I had no idea how a silent auction worked, but Max, high on shrimp and her victory in distracting Alisa, quickly caught me up on what she’d managed to glean. “There’s a sheet beneath each item. Bidders write down their names and their bids. If you want to outbid someone, you write your name below theirs.” Max strode over to what appeared to be a teddy bear and upped the high bid by two hundred and fifty dollars.
“Did you just bid eight hundred dollars for a teddy bear?” I asked her, aghast.
“A mink teddy bear,” Max told me. “Pearl Earrings over there is stalking this auction.” My best friend nodded to a woman who looked to be in her seventies. “She wants that bear and doesn’t care if she has to slice a motherfaxer’s neck to get it.”
Sure enough, a few minutes later, the woman glided by the teddy bear and scrawled down another bid.
“I’m a philanthropist,” Max declared. “So far, I’ve cost the people in this room ten thousand dollars!”
All things considered, she really should have been the heiress. With a shake of my head, I circled the room, looking at the items on auction. Art. Jewelry. A designated parking space. The farther I walked, the bigger ticket the items became. Designer purses. A Tiffany sculpture. A private chef dinner for ten. A yacht party for fifty.
“The real big-ticket items are in the live auction,” Max told me. “From what I’ve gathered, you donated most of them.”
This was unreal. This life was never going to stop being unreal.
“Personally,” Max said, adopting a snooty accent, “I think you should bid on the tickets to the Masters at Augusta. With housing.”
I looked her dead in the eye. “I have no idea what that means.”
She grinned. “Neither do I!”
Alisa had told me to bid, so I circled the room again. There was a basket of high-end makeup. Bottles of wine and scotch with high bids that nearly made my eyes bulge out of their sockets. Backstage passes. Vintage pearls.
None of this was me.
Eventually, I saw a grandfather clock. The description said it had been carved by a retired Country Day football coach. It was simple but perfect. Across the room, Alisa nodded at me. I gulped and upped the current high bid by what the page informed me was the minimum.
I felt nauseous.
“It’s for a good cause,” Max assured me. “Sort of.”
This school didn’t need a new chapel any more than I needed a bronzed sculpture of a cowboy on the back of a wild, bucking bull, but I bid on that, too. I bid on a baking lesson with a local pastry chef for Libby and doubled down on the mink teddy bear for Max. And then I saw the photograph.
I knew, before I even looked down, that it was one of Grayson’s.
“He does have an eye.”
I turned to find Zara standing beside me.
“Are you going to bid on it?” I asked her.
Zara Hawthorne-Calligaris arched a brow at me. Then, without a word, she went to up the bid that I had placed on the grandfather clock.
“Well, ship,” Max whispered beside me. “I’m pretty sure she just challenged you to a rich-people duel.”
“Easy there, slugger.” Xander appeared beside me.
“Where have you been?” I asked him, annoyed.
“I was helping Rebecca with her mom.” Xander’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “She doesn’t do well with wine.”
I didn’t get a chance to probe that statement further before Alisa came over to escort us to our table. “Plated dinner,” she told me. “Followed by the live auction.”
I managed to sit, eat my salad with the correct fork, and not spill anything on the silk tablecloth. Then things took a turn for the worse. A loud crashing sound broke through the din of polite chitchat. Everyone in the room turned to see Rebecca, beautiful and wan, trying to help her mother back to her feet. The easels holding the picture of Emily and the architect’s sketch had been knocked over. Rebecca’s mother yanked her arm out of her daughter’s grip and stumbled again.
Suddenly, Thea was there, kneeling between Rebecca and her mom. Thea said something to the distraught woman, and even from across the room, I could see the expression on Rebecca’s face, like she’d just remembered a thousand things she’d been trying desperately to forget.
Like this moment and the way Thea reached for her might destroy her in the best and worst possible way.
A moment later, Libby was there, trying to help Rebecca’s mom to her feet, and the grieving woman exploded.
“You.” She pointed a finger at Libby. My sister was dressed in a black cocktail dress. Her blue hair had been ironed silky straight. Instead of a necklace, she wore a black ribbon tied around her neck. She looked about as sedate as Libby ever looked, but Rebecca’s mother was sneering at her like she was monstrous. “I saw you with him. That Hawthorne boy.” She managed to stand. “Never trust a Hawthorne,” she slurred. “They take everything.”
“Mom.” Rebecca’s whisper cut through the room. Her mother dissolved in sobs. Libby became aware of the number of people staring at her and fled. I ran after her and ignored Alisa when she tried to call me back. As I passed Rebecca, Thea, and Rebecca’s mom, I heard the drunk woman whimpering the same words, over and over again.
“Why do all my babies die?”