Chapter 2 - THE FOLIO AT THE FRONT DESK
Grant caught my elbow three steps from the table.
His fingers dug into the sleeve of my linen cardigan—not hard enough to make the couple at the next booth call security, but hard enough to remind me who held the car keys.
“Sit down, Claire,” he hissed under his breath, keeping a tight, polite smile plastered on his face for the rest of the dining room. “You are not humiliating my mother on her sixty-eighth birthday because you’re in one of your moods.”
Beside me, Lily stiffened. Her small right hand—still pink across the knuckles where Grant had slapped the plate out of her grip—curled tightly into my skirt.
“Let go of my arm, Grant,” I said.
I didn’t whisper. I said it at a normal, clear volume that made the gentleman buttering toast at the adjacent table pause and look directly at Grant’s hand on my sleeve.
Grant flushed slightly and released my arm, though he stepped directly in front of us to block the aisle toward the lobby doors.
“Fine,” Grant muttered, reaching into his slacks pocket and pulling out a single crumpled twenty-dollar bill. He held it out toward me like a bone to a stray dog. “Go sit at the coffee kiosk in the lobby and buy her a muffin until we finish eating. We’re driving back to Charlotte in my SUV at noon, so don’t wander off.”
Behind him at the table, Judith didn’t even turn around. She was busy helping the server clear space in front of nine-year-old Owen for a tiered silver stand overflowing with steamed Maine lobster tail, poached eggs, smoked salmon roses, and truffle-salted potatoes.
“Look at the size of that claw, Owen,” Judith cooed loudly enough for Lily to hear. “Just like your grandfather used to order at the yacht club. A real Bennett.”
Across the table, my sister-in-law Melissa wouldn’t meet my eyes. She was staring down into her coffee cup, her fingers twisting the strap of the cream leather designer handbag sitting in her lap.
I didn’t take Grant’s twenty-dollar bill.
Instead, I reached into my purse, pulled out my own set of car keys, and held them up gently so the brass key ring chimed.
“I drove my own sedan down on Friday because I had the fabric showroom inspection in Mount Pleasant, Grant,” I said calmly. “We aren’t waiting until noon. And we aren’t riding back to Charlotte with you.”
Grant’s eyes narrowed. “If you walk out of this resort right now, Claire, don’t bother using the joint checking card for gas. I’ll transfer the balance out on my phone before you reach the highway.”
That was always Grant’s ultimate weapon: the reminder that as a senior vice president at my late father’s architectural restoration firm—a position my father had given him five years before dying of a stroke—Grant managed our household accounts while I ran my small interior design studio.
I didn’t argue with him. I took Lily’s uninjured left hand and walked straight past him out of the sunlit dining room.
As soon as the heavy glass doors swung shut behind us, I knelt on the plush lobby carpet in front of my daughter.
“Let me see your hand, baby,” I murmured, lifting her small right wrist to my lips and kissing the red mark across the back of her knuckles.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore, Mom,” Lily whispered, though her lower lip trembled for half a second. “I’m sorry I dropped the eggs on the rug.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Lily. Not one single thing,” I told her fiercely. “Wait right here on this bench by the fountain while I check us out of our room, okay? Then we’re stopping at the pancake house on Highway 17 and ordering every single thing on the menu.”
A tiny, genuine smile flickered across her face. “Even chocolate chip waffles?”
“With extra bacon,” I promised.
I walked six steps over to the mahogany reception desk, where a young concierge named Marcus was printing departure folios.
“Good morning, Mrs. Bennett,” Marcus said warmly. “Checking out of Suite 412?”
“Yes, please, Marcus,” I said, pulling my business Visa card from my wallet. “I know my husband put the family’s three suites under his master reservation, so I’d like to separate Suite 412 and pay for my room directly so we can head up to the suite and pack our bags.”
Marcus tapped a few keys on his terminal, then frowned slightly at the monitor.
“Oh, Mr. Bennett didn’t use his personal card for the master reservation, ma’am,” Marcus said politely. “All three suites—412, 414, and the Presidential Marsh Villa next door—were prepaid and guaranteed under C.H. Carter Heritage Trust using the corporate AMEX ending in 4019.”
My hand froze halfway across the marble counter.
C.H. Carter Heritage Trust.
Charles Henry Carter was my late father. When he died four years ago, his estate had placed my mother’s Charleston historic home and a two-hundred-thousand-dollar preservation endowment into that trust—an account that was supposed to be frozen in a long-term municipal bond until Lily turned twenty-one, with my husband Grant listed only as the non-signatory administrative custodian!
“Marcus,” I said, my voice dropping low as a cold knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “Can you print me the itemized master folio for all three rooms on that card?”
“Since your name is the primary beneficiary on the corporate profile, certainly, ma’am,” Marcus said, hitting print and sliding a three-page itemized receipt across the desk.
I looked down at the paper.
The $149 seafood platter Grant had just bought Owen—along with Judith’s four-thousand-dollar-a-night Marsh Villa, a twelve-hundred-dollar spa bill for Melissa yesterday afternoon, and three thousand dollars in room-service vintage wine—wasn’t being paid for by Grant.
Every single penny was being charged to my late father’s trust fund—the trust fund meant for Lily’s future.
And at the very bottom of page three was a charge from yesterday morning at the resort’s private marina boutique: $4,850.00 — Menswear & Swiss Timepiece Repair, Auth: N. Bennett.
My heart stopped dead in my chest.
N. Bennett.
Grant’s older brother—Owen’s father, Nathan—had supposedly drowned in a boating accident off the Outer Banks four years ago.
I stared at the clerk. “Marcus... who signed for the marina boutique charge yesterday?”
Marcus glanced at the scanned signature slip on his screen, then nodded toward the tall arched window overlooking the resort’s private boat dock.
May you like
“Your husband’s brother, ma’am,” Marcus said Helpfully. “The tall gentleman in the blue sailing jacket waiting on the pier by Suite 414. He told me he was staying in Mrs. Melissa Bennett’s suite for the weekend.”
Outside on the wooden dock, fifty yards from the dining room window where my daughter had just been hit over three dollars of bacon, stood a man holding a coffee cup—and hanging from his wrist was my late father’s gold Patek Philippe watch.
