“Excuse me?” said someone behind the four women.
They turned and peered into the flushed, eager face of a reporter. A cameraman in jeans and a Yankees T-shirt stood behind her.
The woman smiled brightly. “Amy Seaver, Channel Ten. How well did you know Steven Barnett?”
Corinne ducked her head. Poppy shifted awkwardly. Rowan balled up her fists.
Amy Seaver barely blinked. The cameraman leaned in. “It’s strange,” the reporter went on. “First your grandfather, who ran the Saybrook’s empire, and now his protégé, the man who was rumored to be next in line for the job . . .”
Rowan frowned. “If you’re trying to connect the two deaths, you shouldn’t. Our grandfather was ninety-four. It’s not exactly the same thing.”
“And Poppy was named president, not Steven,” Corinne jumped in, pointing to her cousin. Mason, Corinne’s father and the company CEO, had made the last-minute decision, saying he wanted to “keep things in the family.” It had been a huge surprise, but everyone knew Poppy was up to the challenge.
The reporter kept pace with them as they walked toward the church, Natasha a few steps behind the rest of the cousins. “Yes, but didn’t Mr. Barnett row for Harvard, surf in Galápagos? Don’t you think it’s odd that he drowned in shallow water?”
Rowan thrust an open palm toward the camera.
“No comment,” Poppy said quickly, then hustled Rowan and the others toward the church. “Try to hold it together,” she whispered.
“You know what she’s getting at, though,” Rowan whispered.
“I know, I know,” Poppy answered. “But just let it go, okay?”
It was something they never liked to think about—the family curse. The media had invented the concept long ago, and oh, how they adored it—there was even an anonymously run website called the Blessed and the Cursed that documented the Saybrook calamities and misfortunes, and it received thousands of hits a day. No one could get enough of the legendary American family that was so blessed with fortune and beauty, yet cursed with a string of mysterious sudden deaths.
When the girls were little, the curse had been their go-to ghost story when they camped out in the backyard in their family compound in Meriweather. It all started, they’d begin, flashlights positioned under their chins, when Great-Aunt Louise fell off a balcony at a New Year’s Eve party. She fell twenty stories, holding her martini the whole time. After Louise, a great-uncle was trampled at a polo match. Then a second cousin’s plane was lost at sea. Their now-divorced aunt Grace, the youngest of Edith and Alfred’s children, had a son who was kidnapped from their front yard.
Though Steven Barnett wasn’t technically a Saybrook, it felt like he was. Alfred, who was always looking for new talent, had plucked Steven straight from Harvard Business School nearly fifteen years prior, impressed by his business acumen and poise. Steven was efficient and brilliant, with a keen business mind and a knack for PR, able to talk about anything from the hottest diamond bauble for the holidays to the future of socially responsible mining. He’d ascended the ranks quickly, a constant fixture at Alfred and Edith’s town house in the city or at the family’s island beach estate on long weekends, becoming a trusted adviser and honorary son. Now he’d suffered the same fate as all those other Saybrooks, claimed by the great gray cloud that followed their family. Yes, his drowning in the shallow water of the marina was strange. But Steven’s blood alcohol level had been sky-high, and the police had deemed it a tragic accident.
The reporter finally fell back, and the cousins continued into the cathedral. An organist played a Bach fugue, and an empty pew waited for the cousins near the front of the church. In the first pew Steven’s wife, Betsy, dabbed her gray eyes, though her grief looked rehearsed. His brothers sat shoulder to shoulder, like fun-house mirror versions of the deceased. Two red-haired women stood in front of the casket, hands folded in prayer. One wore a diamond tennis bracelet the Saybrook women recognized immediately.
“Danielle?” Corinne said.
The woman turned, her expression shifting. “It’s so awful,” she whispered.
Aster inched away, but Corinne pulled Danielle into a hug. Danielle Gilchrist was the daughter of the caretakers at the Meriweather estate, and she’d been around so much when they were kids that she was practically like family. She and Aster had been the closest—Aster had given her the bracelet—though Aster refused to look at her now. Danielle’s mother, Julia, stood next to her daughter, dressed in a black sheath that showed off her slender figure. Though she was nearly fifty, with her lithe physique and the same stunning red hair as her daughter’s, she could almost pass for Danielle’s sister.