Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
“To Europe?” My eyebrows rise. “No.”
“We’ll have to get you a passport,” Tor says, his gaze flickering to Paula as she comes back in with two shallow white dishes.
“The first course is a lobster bisque,” Paula announces, putting the first dish down in front of Carson and the second in front of Myra.
“Oh, it looks wonderful. Thank you, Paula,” she says.
Paula returns carrying three dishes much more carefully, then places them down in front of the rest of us.
“Thank you,” I say, feeling a little awkward being served in someone’s home.
I’ve never had lobster bisque, but I have a taste of it while Paula is making the rounds with a wine bottle, pouring some into a glass for each of us. It’s rich and creamy and makes my taste buds sing.
The next course is a mixed green salad, each one served with a cup of dressing on the side. Tessa drizzles hers over her salad, while Myra dips her fork in her cup before stabbing the greens. I’m not sure what the dressing is and want to taste it before I dump it all over my salad. Typically, I would just ask for ranch, but I don’t want to be difficult.
I decide to land somewhere in the middle, stabbing a manageable piece of lettuce on my fork and lightly dipping it in the dressing to give it a try. As soon as the flavor hits my tongue, my taste buds explode. The vinaigrette tastes like nothing I’ve ever had before. Nothing that can be bought in a store, I’m guessing, which is unfortunate because now I want a bottle of it.
“This is amazing,” I tell Paula as she puts a basket of bread on the table.
She flashes me a smile. “I’m glad you like it.”
While we eat our salad, Myra keeps the pleasant conversation going, and I find myself impressed that someone can talk so much and end up saying so little. I don’t even mean it as an insult. She’s just an absolute master at shallow, meaningless chitchat that makes you feel as if you’re having a lovely conversation—even though nothing of substance is actually being said.
When the entrée comes out, we don’t know a single additional thing about each other, but we exchange smiles like old friends instead of the old enemies we actually are.
The gears in my mind start turning as soon as I realize I’ve been caught up in her web, and I try to make sense of how crazy this all is.
I know the Walters family is rotten to the core, but I feel like I’m dining with royalty instead of monsters. I feel honored and special when Myra speaks to me, as if she didn’t clutch her rapist son tight with happy tears shining in her eyes when she found out he would never have to pay for what he did to me. I feel the weight of Carson’s quiet intimidation every time my gaze accidentally meets his, and somehow I’m the one who always looks away even though he’s the one who should be ashamed.
But he’s the king of this town. I’m just some commoner who had the audacity to complain about getting caught beneath the wheels of the royal carriage.
More than anyone else in Holbrook, I know they’re bad people—and even I don’t feel the weight of that sitting at their dinner table.
I realize as Paula comes around to collect our dinner plates that I was right earlier in my observations about this place, comparing it to a twisted fairy-tale land.
Reality has no bearing on the Walters household.
One dinner with these people has helped me see what an entire year of being at war with them has not.
I get it now.
They do have a certain charm that I never could.
If I didn’t know better, I’d want to believe they’re good people, too.
It doesn’t justify anything, but it does help me understand it. All year I’ve felt like I was going crazy because I knew my expectations were sane. The response was what was crazy.
And it is.
But crazy is the lifeblood of this household. Crazy is perfectly normal here.
They didn’t like the notion of the reality I put forth, so they simply ignored it and wrote over it with a version they liked better.
Now, Tor has recast all of us and submitted a new script, and Myra is doing what a Walters always does. She’s playing her part.
Carson is more resistant. He doesn’t say anything, but I can feel it. He doesn’t try to hide his dislike of me. He just allows us all to ignore it and allows Myra to represent both of them in accepting me.
I have a hunch he and I are the most realistic people in this room, the two most aware of it being a fucked-up counterfeit reality, he just doesn’t find it shocking anymore. He likely helped construct the stage and approves every performance himself. He likes living in his twisted kingdom with his kidnapped princess bride and his untouchable sons, whereas I’ve spent a year railing against their reality-denying bullshit.