Do I Know You? by Sarah Strohmeyer

Author:Sarah Strohmeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

EVE

Eve sits in the middle of her gigantic four-poster bed, which is so large that both the mattress and the sheets had to be custom-made. When she designed this bedroom suite as an addition to the house, she and Chet dreamed of creating a retreat that would serve dual purposes: a private sexual oasis in this sprawling compound and, later, a gathering spot for the fruit of their union.

The babies never arrived, despite numerous consultations with Boston’s premier infertility experts and a regimen of black cohosh and false unicorn prescribed by a well-respected shaman out in Cochituate. Having already adopted one child, Chet didn’t want to go down that route again, and Eve, for her part, wasn’t too keen on the idea, either.

From then on, they focused not on expanding the family but on expanding the family business. Chet continued to pour capital into his wife’s fledgling lifestyle brand while Eve expanded its reach, touting her favorite fashion designers and architects, chefs, menus, exercise routines, kooky herbal remedies, and mindfulness practices on the website. She began to feature Will as a model—an instant hit—and discovered the power of weddings as promotional events when Jake married Heather in a glittering extravaganza she orchestrated for them.

Everything was going swimmingly until Dani infuriated her father by smashing Will’s $200,000 Lambo into a Jersey barrier, narrowly avoiding a DUI charge thanks only to Arthur Whitaker’s swift intervention. Chet had already been stewing over Jake and Heather’s purchase of a $7 million monstrosity in Waban they were renovating unnecessarily. Did they really need two gyms or an expanded wine cellar? Must (one of the) family rooms be lined with mahogany?

Meanwhile, there was Bella living on a modest salary she earned at an NGO devoted to international social justice for women in developing countries. She didn’t even own a car, much less a Lamborghini, and her apartment in Bogotá—which, granted, she couldn’t have afforded without Chet’s help—had approximately the same square footage as Jake and Heather’s bedroom suite.

That’s when Chet decided to teach his biological children a lesson. Having threatened on numerous occasions to cut the spoiled brats out of his will, he took the next worst step by allocating forty-five percent of the company to Bella, a tad more than Eve’s forty percent ownership, and reducing Dani, Jake, and Will’s shares to five percent each. He must have realized cutting out Megan entirely would be a blow to her mother, both for symbolic reasons and because she’d long counted on her daughter’s share to fortify her standing. But by then he wasn’t that fond of his wife, either.

No one was more outraged by the snub than Megan’s godmother, Queenie. Having mentored Eve when she arrived from Paragon, Indiana, as green as Midwestern June corn, the worldly actress was even more bonded to the product of Eve’s one-night stand with Jonny Blak. Tiny, plump Megan with her big blue eyes and incurious nature demanded all the protection Queenie could arrange. Hooking up her mother with Chet Pease, she’d hoped, would be enough of a security blanket but apparently not.

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