel, nine on a cold Monday morning seemed like the ideal time to get wasted.
Before confronting Damien "Trip" Beaufort the Third about the country club's overdrawn bank account, and because standing up to my dad was akin to fighting off a zombie attack single handedly, I lifted a wrist one of my wrists to my nose and inhaled the anti-stress oil blend I'd tapped over my pulse points earlier.
The lavender, ylang-ylang, and bergamot scent would help defuse the anxiety bombs exploding in my brain. Having a full-blown panic attack wouldn't get me any answers.
My dad preyed on emotions and used any weakness he could find as a weapon. I'd learned at an early age to keep my feelings hidden and my many shields firmly in place. Something I was glad of when my ass-hat husband of six months walked out.
"Wake up." I poked my dad's tuxedo covered bicep and stepped back.
A jumble of incoherent words and a blast of booze-breath puffed from his lips.
"Where did all the money go?" I asked my still comatose dad.
"What?" He raised his head and swept a shaking hand over his ruddy face, swaying as if he was about to fall off his chair and onto the floor. "Where's everyone? When'd the party end?"
"Two million dollars? An overdraft of two million dollars at its limit?" I waved the letters in front of his unfocused eyes. "Mortgage arrears? When did you remortgage the country club? All of this month's checks have bounced." I let go of the papers, and they fluttered onto the table. "How am I expected to give the employees we have left a paycheck this week?"
"You had no right to go through my office." He gathered the letters in his shaking hands and crumpled them in his fists.
"Dad, the gambling and binge drinking have to stop." I pressed my fingers against my temples willing the migraine blooming behind my eyes to fade.
"You can't tell me what to do. I'm your father. You're just like your mother," he grumbled. "Always shoving your nose in where it's not wanted." He flung the letters onto the floor and stumbled toward the drinks cart, clanking the liquor bottles together as he steadied himself. He reached for the whiskey and poured two fingers into a smudged glass then drank it down without a grimace. "Look where that got her. Knocked up by that white piece of trash O'Halloran. Bastard lost his own wife so he thought he'd take mine."
I sighed. "It's been twenty years." And every week for twenty years we'd had a similar conversation. Time hadn't healed any of my dad's wounds. Time had allowed them to fester and turn gangrenous. "I wish you'd move on and meet someone new." If he did, I might have some semblance of a life without being at his constant beck and call.
"Easy for you to say. You weren't cuckolded and humiliated." Mr. Jekyll entered the room, and I dragged in a deep breath, bracing myself for the oncoming onslaught of venom.
"Every time I look at you I'm reminded of that woman. Why did you have to grow up to look like that blonde bitch?"
"Don't talk about her like that," I snapped. Over the years, other than going under a surgeon's scalpel, I'd done what I could to temper my resemblance to my mom. Thirteen years ago, when I was fifteen, I'd started dying my strawberry blonde hair drugstore brunette. Instead of contacts, I wore 1950's-style cat-eye glasses, and instead of showing an interest in clothes, I wore a uniform of somber business suits in grays, browns, and blacks. When I wasn't working, I usually wore leggings or yoga pants. The only indulgence I ever allowed myself were the occasional pair of designer shoes, although all but one pair had found new homes via eBay. Slipping my feet into four-inch heels and butter-soft leather was the closest I got to having an orgasm these days.
"I wish you'd left with her," he said, his voice snapping like a whip.
On days like these, I wished I'd taken my mom's offered hand and gotten into the car with her instead of falling for my dad's tears and promises of a pony.
Slumbering memories stirred and scratched their jagged fingernails across my mind. Overnight, I went from being an only child with a supposed happy home life to having a stepdad and four teasing step sisters with another one on the way.
The adult part of me understood why my mom left, but that didn't stop the child inside of me grieving for a life that never was. No eight-year-old should see her daddy sobbing on the floor begging his wife to stay, and no twenty-eight-year-old should have to deal with crippling debts and a father with unpredictable mood swings.
Ever since my mom had fallen in love with Sean O'Halloran and his girls, I had been my dad's dutiful shadow and had defended him through too many highs and lows to recall. Now one of his lows had left us on the brink of bankruptcy.
"You have to tell me where the money went." I wouldn't allow my voice to crack or show him I was on the verge of tears. I didn't need the "what are you going to do, cry?" rant, which would, undoubtedly, make me cry with anger and frustration and make him irate.
"Remember when this place was filled to the brim with members?" Wistfulness seeped into his pale blue eyes.
Great. A trip down memory lane was the last thing I wanted. Getting the answers I needed wouldn't happen anytime soon.
"Remember when this place had a year long waiting list? When Sundown Sands was the place to be? You know," he said pouring himself another helping of whiskey, "Nixon stayed here once."
I gave a watery laugh. "Sure, Dad. The good old days." Agreeing with him was easier than arguing. Going back and forth when he was still half-drunk would only lead to him shutting me out or me having a meltdown.
People didn't have the money to pay the exorbitant membership fees he charged. They wanted value for money. A place where all the family could have fun. Sundown Sands Country Club was not that place. The golf courses were so overgrown that anyone who made it past the ninth hole without breaking their ankle should thank God.
Grass had claimed the clay tennis courts. The carpets throughout the entire club were threadbare, and the hardwoods had so many scars they looked as if the a war had been fought and won within the two-hundred-year-old walls.
If we had the money, there were so many things I would do. The neglected one-thousand acres would make a perfect family resort. I would add bedrooms, swimming pools, and stables. Maybe get the pony that never materialized.
Year after year, people from all over the country would come back because of the service and the activities.
The spa I dreamed of opening would offer mud wraps, hot stone massages, reflexology, and personalized aromatherapy treatments. Handmade skincare products and essential oil perfumes would carry my label. And my Etsy store would become an actual brick and mortar shop. But those were all pipe dreams along with training as a spa therapist. The small amount of money I'd managed to squirrel away to pay for school was now in someone else's pocket.
I stepped toward one of the single-paned floor to ceiling windows at the back of the ballroom and cracked it open to allow the air blowing in from the Atlantic to dilute the stench of stale cigars.
The canopy of oak trees below with its gnarled arms, secret hideaways and worn paths that led to our private beach beckoned to me. If I had time later, I would walk along the shoreline and lose myself in my thoughts.
"Help me, Dad. I don't want to lose this place. Remember the money I'd earmarked for renovations. Where'd it go?"
My dad abruptly pushed away from the cart, rattling the bottles so hard a few tumbled and smashed against the dancefloor.
"What time is it?"
"Dad! Careful." I ran toward the hundred-proof concoction flowing between the cracks on the floor, grabbed a handful of napkins from the drinks cart, and swept up shards of glass with the side of my stiletto.
"The money," I said and gritted my teeth. "Focus. We're talking about the money."
"I won't ask again. What time is it?" He tore his fingers through his silver hair, and his bulging eyes flitted around the room. "I need the time."
Giving in, I glanced at my watch. "Nine-fifteen. What's so urgent?"
"Be in my office at ten. Don't worry everything will be okay. Have I ever let you down?"
He rushed out of the ballroom leaving fumes of alcohol in his wake.
"All the damn time."