“You cannot simply run off and leave us in there,” Helen said, her high-pitched cheerfulness entirely gone, replaced by a cold, practical hiss. “The baby has to be registered by tomorrow morning. We have the christening and the announcement party scheduled for the first Sunday of October.”
“I am not paying for Brooke’s estate, Mother.”
“Do not be childish,” Helen said, her fingers frantically brushing a speck of gray asphalt dust from her cuff. “You have your restaurant. You have always been the independent one, Audrey. You do not need the same support Brooke does. She has a child to protect now.”
“She took my husband.”
“Gavin has made his choice,” Helen said, her chin rising. “We have to look forward. We have two hundred people coming to the country club next month. If you start filing legal disputes now, you will ruin everything we have built in this town. Act like an adult and keep this quiet.”
She turned her back to me, her silk scarf rustling in the dry breeze as she walked back toward the hospital entrance.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut, locking it with a sharp click. The interior of the car was stifling, the leather seats radiating the midday heat.
I did not start the engine.
Instead, my fingers went to my left wrist, tracing the heavy, smooth gold of my grandmother’s bracelet. I turned the thick band slowly, feeling the cool metal against my skin until my thumb found the small, precise engraving on the inner curve: First Star.
It was the name of her old farm, the place she had sold fifty years ago to buy the original brick building on Cumberland Avenue where Sterling and Sage now stood. She had given me the bracelet on my twenty-first birthday, telling me that the name was a reminder of where the family’s strength actually lived.
Gavin had always laughed at the bracelet, calling it a clunky piece of scrap metal that did not suit the modern aesthetic of our dining room. He had tried to get me to put it in a safe deposit box three years ago, claiming it was too valuable to wear while working near the commercial stoves.
