The door to the Evil Empress’s lair swung open.
A sad combination of circumstances had landed me in this predicament. First, Thanksgiving-week hotel rates were sky-high, and my bank account was still recovering from the Delacour Pure Barre bribe. Kali had already promised her couch to another out-of-towner, so I’d had no choice but to shack up with the Empress. Then two separate car crashes on I-75 had added ninety minutes of traffic to the already five-hour drive from Nashville to Atlanta. Leaving me cranky, disheveled, and now staring directly at Charlotte Harlow. Life was not, shall we say, perfect.
“Olivia,” Charlotte said. “Lovely to see you. Come in.”
“Hi, Aunt Lotte. Thanks.”
“Although you’re not exactly punctual,” my aunt added, her mouth curling wickedly.
I feigned deafness and stepped inside, happy to escape the gleaming ruby-eyed stone lions that flanked her doorway. Flying monkeys would’ve been less intimidating.
Charlotte wore a cashmere sweater and pencil-cut black trousers, dressed for a corporate takeover even at eleven p.m. A stark contrast to my jeans and Vanderbilt Law pullover. Underdressing can be a power move, I told myself. Like I didn’t care what she thought of me. I pulled my suitcase behind me, feeling like the world’s most unwanted guest.
She led me through the marble-paneled atrium, which I’d always secretly admired but could never admit. Two arching staircases swung around from a balcony high above us. When we were little, Kali and I used to wrap our sheets around ourselves like ball gowns and practice descending the twin staircases in perfect synchrony. It’d been the only time my cousin ever agreed to put on a dress, pretend or otherwise, and only because of our shared love of all things Happily Ever After. Nostalgia tugged at my heartstrings. Things had been simpler then. Much simpler.
I followed Charlotte into her kitchen, which she’d redone when I was at college. The walls were whitewashed limestone, disappearing behind shiny white granite with van Gogh swirls of grey. The only color came from the overhead exposed wooden beams, which had been painted a brilliant blue that reminded me of Greece. Everything gleamed. Impractical, but Charlotte and Hank seemed the eat-out type, anyway. I was surprised to see an open bottle of merlot and two waiting glasses. Sharing a glass of wine at the kitchen counter felt strangely intimate. Like something I’d do with Leighton. Maybe even Kali.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please.”
As she poured us each an even portion, my feeling of weirdness intensified. It felt odd to be sitting in Charlotte’s kitchen, sharing wine like old friends.
“The kitchen looks nice,” I offered.
“Thank you.” Charlotte handed me a glass. “Your mother helped me with the design. We were working on it together that summer. I haven’t changed a thing. I only repaint the white every year.” Her voice was quiet. “So it’s as bright as she wanted. She loved Santorini. That was our inspiration.”
My throat tightened, and I took a sip of my wine for something to do. “She always loved Greece,” I said after a moment. “Your trips together—she’d talk about them for months.” For as long as I could remember, Charlotte and Mom had taken annual June trips to a Greek island of their choosing. I used to resent them. It was another instance of Charlotte stealing Mom away. Hearing Charlotte talk about them was . . . nice. I liked thinking about the memories my mom must’ve made on Mykonos, Paxos, Crete, and the rest. I was probably romanticizing things, but I liked to imagine her and Charlotte relaxing on a sandy beach, recounting childhood memories, watching the sapphire waves, and giving zero thought to philanthropy work.
“I enjoyed them as well. I haven’t been able to face going back since.”
We drank in silence for a moment. There had been a time, five years ago, when I’d thought Charlotte and I might build a real relationship. During my senior year of college, I’d passed out in front of my roommate. She’d called 911 and then Leighton and my dad, the two emergency contacts in my phone. Leighton picked up; Dad, on a business trip in Singapore, did not. I’d been rushed to the hospital and taken into emergency surgery. So Leighton had called the only other family member she knew. When I woke up in recovery, it was Charlotte dozing in the pleather recliner next to my bed. I’d had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. As the OB-GYN explained to us both the next morning, I’d been pregnant, but the pregnancy had been inside my abdomen, not in my womb. Its rupture had caused a life-threatening amount of internal bleeding.
I hadn’t been dating anyone seriously at the time. I hadn’t known I was pregnant at all. But none of that mattered to Charlotte. She held my hand when the surgeons did their daily dressing changes, and she helped me to the bathroom when I was too weak to get out of bed alone. We passed the time watching Seinfeld reruns and systematically rating the entire cafeteria menu. She’d stayed for three days, until I was discharged. I sent her a thank-you card the next week. She sent a generic get-well-soon bouquet, and we never spoke of it again. When I next saw her at a cousin’s wedding, there was no warmth in her greeting. It was like those three days had never happened. Except I had the scar on my abdomen to prove it.
Charlotte’s phone buzzed against the granite countertop, startling us both. She picked it up, poorly concealing her thrill of excitement. “Please excuse me.”
“Sure.”
Alone in the kitchen, I sipped my wine and amused myself by imaging what late-night call would make Charlotte Harlow so excited. An illicit affair? Doubtful; she’d married Hank only three years ago, and she didn’t seem the type. More likely it was a benefit coordinator calling to discuss some new gala. Thrilling stuff.
A sudden crack of thunder made me jump, and my hand knocked over my glass of red wine. Rain pounded the bay window as the skies opened in an instant. A blood-like pool spread over the counter and began to drip onto the floor.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered. Red wine stained like crazy; Mom had drilled this into me, even as a child. Charlotte would probably think I’d done it on purpose. I glanced around for a paper towel, but only pristine snowy hand towels hung from the stove. Beautiful, but impractical. She had to have paper towels somewhere. I darted down the hall to the pantry and located a roll of Bounty. Perfect.
“. . . even better than I’d hoped.” Charlotte’s voice floated down the hall from a half-closed door. I rolled my eyes; probably some fundraiser goal, but her next words stopped me dead. “And Olivia’s playing her part brilliantly.”
Playing what? I grabbed the paper towels and inched closer to the open door.
“. . . especially dramatic,” Charlotte was saying. “It’s a great B plot. Yes, for the younger audience. We want this to be widely accessible.”
I frowned at the door. “Widely accessible” was the polar opposite of the $500-a-head fundraisers Charlotte normally organized. And I doubted there were plots involved, except about separating donors from more of their money.
“. . . but tasteful,” she was saying. “Tasteful drama.” She laughed. “You know I’ve done my market research. I’ve got to go—Olivia’s here now. Talk soon.”
I hurried back to the kitchen and dropped the wine-soaked paper towels into the trash as Charlotte reappeared. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure. I eyed her suspiciously; what had that been about? What part was I playing? And could drama ever be tasteful?
But my aunt had already retaken her seat. “What brings you to Atlanta so early in the week? It’s unlike you to prioritize your family around the holidays.” She sipped her glass. “Learned that from your father, I suppose.”
Maybe because this is the welcome I get? I ignored the insult to both me and my father. Sometimes I thought Charlotte showed a sliver of heart just to throw me off balance, and then she’d snap right back to her typical icy ways. It never failed to unnerve me. “Leighton’s bridal shower, actually.”
“Oh?” My aunt raised an eyebrow innocently. “Is she holding it in Atlanta?”
“Aunt Lotte, please.” I set my glass down for emphasis. “Can we cut the crap? I’m here to tell you to back off. Since apparently you didn’t get the message the first time.”
“As I told you before, Olivia—”
“None of this is Leighton’s fault,” I snapped. “This cover was supposed to be hers. I agreed to help Kali anyway. And I threw Kali an amazing party. You sabotaging Leighton was never part of the deal!”
“Sabotage?” Charlotte sniffed. “Hardly. If Leighton can’t handle a few road bumps, marriage will be—”
“Road bumps? That’s what you call canceling her Delacour appointment? Sneaking poison ivy and ragweed into her bridal shower?”
“That’s what mothers do,” Charlotte said primly.
“What, poison their competition?”
“Fight for their daughters.” Her eyes nearly glowed. “If your little friend wants this profile so badly, she should fight harder. Instead of expecting everything to fall into her lap.”
This was beyond rich, coming from a woman born into family money and an even more valuable network of powerful connections. But there it was again: the insinuation that Leighton didn’t work for anything, that she didn’t deserve any success of her own. It made my blood boil.
“Leighton has been working hard,” I growled. “She works her ass off on Peach Sugar. Leave her alone, Charlotte. I mean it.”
“Olivia, I thought I’d made myself clear. I am the one giving instructions. You are the one carrying them out. You plan perfect events for my daughter, and I don’t interfere with your job.” Charlotte looked almost bored. “I’m not unreasonable. I’m not asking you to sabotage your best friend. I could ask you to do that, but . . .”
The threat hovered. I clenched my fist around the barstool seat, trying to channel my fury into something other than slapping Charlotte across the face. Or throwing my red wine across her white kitchen. Or on Charlotte herself. “Whether you do it or I do it, Leighton is still hurt,” I said coldly. Charlotte had clearly used up her daily allotment of humanity on reminiscing about Mom, so I pulled out my backup card. Grabbing my phone, I brought up the comment section of the Instagram Live from Leighton’s shower. “Read that.”
Charlotte took the phone and frowned at the screen. “‘There’s no way this was an accident, right? What if it was the other SC wedding?’” The comment had attracted half a dozen replies and forty-six likes.
“Imagine if they knew about the Delacour cancellation. That would really grease the conspiracy wheels.”
Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
“The Charming Bride competition means that a hell of a lot more people are following along. A lot of eyes on everything to do with Kali and Leighton’s events. If you do anything else like this, Kali will get blamed. And she’ll never win the competition if SC readers think she’s a tasteless cheater.” I folded my arms. Was it my imagination, or had she flinched at the word “tasteless”? “The poison ivy was a mistake. If you’d chosen something less obvious, you’d have some plausible deniability . . .”
My aunt was too refined to sweat under pressure, but a trace of anxiety flitted across her face. Bad publicity was to Charlotte what humidity was to Dolly Parton’s wig stylist: the ultimate enemy.
“If you so much as hint that I was involved with any of the mishaps caused by your poor planning,” she said coldly, “I will make sure you never work at Holmes & Reese. Or at any law firm worth knowing. We are family, Olivia. There are some lines we do not cross.” An icy force radiated from her, and I could practically see the tendrils of power rippling around her. How did an Atlanta housewife exert so much influence over my future career in New York? But that question was easily answered: a well-timed marriage to a Manhattan law partner.
If only I could work at another firm. There were hundreds of law firms in the city. And at least a dozen as prestigious as Holmes & Reese. But that wasn’t how the world worked. The top Big Law players, the ones with the five-figure signing bonuses and the most prestigious clients, hired exclusively through summer internship pathways. This allowed firms to lock down talent early and evaluate them over the course of two three-month summer stints. I’d chosen Holmes & Reese two years ago, halfway through my first year of law school. If it hadn’t worked out—and not every summer associate made it to an offer letter like I had—I’d be left scrambling and re-recruiting into a new industry, like Aditya.
But things had worked out for me. Had been working out, until Charlotte’s new husband had suddenly transferred firms. If I walked away from my Holmes & Reese offer, it would take years to scrabble into the top echelon of Big Law. If I made it at all.
“So we’re family when publicity is involved, but enemies otherwise?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Charlotte sniffed. “We’re simply working at cross-purposes.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?” I swung my legs off the barstool. I needed to exit this conversation before I completely lost my cool. “You’re right, Aunt Lotte. We are family. That’s why I agreed to help Kali in the first place. So focus on the ceremony, and let me get back to what I agreed to do: helping your daughter get exactly what she wants.”
Unfortunately, I was Charlotte’s houseguest, which really limited my dramatic exit options. All I could do was turn and whirl out of the kitchen, hoping desperately that I hadn’t just made a huge mistake.
Some would say that I’d lost my cool with Charlotte. That I’d let my anger get the best of me, and lost control of the conversation in a way that was very unlike Olivia Fitzgerald. It’d been a humbling experience, and one I wasn’t keen to repeat. Keeping my cool under pressure was one of my strengths. Or at least it was supposed to be.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” said Aditya when I’d finished word-vomiting all that over the phone. “She’s family. She gets under your skin like nothing else.”
I nodded to myself, pacing back and forth outside of the shiny red diner where I’d scheduled my next confrontation.
“She’s like poison ivy,” I muttered. “Vicious. Sneaky. Rash-inducing.”
“Rash-inducing?”
I stopped pacing and eyed my reflection in the diner window. A splotchy stress rash had broken out across my neck. Or was that late-onset poison ivy? “Yes! From stress!” Stress. It had to be stress. I refused to consider the alternative.
Aditya chuckled. “So you told her to back off? How did that go over?”
“Not too well,” I admitted. “She doesn’t like being told what to do.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
“Ha, ha.” I paused uncomfortably. The depths of Charlotte’s evilness were sort of . . . embarrassing. Why was my aunt so hell-bent on getting her disinterested daughter onto the cover of Southern Charm? Why did she act like she’d just stepped off a reality TV show? Why had my mom been so drawn to Charlotte, and why was my dad’s definition of success so narrow that it was Holmes & Reese or bust? How had I let myself get into this mess in the first place? “Maybe I can get through to my uncle instead.”
“Isn’t that risky? If he’s the one with the real power at your firm?”
“Yes, but he may be easier to reason with.”
“What’s he like? NY style?” After two years of friendship, Aditya had picked up on the New Yorker gag. Again, I had the answer ready because I’d drafted one for Will. “Generic affability conceals a steely-hearted ruthlessness and a devotion to client needs bordering on worshipful.”
“Worshipful. Nice one.”
I lifted a hand to wave to Hank, who was exiting his car nearby. “Got to go, he’s here.” I ended the call. “Good morning, Hank. How’d you play?”
“Morning.” Hank wiped the sweat off his brow and zipped up the Stanford sweatshirt he’d thrown on over his golf gear. As far as I could tell, Hank never worked when he was in Atlanta—at least not in the office. Most of his time was spent schmoozing on golf courses or tennis courts. Charlotte and Hank “kept residences” in both Manhattan and Atlanta, and Hank flitted between the cities at his leisure. “Not well enough to talk about. But coffee’ll help. Shall we?”
We settled ourselves inside a dusty booth. The place hummed with conversation, punctuated by the clang of silverware against plates. After the waitress had taken our orders, Hank leaned back. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” He smiled easily, deepening the wrinkles that swung down either side of his face. Their symmetry was oddly satisfying.
“Actually, I—”
Hank’s phone chimed, and he held up a finger. “Hold that thought.”
“Of course.”
I stared around the diner absentmindedly while Hank typed away on his iPhone, muttering half-formed comments under his breath. A few booths down, a blonde and a brunette around my age were huddled over the blonde’s phone. The brunette threw her head back and cackled with glee. The blonde swatted her playfully, hiccupping with laughter. Both were dressed in leggings and old college sweatshirts, their hair pulled back as an afterthought. I watched them wistfully. They looked like the me and Leighton of six months ago, before I’d run into Emma. Before Patricia had given Leighton the ultimatum about figuring out her career. Before every hangout was consumed with strategy sessions and obsessions over Southern Charm’s social media platforms. I missed that. I missed us.
Hank set his phone down with a clatter. “Sometimes I’d like to pour coffee on top of that thing,” he said ruefully.
“Everything okay?”
“No rest for the wicked.” At my confused look, he tapped the phone. “You remember how tethered you were to your email this summer? That’s corporate law. Constant accessibility to your clients. I hope you’re ready for that.”
“I think I am,” I said honestly.
He nodded. “It’s easy to be ready when you’re in your twenties and have no real responsibilities. Spouses, kids, things like that. At your age, it’s hard to think long-term. If you’re willing to sacrifice future you’s priorities along with today’s.”
I’d seen my father’s commitment to his work. He’d fought hard and provided for his family, but it’d come with a non-monetary cost to his family life. A not-insignificant one. In the last few years, I’d realized that Dad’s inaccessibility had probably played a big part in Mom drifting so close to Charlotte. This had somewhat cooled my idolization of his high-powered career. “Definitely important to think about. But I—”
“Have you talked to any of the junior associates?”
“I’ve worked with a bunch of them—”
He waved this aside. “I don’t mean when you’re staffed on cases. Or at H&R-sponsored happy hours. I mean really talk to them. Preferably one-on-one.”
“About . . .?”
“The realities of being a junior associate,” he said grimly. “Take it from me, Olivia. There’s more to life than working at a firm that everyone’s heard of. Go in with your eyes open. Got it?”
I swallowed and nodded. “Got it.” Part of me wanted to ask more, to figure out what was driving this line of conversation. But I had to switch topics. When I’d asked Hank for a private chat this morning, he’d slotted me in after his morning golf but was due back at the house soon to assist with Thanksgiving preparations. Time was limited.
“Hank, I wanted to talk to you about something delicate. In confidence.”
The phone beeped again, but Hank’s gaze stayed on me. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“I really enjoyed my time at Holmes & Reese, and I’m excited to have received a preliminary offer,” I began.
“But . . .?”
“I almost feel silly bringing this up,” I confessed, allowing a hint of embarrassment into my voice. It was crucial to nail this delivery; that’s why I’d rehearsed a dozen times to the bathroom mirror. “But your wife asked me to plan Kali’s pre-wedding events for this Southern Charm competition. Which I was—am—happy to do.”
“Olivia, pretend I’m the senior partner and you need to distill our case down to one sentence. What’s going on?”
If he wanted facts, I’d give them to him straight-up. “Charlotte has implied that if I don’t help Kali win the competition, she’d get my Holmes & Reese offer rescinded.” I let that hang there in the silence. The sentence burned like vodka without a chaser.
Hank’s grey eyes darted back and forth between mine. “Implied?”
“Made it very, very clear. A competition that was never supposed to exist. Against my best friend in the world,” I added.
I watched his face closely, trying to read the subtleties. I didn’t know Hank very well; he’d married into the family three years ago. For obvious reasons, I didn’t seek out their combined presence, and most of our interactions had been at family holidays. I’d found him pleasantly witty, tolerant of his wife, and more glued to his phone than a teenager. I’d seen him around the office a few times this summer, but we’d never exchanged more than brief pleasantries. I’d gotten the impression that he was keeping his distance to avoid accusations of nepotism. I appreciated that, especially since I’d gotten my first Holmes & Reese summer position long before Hank had joined the company. But the timeline wouldn’t matter to snarky office gossips; if word spread that Hank was my step-uncle, my own merits would be dismissed in an instant.
It’d been a risk, approaching him like this. I didn’t like to gamble in high-stakes conversations; I liked to go in knowing everything possible about the outcome. But you couldn’t know everything about your opponent. From what I knew about Hank, there was a reasonable chance he’d see the ridiculousness of Charlotte’s actions. And as a fellow highly motivated professional, he wouldn’t want my blossoming career stifled by a trivial wedding dispute. Plus, significant others could sometimes rein in their partner’s worst impulses; they could get through where no one else could. And I certainly wasn’t getting through to Charlotte on my own.
And then Hank broke into a grin. “Olivia, Olivia,” he said easily. “I like you. I like you a lot.”
Uh-oh. In my experience, never had the phrase “I like you” ever been followed by anything good, unless you counted the time Scott Waterhouse had asked me out in third grade. But he was only acting on a dare from his buddies, so that barely counted.
“I’m going to give you two pieces of advice.” Hank paused as the waitress returned with our food orders: pumpkin pancakes for me, an egg-white omelet for him. He was disciplined even in his food habits. (This I found supremely unrelatable.) “At the highest level, a lawyer’s job is to shape the facts to the best interest of the client. Whether that’s setting up a merger, defending an antitrust claim, or shielding internal operations in compliant language. That’s Big Law. That’s high-level corporate law. We’re not talking traffic court.”
“I understand.”
“So think of this situation as an opportunity to flex those muscles. On a smaller scale,” Hank added. “I understand there are personal stakes for you. That makes it even better. Being able to secure, navigate, and deploy social capital is crucial to making partner.”
“That’s sort of my specialty,” I said without thinking. “But it’s not as simple as that.” If it had been, I’d have figured out the solution a long time ago. “The personal relationships involved complicate things. With Leighton, with Kali, and with Charlotte—”
“Everything is personal,” Hank countered. “You’re never working alone. As a junior associate you’ll work with peers, senior associates, and your partner. Then there’s the relationships with opposing counsel. And with judges. And, of course, with the clients. These are the people you’ll build relationships with over the next few decades. Once you get a few years out of law school—and shed the people who don’t have what it takes to climb the ladder—you’ll see how small a world it is. Navigating conflicting priorities is essential. And finding a compromise out of thin air, in a situation where it feels impossible?” He grinned and took a sip of his coffee. “That’s lawyer 101.”
I could sort of see his point, but another part of me bristled with indignation. This was all well and good. But I hadn’t come here for a lecture about compromises and relationship management.
“I understand,” I said again, the more professional version of I know all this already! “And part of all that is using every connection you have. And thinking outside the box for alternate approaches. Which is what I’m doing now, by coming to you.”
“Ah, very nice,” he said appreciatively. “Shaping the facts differently. There you go.”
I waited, but he was busy with his omelet. “So will you talk to Charlotte?” I asked at last.
“That brings me to my other point. Excelling in Big Law means making a lot of personal trade-offs. The ones I was alluding to earlier. Some call it sacrifices, but I don’t like that word; it has a negative connotation. ‘Trade-off’ implies an active choice, which is more accurate.” Hank set his utensils down. “My first marriage ended because I traded quality time at home for quality time in the office. That’s a statement of fact. Now, at this stage in my career? I have other priorities. One of which is my marriage to your aunt.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “Yes, but—”
“The competition is important to her, end of story,” he said. “I don’t pretend to understand what my stepdaughter wants. But supporting my wife is a priority to me. I’ll always back her.”
“Meaning you’d interfere with my job offer?”
Hank smiled again. For a corporate lawyer, the guy sure did a lot of smiling. “I don’t think it’ll come to that, Olivia. From everything my wife tells me, you have a habit of getting your way.” He stood and dropped four twenties on the table. Either he was overpaying for dramatic effect or was so wealthy that he had no concept of diner pricing. “And remember—nothing’s sealed until it’s in writing.”
And with that, my uncle smiled that goddamn Cheshire Cat grin of his and sauntered back out to his car.
My audience was over.