The Cruelest Stranger Read online

  And don’t even get me started on his heart—it was arguably the best part of him, which is saying a lot because every part of him was amazing.

  But one year ago last week, he was driving home from the middle school where he taught math, and he was hit head-on at a busy intersection less than a mile from the apartment we shared.

  As I told you in my first email, he did not survive.

  The past year has wavered between bouts of sheer hell and the most brilliantly intense, soul-scorching pain a human can endure, but last week, I managed to suck it up, scrape myself off the floor, and march myself to a bar called Ophelia’s to meet a man for a blind date.

  I didn’t know what he looked like—only that he was essentially tall, dark, and handsome.

  And there, at the end of the bar … was you.

  I attempted to get your attention for the sole purpose of ensuring you weren’t the man I was looking for, but the way you responded, the things you said to a complete stranger, were harsh and unkind.

  And before I had a chance to explain, you left.

  But you forgot your umbrella and it was still raining, so I ran after you, hoping I’d catch you so I could give it back because that’s exactly the kind of person I am.

  By the time I caught up with you, you’d disappeared into a funeral parlor.

  Later that night, I was able to piece together a few details to get your name. And I spent the better part of the day that followed convincing myself that you’d just lost the love of your life and that your unapologetic unkindness was a direct result of that—not because you’re a callous, coldhearted man.

  My heart ached for you, for your loss, for how badly you must have been hurting to have lashed out at a total stranger in such a hurtful way.

  This morning, on a whim, I decided to send you an email … a few gentle words to let you know you’re not alone in this world, because Lord knows I could’ve used the same thing a year ago.

  But now I know I was wrong about you.

  You’re cruel for the sake of being cruel.

  But all of this said, it doesn’t make me any less sorry for your loss.

  Sincerely,

  Astaire Carraro

  I hover my mouse over the ‘send’ button, chewing the inside of my lip.

  When I sat down to compose this message ten minutes ago, I wanted to vent, to get the words out of my system. I had no intention of sending the thing. But it’s not like I have anything to lose at this point, nor will I likely ever cross paths with him again.

  Screw it.

  I reach for my wine glass, toss back the remains, and send the damn thing.

  10

  Bennett

  “Oh, good. You are home.” My mother pushes past me Saturday night, showing herself into my apartment. “You weren’t taking my calls after the memorial, so I assumed you were either out and about with one of your female friends. Or you know, the usual … ignoring me.”

  “I was just about to step out. Something I can help you with?” I close the door before following her to the wet bar where she proceeds to make herself a vodka cranberry that’s more vodka than cranberry.

  My phone vibrates with a call.

  A quick glance tells me it’s that social worker from last night.

  “I wanted to discuss this ongoing little tiff with your brother.” She places her clutch on the counter before stripping out of her jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair.

  “Please, Mother. Don’t trouble yourself.”

  She lifts a pencil thin brow. “Trouble myself? Darling, the two of you are my world. It pains me to see how much your father’s death has destroyed your relationship. You were so close before.”

  I bite my tongue. My mother was rarely around, rarely involved more than she had to be when we were growing up and this does nothing but solidify that. I’m sure in that delusional, dollar-bill-filled head of hers, we were the best of friends.

  Never have been.

  Never will be.

  Not in this lifetime.

  “Don’t you think the silent treatment has gone on long enough?” She spins to face me, eyes as wild as the exotic feathers lining the hood of her jacket. “Five years, Bennett. Five years. All he wants is to be in your life again. And a position at the company.”

  I choke on my laughter before capping the vodka on the mini bar.

  I’m cutting her off at one drink because she isn’t welcome to stay long enough for two.

  “You expect my brother, who can barely keep his art gallery afloat and is now delving into the world of self-help books despite the fact that he’s never taken a psychology class in his life … to help run the corp?”

  My mother blinks, expression unreadable.

  “You and I both know any salary I’d give him would be spent before the first deposit hits his bank account,” I add. “Not only that, but my receptionist is more qualified for a seat in the boardroom than he is.”

  “I think this would be a great learning opportunity for him.” She takes a sip before squaring her shoulders with mine, a hint that she has no intentions of backing down. “You’ve done tremendous things with the company since you joined. You’d be a great inspiration for him.”

  “Right. Errol aspires to be just like his little brother someday.”

  “I know the two of you can be competitive sometimes …”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But with the loss of Larissa—” She blinks away false tears.

  “—please, Mother. Enough with the act. It’s insulting. I’m well-aware of how you really felt about her.”

  Her left hand lifts to her narrow hip and her brows transect. “You only know what you think you know.”

  “I know enough.”

  She rolls her eyes. “She wasn’t as perfect as you thought she was.”

  “I never once implied that she was perfect.”

  “Obviously you thought the world of her. You were always rescuing her, helping her.”

  My jaw tenses. “Someone had to.”

  “Well, I’m just saying … you cared an awful lot about her.”

  I don’t correct her.

  I didn’t care about her—I pitied her.

  Big difference.

  “Anyway,” she continues, “I helped her in my own ways over the years. I’ve cleaned up plenty of her messes. I just never felt the need to broadcast them to you to make you feel guilty.”

  I squint. “What are you talking about? You aren’t making any sense.”

  She sips her cocktail, which is now mostly finished. “I don’t feel the need to get into specifics with you.”

  “You can’t say something like that and expect me to let it go.”

  “Of course I can, darling.” She sniffs. “Anyway, I just came by to tell you Errol was extremely hurt at the way you shunned him at Larissa’s memorial today. He had every intention of making amends and then you just … brushed him off in front of all those people. Hurtful and humiliating. And on such a painful day.”

  I smirk, replaying that scene from the memorial in my mind’s eye: walking up to offer my mother a show of support, pretending I hadn’t noticed Errol standing there, hands in the pockets of his skinny suit pants as he rocked back and forth on the heels of his freshly-shined Ferragamo Oxfords.

  This isn’t about Errol or the rift. This boils down to the fact that a few of her high society friends noticed the real-time cold war between the Schoenbach brothers, and she’s worried people are going to talk.

  My mother toys with the oversized buttons on her wool jacket before tucking her satin clutch beneath her arm and eyeing the door.

  My phone buzzes again, this time with a text from a friend waiting to meet me for drinks.

  “Wait,” I say, thinking back to the bizarre call from the social worker. “Did Larissa have a daughter?”

  Mother comes to a hard stop, hand clasping at her chest, though she keeps her back to me—a peculiar reaction for a woman who’s always been unflinchi
ng to the core.

  “Answer the question.” I pace toward her, positioning myself in front of the door so she’s forced to look me in the eye.

  She glances at the marble foyer floor, mouth tittering.

  “Mother.” My voice is stern. I can be just as unrelenting as her, if not more so.

  Her petite shoulders lift and fall as she flattens her scarlet lips. “I told you, Bennett. I’ve cleaned up a few of her messes over the years, and not once did I breathe a word of them to any of you. What’s the point of dredging any of it up now?”

  “So it’s true.” I straighten my spine. “She has a kid.”

  My mother rolls her eyes, sips the last of her vodka cranberry, and places the empty glass on a crystal coaster near the bar. She knows I’m not going to let this go.

  “I had everything arranged.” Her tongue clucks as if she’s annoyed all over again. “I’d arranged for her to live in a nice condo in Minneapolis for the remainder of the pregnancy, and I’d found a lovely family who were going to adopt the baby—a Stanford-educated surgeon and his beautiful wife. Larissa was to have the baby, sign it over, and return to Chicago to finish her degree and it’d be like nothing had happened …” She swallows. “But then she changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. Said she couldn’t go through with it. Something about knowing how it felt to be discarded or some nonsense like that. Anyway, she came back to Chicago and she had that baby with her, and I did what I had to do.”

  “What did you do, Mother?”

  Her gray eyes flick on to mine. “I disowned her. Cut her off. Told her I was done helping her in every sense of the word. That it was time she learned to stand on her own feet. Next thing I know, she’s getting mixed up with the wrong crowd all over again, and well, you know what came of all of that.”

  “That’s cold.” And I say that as one of the coldest bastards ever to breathe this Windy City air.

  “Don’t judge me,” she spits, face scrunched. “I did what I had to do to protect this family. To protect the Schoenbach name. To keep our bloodline synonymous with quality and exclusivity.”

  “We’re not a goddamned brand, Mother. We’re human fucking beings.”

  The sting of her slap warms my left cheek, but I resist the urge to soothe the pain with my palm. It’ll pass.

  “Watch your tone with me, Bennett.” She retracts her hand, nursing it against her heaving chest. I imagine the slap hurt her more than it hurt me. “And don’t you dare make me the villain in this.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t call you the hero.”

  Cinching her lapels between her fingers, she opens her mouth to say something and then stops herself, giving me a once over.

  I step aside and she lunges for the door, stopping on her way out to turn back.

  “If you only knew the things I’ve done to protect this family … you wouldn’t be so quick to judge,” she says. “In fact, you’d be thanking me”

  With that, she slams the door behind her.

  I wait a few minutes, ensuring that we won’t cross paths in the lobby, and then I collect my keys, phone, and jacket, text my driver, and head to the lobby to wait.

  I order him to drop me off at my usual place, so I can meet a former colleague for a drink, and I spend the fifteen-minute drive attempting to wrap my head around the fact that Larissa had a child—and that she left it to me.

  Never in my life have I so much as entertained the idea of having a child.

  They’re sticky. Messy. Loud.

  They smell.

  They steal your sleep and commandeer your weekends with zoo trips and soccer practice.

  Honestly, the thought of being a father figure sends a wave of nausea to my middle.

  I could never raise a child—let alone someone else’s child.

  The cab drops me off in front of Ophelia’s, and I head in for a double vodka on the rocks to clear my head.

  Even in death, I’m cleaning up Larissa’s messes.

  11

  Astaire

  “What are we drinking tonight?” asks the female bartender, who is the opposite of Eduardo from the way she greets me with a bubbly smile to the way she half sings along with the Greta Van Fleet song playing in the background.

  I like her already.

  I don’t know what compels me to set foot in Ophelia’s just three nights after my incident with the world’s cruelest stranger, but here I am, sitting in the exact same chair at the exact same bar, trying to convince myself that fate wouldn’t be so mean as to force us to cross paths twice in one week.

  Plus, I needed to get out of my apartment.

  It’s been hours since I sent that second email and Bennett has yet to respond. Either he didn’t see it—or he did see it, laughed, deleted it, blocked my email, and went on with his life.

  Either way, it’s all the same.

  “Surprise me.” I wink.

  Her eyes light. “All right. I can surprise you. But first, answer this one question: if you could travel to any city in the entire world right now, where would you go?”

  “Easy. Paris.” That’s where Trevor and I were going to honeymoon. We’d been saving like crazy in the year leading up to his death, and the week before he died we were one paycheck from buying the tickets and reserving a hotel room with an Eiffel Tower view.

  I can’t count how many times we’d watched An American in Paris and then stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, making plans, getting ourselves geared up for our big trip.

  The bartender winks back at me before turning around and grabbing various bottles and turning into a liquor-licensed mad scientist. A minute later, she presents me with a pale yellow cocktail in a crystal champagne flute.

  “For you,” she says. “A Soixante Quinze, otherwise known as a French 75.”

  I take a sip without asking what’s in it—I wanted to be surprised after all. The taste of lemon, champagne, sugar, and gin dance on my tongue.

  “Good, right?” She wipes a damp spot in front of me with her towel.

  “Amazing.” I take a generous swill and she struts away, peacock-proud, to help another customer.

  From my periphery, I take in my surroundings. The place is busier tonight than it was Thursday, naturally.

  Couples kissing.

  Holding hands.

  Groups clinking glasses.

  Laughter.

  So much laughter.

  Trevor and I moved here two years ago, having both landed jobs in the Worthington school district. When we weren’t working that first year, we were in full wedding-planning mode—which unfortunately left minimal time for socializing and making friends in our new town. All of our college friends are back in Indiana, and I don’t see them nearly as much as I’d like.

  They came around shortly after he died, taking turns spending weekends with me, picking up my shattered remains and trying to piece me back together with distractions and attempts at good times. But after a while, they all went back to their own lives.

  I had to do the same.

  It’s funny, when you’re younger, you think your friendships are everlasting, you think you’ll always be there for each other, that nothing will ever change no matter what. And day to day, nothing changes. But then one day you wake up and realize priorities shifted, people got married, took jobs across the country, started families.

  You keep in touch online at first, chatting and sending messages for hours on end when you catch each other online at the same time. But eventually life gets in the way of that too and you might be lucky to get a “happy birthday” text once a year.

  The distance is always subtle at first, gradual, and then it’s gaping.

  “Double Belvedere on the rocks.” A tall, dark figure fills the space next to me, his voice vaguely familiar as he flags down tonight’s vivacious bartender. “And a Manhattan.”

  The expensive-cologne-wearing gentleman takes the spot beside me as he waits for her to deliver his order, and I steal a glance from the corner of my
eye.

  Chiseled jaw. Onyx hair. Full lips.

  It’s official.

  The universe has a wicked sense of humor.

  I keep my focus on the back of the bar, twisting the stem of my drink between my thumb and forefinger, attempting to pay him no mind as the words of my latest email dance in my head.

  “I know you … how do I know you?” His words buzz in my ear as I inhale his intoxicating scent.

  I shrug, reining in any and all emotions in favor of maintaining a poker face.

  “You were in here the other night, weren’t you?” He leans closer, bringing with him the scent of money, privilege, and influence.

  Taking a sip, I keep my gaze trained ahead. “Probably.”

  “Fishing again?”

  Asshole.

  “How’d you know?”

  He sniffs. “Lucky guess.”

  The bartender delivers his drinks, two crystal tumblers set atop two recycled-paper coasters. He reaches into his wallet and places a couple of twenties on the table, the weight of his stare lingering and setting my senses ablaze.

  It’s unclear at this point if he’s read my latest email.

  Bennett slides the Manhattan to the spot beside him before checking his phone. He must be waiting for someone.

  “Why are you here?” he asks.

  Finally, I turn to him. “Excuse me?”

  “I come here all the time, and now all of a sudden I’m seeing you twice in one week. Why are you really here?”

  The nerve of this man.

  “Stalking you.” And then I add, “Obviously.”

  He sips his vodka and studies me.

  “You must be incredibly bored right now,” I say.

  “Obviously.”

  “When you saw me here, sitting by myself, what about this led you to believe I wanted to be bothered?” I feed him his line from the other night. Maybe it’s petty, but maybe I don’t care. He’s already accused me of “fishing” for men and went on to sarcastically confirm that he’s only talking to me because he’s bored.