Page 8 of The Getaway

Another slam. Gemma flinched. “Mom! Vienna hit me.”

“Well then. Once more unto the breach for me,” Gemma said.

“Good luck! I’m gonna go get that case of Shizzy’s out of the car.”

Gemma paused in the doorway to the hall, and Grant walked right into her from behind.

“You’re really going through with that?” she asked, turning to face him.

Grant rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “We need investors! I promised Donnie I’d try.”

Gemma took a deep breath. Somehow she’d never been quite clear on how Grant had gotten in bed with an independent hard cider, lemonade, and now fruit punch producer out of Buford, Georgia, by the name of Donnie Kowalski and had invested a chunk of money in the business. She had never asked how much money, because she worried that if she knew, she might murder her husband. The company was called, curiously, Shizzy’s, and Grant had told Donnie that he would land them some new investors this week in the Hamptons. He thought it was a brilliant idea—that this hard fruit punch was going to be the next trendy drink in every beach cooler. Gemma cringed at the very image of her husband whipping out the garishly colorful bottles with Donnie’s face winking in the center of the label, and pitching lollipop-flavored alcohol to Lincoln and his friends.

“Just . . . I don’t know . . . maybe not the first day?” she suggested.

“It’ll be fine,” he cajoled. “I’m not gonna walk over there with the whole case. I’ll just bring a six-pack. Whoever wants to try it can try it.”

Gemma sensed that if she pushed this too far, Grant might retreat and get sulky, so she decided to let it go. Who knew? Maybe one of these people would think Shizzy’s Hard Fruit Punch was the most delicious concoction ever devised by man. Personally, she thought it tasted like a cough drop that had been fished out of an old drain.

“Fine,” she said and headed down the hallway as he trotted off toward the kitchen.

The shiplap walls around her were decorated with watercolor paintings of beach chairs in the sand, each signed by the painter, Lily Foster herself. Gemma’s heart panged. There was something sad about this art outliving the artist’s place in this house.

The guesthouse on Lincoln’s vast property was bigger than the half-dozen homes Gemma had lived in growing up, but still half the size of the house they were currently renting in Westchester—thanks to a loan from her father—in hopes that Lincoln would offer Grant a position and they’d need someplace to stay while they looked for a more permanent home. None of them—not Grant, not Vienna, not Florence—had a clue how good they had it. And she wasn’t about to let them find out.

Dance music pounded from inside one of the two rooms, so she rolled the dice that they were in there and opened the door. She was welcomed by Vienna’s phone shoved in her face.

“Vee! I told you, no filming!”

Vienna lowered the camera. “You didn’t say no filming. You said I couldn’t film Dad’s new sugar daddy and his friends.”

“Why?” Florence asked from across the room. She was posing in the sunlight with her camera held aloft in selfie mode, checking her angles. As if her gorgeous girls looked bad from any angle. They had their father’s height—both of them almost six feet tall—and her thick auburn hair. Their deep-blue eyes came from Grant’s side and their sharp bone structure from hers. Basically, they’d won the genetic lottery—avoiding both Grant’s bad teeth (orthodontia for five years) and her large nose, which had tortured her as a teen. “Are they going to do something salacious?”

“No, but not everyone likes to have every moment of their lives documented. As hard as I know that is for you to believe.” She snatched the phone from Vienna and hit the side button. She knew it was only symbolic. These phones were never off. “And don’t call Lincoln your dad’s sugar daddy. They’re not working together. Yet.”

“Fine, whatever,” Vienna said. “Can you tell Florence to get out of my room?”

“I was here first!” Florence protested.

“Why don’t you just share? There are two beds.”

They looked at her as if she’d just suggested they wear the same pair of shorts at the same time. She stared right back, refusing to say a word. Sometimes the only thing that worked with these two was silence.

“God, fine. I’ll take the other room.” Vienna snatched up the handle on her rolling bag and shoved past Gemma out the door. Not surprising. Vienna always caved first. She’d been second out of the womb and playing catch-up ever since. She was also the more emotionally stable of the two, and Gemma knew that, as their mother, she had been guilty of giving Vienna the short stick once or twice, just to avoid Florence’s inevitable meltdown.

“Thanks, Mom!” Florence trilled. She made a peace sign for the camera while pursing her lips.

“You know, you could give your sister the win every once in a while,” Gemma said, hand on the doorknob as she angled toward the hallway.

“But then she’d never learn to fight for herself.” Florence blithely lifted a shoulder and tossed her phone on the bed. “See ya!”

Gemma stepped into the hallway and closed the door. Sometimes she was glad she’d never had a sibling.

4

Marley

“Finally!”