Page 2 of Double

“You were a kid when your father was alive and pulling your puppet strings. You’re an adult now. You need to open your mouth and tell Gretchen to back the hell off.”

Faylise was three for three.

I was purposely fashionably late to my aunt’s house for two reasons. Both reasons were that I didn’t want to be alone with her. For one thing, I knew she would try to get me to pitch in on the setup. As an invited guest, and particularly as one who’d worked all day, I didn’t want to be on setup duty. I wanted to arrive, mingle, eat, and leave—in that order. For another thing, I didn’t want her asking me questions. My aunt was a natural-born bully who didn’t understand personal boundaries or subtleties. She loved to ask inappropriate and invasive questions, especially about my virginity and whether or not I was still holding on to it.

For some reason, she was oddly curious about how long I would remain . . . untouched. It was one of the things that pissed me off about her the most. I didn’t get why she thought she had a right to be proud of my sexual status. The fact that I was a virgin had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that I’d grown up being controlled. My body was the one thing I had autonomy over, growing up. Initially, that presented itself in my life as the beginnings of an eating disorder. Eventually, it morphed into me choosing to keep myself to myself simply because I could.

Gretchen answered the door for me when I arrived. At first, I was surprised, but then I realized that, with all of her money problems, she probably had to let her staff go. As I thought about it, I wasn’t sure how she’d been able to hold onto the oceanfront mansion that I walked into. It wasn’t paid for, and I knew the mortgage had to be astronomical.

“Hey, Auntie.” I gave her a hug. I was a bit taller than average for a woman, clocking in at five feet, seven inches. My height clearly came from my father’s side because Gretchen was about an inch taller than me.

She hugged me back, but when we released one another, she hit me with the side-eye. “I told you to arrive at 7:00 p.m. You’re almost thirty minutes late.”

“I worked today. I went home to shower and get dressed.” I gestured up and down the fitted olive-green velvet, mermaid-style dress. “I’m worth the wait. No?”

She sucked her teeth while grabbing me by the hand and pulling me past the entryway. “You’re rude is what you are. I have special guests here waiting to meet you.”

I stopped walking. “Waiting to meet me? Who? Is this a setup, Aunt Gretchen? I’m not looking to be set up.”

“Little girl, nobody’s thinking about what you want and don’t want.” She tugged me by the hand harder.

Gretchen was strong because she made my feet move against my will. Soon, we were in her great room. There weren’t many people at the dinner party, maybe ten or so. What made me finally relax was that I spotted my Uncle Moses and Aunt Lianna amongst the crowd. I ripped my hand from Gretchen’s grasp just as she was releasing me. Practically jogging, I made my way over to where my aunt and uncle stood.

“Auntie,” I crooned, pulling Lianna into a hug. That was followed with a quick hug for my uncle, my arms going around Moses’s neck.

They both returned the greeting and the hug.

“I’m glad to see you here. Gretchen said something about having people for me to meet.”

A deep frown marred my uncle’s handsome features. “She said what? The only person I recognize here is Sterling Gillespie. He’s the island’s Minister of Finance. These other men, I’ve never seen before.”

“Well, I know she doesn’t want Tinsley to meet Sterling Gillespie. He has to be”—she seemed to think about it—“in his early sixties.”

Moses’s face remained frowned. “I don’t have a good feeling about this. I think we should leave.”

“You think?” The surprise on Lianna’s face was evident.

“I think. I don’t know what my sister’s up to, but I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.”

As far as I was concerned, my uncle hadn’t said nothing but a word. If he was ready to go, I was leaving with him. Before we could even take the first step toward the door, Gretchen announced dinner and asked us to take seats at the table.

“You sit next to me, niece,” he told me. So I did, and I was glad when Sterling Gillespie didn’t sit on the other side of me. Instead, he sat across from me.

Sterling Gillespie was a man who looked every one of his sixty-something years. His head was bald but not in a sexy zaddy way. There were hair follicles around the rim of his head that hadn’t yet given up the fight. His paper-bag brown skin was dry and sallow, despite the fact that beads of sweat pooled on his forehead. His eyes were dark, small, and beady. His nose was wide, as were his lips. His chin jutted out, as did his ears. Some men were handsome in their youth but didn’t age well. Sterling Gillespie was a man who had never been a looker. My eyes ran over his ill-fitting sports coat as he flashed me a smile featuring gapped, yellow teeth. The smile I returned barely caused my cheeks to lift.

While Gretchen no longer had a butler, she had obviously splurged on a chef to prepare the evening’s meal. The chef described everything in great detail as he moved it from the wheeled cart to the table. I tried not to show any emotion as the main dish, pernil—a roast pork that originated in Puerto Rico—was placed on the table.

Gretchen knew that I was a pescatarian. I only ate seafood. It was another thing I’d done in protest, as a teenager, over the amount of control my father held over me. I controlled what I could under his regime, and one of the few things that I could control was what I ate. After sixteen years as a pescatarian, my body and my mind had built up defenses against meat. I couldn’t eat it without becoming violently ill. It was no longer a choice. Seafood was literally the only protein that would stay down.

As they came around the table, I helped myself to yellow rice, peas, and potato salad. Once everybody had food on their plates, Gretchen started up a conversation about the future of the tourism industry on the island. The conversation was pleasant enough. Gretchen and Sterling led it, with everybody else chiming in occasionally. As the chef removed the dishes and replaced the empty plates with glasses filled with tea and coffee, the conversation waned.

Just as I was about to excuse myself for the night, Gretchen spoke. “Now that I’ve fed you, I want to talk about the reason for this meeting.”

“Meeting? I thought this was an invitation to have dinner, Gretchen.” Uncle Moses kept his words light and breezy, but I felt him stiffen beside me.

Her eyes were hard. “Campbell Paper Holdings is in trouble.”

“Campbell Paper Holdings is in the toilet, and you put it there.” Moses locked eyes with her.