Harvey shuffled a few papers on his desk, avoiding my eyes before clearing his throat again. Hope answered for him. “Uncle Edgar wasn’t feeling well this morning. He asked me to attend in his place.”
That made sense. But then, why did Harvey look even more ill at ease? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
He checked his watch. “About time to head to the cemetery. The rest of your family will meet us there. I’ll drive.”
Bracing inwardly at the thought of seeing my siblings, I didn’t argue with Harvey. I didn’t care who drove, I just wanted to get this shit show over with.
I got into the passenger seat of Harvey’s Mercedes, barely noticing the tight turns as we made our way down the winding roads to the cemetery. The Sawyer family plot was packed with my ancestors, going back to Alexander Braxton Sawyer, the first Sawyer to make his home in North Carolina.
I hadn’t been to the family cemetery in years. Not since my grandfather died when I was a teenager, only months after my father had executed a takeover of the family company and put his own father out to pasture. I’d always thought that my father’s betrayal had killed my grandfather. Not that Prentice had cared. He had what he wanted. Control of Sawyer Enterprises.
I tromped across the perfectly-maintained grass behind Harvey, Hope silent beside me. She’d buttoned a heavy black overcoat up to her chin, her shoulders hunched against the biting wind. The breeze that had seemed almost springlike in town turned into an icy blade in the open of the cemetery. I hadn’t dressed for the weather. I was too used to Atlanta and hadn’t expected to be outside. I’d deal. Hopefully, the burial wouldn’t take long.
Harvey led us to the graveside, nodding in his friendly way at the pastor waiting for us, at my siblings standing in a loose jumble on the other side of the deep hole in the earth. The gray metal casket gleamed from the depths of the grave. Only Hope stood beside me, silent but there. I shouldn’t have been grateful for her support. It shouldn’t have mattered. I nodded at the group opposite but said nothing.
I hadn’t seen or heard from any of them in fifteen years. Only Ford was missing. The only sibling who shared my mother, we’d been close as kids. He’d been my best friend right up until he’d stabbed me in the back. Now he was locked up for the murder of our father. Ford was an asshole, but he was no murderer.
The rest of them… Fuck, I barely recognized my youngest sisters. Sterling had been a child when I left, Quinn and Parker not much older. Avery, the oldest, had been learning to drive. I still remembered guiding her down the long driveway to Heartstone Manor, half afraid she was going to crash my beloved truck. Now she looked at me with hard, unforgiving eyes.
Royal, Tenn, and Finn stood in a semi-circle, all ignoring me. They’d been teenagers when I was exiled. Old enough to speak up, but not one of them had taken my side. They’d circled the wagons and let my father banish me from our home. They’d stood by and let Ford take everything from me.
Hope had set it all in motion, but these people, my brothers and sisters, had let it happen.
Braxton, the same age as Sterling and her bitter enemy, stood on the opposite end of the group, studiously ignoring me. I’d always found it ironic that despite their mutual hatred, Brax and Sterling could have been twins. Their gilded beauty was almost unreal. Golden hair, perpetually tanned skin, and our father’s electric-blue eyes.
Brax’s jaw was hard, his eyes averted from mine, but Sterling glared across our father’s empty grave, looking like a movie star in a perfectly-fitted black sheath, her chin set in the same angry thrust as Brax’s. Her eyes were red. Tears or something else? Seeing the way she wobbled, her arm wound through Quinn’s, I’d have bet alcohol, not tears.
Quinn, her dark hair and electric-blue eyes a mirror of our father’s, watched Sterling in concern. Beside her stood Parker, on the arm of a stranger in an expertly-tailored gray suit. She’d been only thirteen when I left and already showing a hint of the beauty she’d become.
Parker looked the most like her mother, Darcy, the only one of my father’s wives who was even the slightest bit maternal. Darcy had made up for the rest of them. If we had any memory of a mother’s love, it came from Darcy. I’ll never know how a woman that kind tolerated being married to my father.
Darcy bound us together. One of the only things the Sawyer children shared was a soul-deep ache at her loss. She’d been gone for seventeen years and I still missed her.