A Torrent of Deceit by Sarah M. Cradit

Author:Sarah M. Cradit [Cradit, Sarah M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

17

Charlotte

Charlotte picked at the crab meat peaking from her stew. Harlowe ranted about a rise in interest rates, Haywood nodding in perfect time to each escalating note. Scarlett had finished her stew and leaned back in her chair, contemplative.

Bile tickled the back of Charlotte’s throat. She fought it down with another spoonful of stew. None of them could see the inner battle she waged with herself as she rolled Anessa’s words over in her mind in relentless repetition.

Anessa was cruel, but Charlotte didn’t sense any lie in her.

You know you love him. You know it. Don’t let any of them, least of all her, take more from you.

“You all right?” Armand asked. He leaned in, as if they were silent conspirators.

“Of course. Why?”

He half-smirked. “You could do better to hide your dark circles. And your disgust at the food.”

“I’ve never liked crab,” she mumbled, lying. “And I don’t know why I haven’t been sleeping well. It happens sometimes. It’s nothing.”

“Well, it’s not nothing, dear. It’s never nothing,” Harlowe jumped in, having abandoned her zealous anger at the economic warfare against their banks. “You really do look dreadful. Are you out of concealer?”

“Let her be, Harlowe,” Scarlett countered with unusual ire. “Not everything needs dissecting.”

“Oh?” Harlowe leaned to the side as she regarded her mother. “And from whom, Mother, did I learn this?”

“Let her be,” Scarlett repeated. She dropped her sunhat over her eyes, effectively extricating herself from the conversation.

“Who put the bee in her bonnet?” Harlowe quipped, followed by an awkward silence. She shot her brother a look, and, remembering himself, he laughed at her joke.

Charlotte flashed a surprised but grateful look at her grandmother, who’d never see it. She was in “one of her moods,” as Harlowe called them. Charlotte didn’t know where the woman went when she disconnected. It seemed neither did Harlowe.

“Why are you so concerned with interest rates?” Charlotte asked, redirecting.

“Why am I so concerned with interest rates?” Harlowe parroted, mouth drawn in an exaggerated laugh. This time, Haywood didn’t forget to perform as expected. “Darling. Is that a serious question?”

Charlotte dropped her eyes. Her nausea rose higher. “I only ask serious questions. Mother.”

“Mother,” Harlowe repeated with an appraising look. “Well. All right, then. You are a consumer yourself, are you not?”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“We do not suppose anything, ever. We either do, or we do not. We are, or we are not.” Harlowe waved a hand. “Anyway, when the feds raise the rates, our loans plummet. When our loans plummet—”

“I get it now,” Charlotte said quickly.

“Really, dear. What is troubling you so?”

Armand shot her what seemed like a look of warning. She knew better than to trust it, but that didn’t mean his plea for caution was off the mark.

“I suppo—” Charlotte corrected herself. “I’m starting to feel the effects of being locked up all the time. I’m not used to having nothing to do. I’ve always had more than enough to keep me busy, and for the first time, maybe in my whole life, I feel idle.

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