Over the summer, I’d kept myself busy by volunteering at Clover Hill—a rescue ranch for sixteen horses and about a dozen dogs and cats. I’d felt as lost and abandoned as many of the animals that had come to live there, and in helping to take care of them, I’d discovered a kinship and an affinity for them that surprised me. By the end of the summer, I’d come to prefer the company of the animals over any of the humans I knew. In fact, one of the perks of moving in with Grandmother was that she owned four Thoroughbreds, and I’d already spent more time down at her stable than anywhere else. I liked horses especially because they never wanted you to be something that you weren’t.
I pocketed my phone and let out a sigh, content with the decision not to reply to Sophie. Let her sweat both that I’d moved, and that I wasn’t replying. My smug satisfaction was a little short-lived when I realized I might’ve been rude to poor Arthur.
“Sorry about yelling at you back there,” I said.
“Think nothing of it, Miss Bennett,” Arthur said kindly, his British accent delicately affecting his diction. “Are we to journey straight home?”
“Yes, please,” I told him. I couldn’t wait to get to the guesthouse and shed this car. It fit me like a diamond tiara fits a duck.
“Oh,” Arthur said next, as if just remembering something. “Your grandmother wishes an audience with you at three thirty. She says to save room for tea and cookies.”
I frowned. Grandmother was big on tea and cookies. The tea was usually bitter, and the cookies were very hard vanilla wafers coated with grainy sugar she had imported from somewhere. I worried that someday I’d break a tooth on one.
“Do you know why she wants to see me?” I asked. Grandmother never sent a summons unless she had an ulterior motive.
“No, miss,” Arthur said.
I leaned my head back against the soft leather and tried to relax, but I was wound pretty tight. We arrived at the very edge of my grandmother’s vast estate, and I looked out over the rolling green hills that made up Maureen Bennett’s property with little interest and barely veiled disdain.
Grandmother had written to me when I was about eleven, telling me that she’d decided that I was going to be the one to inherit her entire fortune and all of her properties, and then she’d asked me to come for a visit. I’d shown the letter to my parents, and when my dad had read that part, he’d become angrier than I’d ever seen him in my eleven years. He’d forbidden me to visit his mother. But one Sunday, Mom had told Dad that we were going shopping, and, instead of the mall, we’d gone to see Grandmother.
The visit had been forced, awkward, and uncomfortable, but thereafter, about four or five times a year, Mom sneaked me off to spend an afternoon with my grandmother because, as she said to me, it was important to get to know the only living grandparent I had left.
Still, I never looked forward to those visits, even though Grandmother seemed to be trying her best to entertain me. Most of the time together involved eating out and shopping, and what should have been fun wasn’t. It was the way that Grandmother treated people, as if everyone were beneath her. She seemed to enjoy making them feel small, or like she were doing them a big giant favor by being in their presence. No one who waited on her ever looked her or me in the eye, and that really bothered me. Even Mom struggled to maintain eye contact with Maureen, which was why I made sure to always look directly at her whenever I was with her.
She’d made a comment about it once, staring at me with a flinty glare after I’d refused to back down on some minor point about my attire and her disapproval of it. I was tall and on the thin side, and I wore a lot of skinny jeans and spaghetti-strap tanks. After I refused to change, Grandmother had said, “You’re much like your father, Lily. I don’t know that I especially like it.” At the time, I’d been kind of proud of that, but after everything Dad had pulled lately, I wasn’t so sure I’d ever want to be compared to him again.
“Beautiful day,” Arthur said, rousing me from my thoughts.
“It is,” I agreed, looking out the window at the passing fence posts that marked the borders of Grandmother’s estate. I wondered again what she wanted with me.
Even though I didn’t have any homework for tomorrow, there was a small research project that I wanted to look into, and I wouldn’t have time to get into it before tea. Also, I needed to call Mom to tell her about my first day, but no way was I going to call while Arthur was around. Mom had warned me that Grandmother regularly grilled the staff about our overheard conversations. We’d learned very quickly to keep any talk between us to the guesthouse or her car.
Arthur drove up to the gates, which took their time parting enough for us to slide through, and we headed down the long drive to the main house, which was enormous. I’d seen photos on the Internet of European estates, and they had nothing on my grandmother’s home.
The place was nearly as big as my high school, and even more like a prison. Lucky for Mom and me that the guesthouse was at the back of the property not far from the stables, and much more modest in size. Arthur was taking us to the left to steer clear of the main house when I saw someone coming out of the front door. Recognizing who it was, I reached forward to grip the back of Arthur’s seat.
“Wait!”
Arthur applied the brake. Turning in his seat to offer me a startled look he said, “Miss?”