All of them cheered on Skylar as she pranced down the long hallway. The floppy hat fell halfway off her head, but she caught it with a flourish. After Skylar walked, Corinne took a turn, her cheeks shining. Then Danielle went. They sorted through more dresses, tried on more items, and even made fun of some of Poppy’s impulse buys, including a pair of neon-green snakeskin platforms and a coat that looked as if it was made out of hair. Rowan sat back for a moment, watching all of them, feeling a moment of utter peace. Everything felt so good. So safe. And she realized, with a start, that she adored her life. Her cousins, her family, her integrity. It finally felt like enough. More than enough.
Across the room, her phone chimed loudly. Frowning, she glanced at it, then turned back to Aster, who’d pulled out a beautiful but totally impractical white dress that was see-through on the top and had a voluminous skirt that looked as if it was made out of hundreds of silken braids. “Even I couldn’t pull this off,” she said.
“It looks like a princess dress!” Skylar cried, reaching for it.
The phone bleated again. Rowan shot her cousins a quick smile, then rose and crossed the room. She pulled her phone from her bag and glanced at the screen. Her stomach dropped to her feet. New post on the Blessed and the Cursed.
The site had been eerily silent since Julia’s disappearance. There hadn’t even been a link to the story about the standoff on the bridge or a hint that Corinne had called off the wedding, or everything about Danielle, even though Page Six and Gawker had practically dedicated days’ worth of bandwidth to all of those stories. Nor were there any candid pictures of them. No unauthorized videos. No overheard conversations. Was that proof that Julia, despite her protestation on the bridge, had been running the site? Or had she just provided the host with the juiciest tidbits?
Rowan pressed the link that took her to the page. Sure enough, there was a new post. Rowan blinked hard. Chunky words filled the page. Pictures, too.
“One heiress, two heiress, three heiress, four,” it said, showing pictures of Rowan, Corinne, Aster, and Natasha. Rowan scrolled down a little.
“Five heiress, new heiress.” A picture of Danielle. And then: “Do they know there’s one more?”
Rowan’s eyes blurred. She understood those last words individually, but not as a group. What was the site talking about? There had been another heiress: Poppy, but now she was dead. Or maybe it meant heirs? But there were four heirs: her brothers, then Winston and Sullivan. Somehow she didn’t think it meant anything like that, though. Her fingers started to tremble. A metallic taste filled her mouth.
Danielle stuck her head out of the closet. “Are you okay, Rowan?”
Rowan shot up fast, covering the phone screen with her hands. Danielle’s stare was intense. Knowing, maybe? Or perhaps Rowan was losing her mind.
“I’ll be there in a second,” she said absently, hoping she didn’t seem anxious. “I just need to take care of this.”
It means nothing, she told herself, taking deep, even breaths. Whoever had posted this was just fucking with them. There were no more Saybrooks. There were no more secrets. They knew everything they needed to know.
And yet she couldn’t help but peek again. But when she gazed down at the screen once more, the page was blank. She hit refresh again and again, her heart pounding hard.
But just like that, the post was gone.
ONE YEAR LATER
It was late afternoon at the Saybrook family’s annual end-of-summer party in Meriweather. Edith Saybrook stifled a cough as she strolled to the porch. Though the thermometer tipped almost eighty-five degrees in the shade, she felt an impenetrable chill. She pulled her fur closer around her neck.
Her granddaughter, Corinne, looked up from her Adirondack chair in alarm. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” Edith snapped, clutching her lime-flavored Perrier. “I’m as healthy as an ox.”
Corinne took a sip of her lemonade. Her brand-new fiancé, Will, exchanged a worried look with her. They made a nice enough couple, and she certainly seemed happier than she’d been with that Shackelford boy. What a mess that had been, but it was over now. Not that the tabloids thought so. Reporters were still calling Edith to get her comment on whether Dixon and Corinne would reconcile. Let it go, she always thought.
Edith looked over the balcony at the party on the patio. Though they’d wanted the Labor Day party to be a small affair, mostly to celebrate Loren DuPont, a brand-new client Corinne’s sister, Aster, had wooed, it had turned into a two-hundred-person bash. There was Aster now, wearing a silver cocktail dress, chatting with Loren herself, with that man she hung around with—Michael? Mitchell?—standing awkwardly by her side.
With that Elizabeth gone—Edith had never liked her—Aster had been promoted to associate client liaison, and she’d brought in a lot of new business. Of course, Edith had always seen that girl’s promise.