Page 17 of The Love Bandits

She seems deep in thought, and when she rouses, she says, “Can you ask Claire to add ‘Eat me,’ to the bottom of each of the cookies?”

Damn, this woman is vicious. She’s also nervous. I can tell that beneath all of her machinations she actually loves her son. She’s running out of time, and she can feel the next several weeks drifting through her fingers.

Anthony and Nina are having a New Year’s wedding, and Halloween is next Thursday. Mrs. Rosings only has a couple of months left to convince her son he’s making a mistake—whichmeans I only have a couple of months left to convince Nina of the same.

“Will do, boss.” I salute her and turn to leave.

“Wait!” Mrs. Rosings calls out.

I turn to look at her, and she says, “I’ll need you to come in early. I’ve decided I want to put a few of my jewels on display in the drawing room. There are some cases we can use in the basement. Anthony needs to witness the hungry look in Nina’s eye when she sees the Heart of the Mountain. Then he’ll understand what he’s doing.”

I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, and if Anthony hasn’t seen the writing on the wall now, he’s not going to see it if it’s underlined and in neon lights, but I nod my agreement anyway.

“Did you see the documentary that the Discovery Channel released a couple of months ago?” she asks.

This is where most people would politely inform her that they have no idea what the fuck she’s talking about, but I refuse. She already thinks I’m ignorant, why give her fodder for the fire?

“Which one are you talking about?” I ask, as if there are dozens of documentaries about obscure necklaces, and I’ve enjoyed watching all of them.

She rolls her eyes, probably thinking something along the lines ofstubborn girl, why did I have to lose the nice one?Then says, “I’m surprised you didn’t do your research. You’re an enterprising girl too.”

“I didn’t think I’d be working here for this long,” I admit.

I’d hoped that The Love Fixers would be bringing in more money by now, but we’ve been held back by our location in Marshall, the steep learning curve of Facebook ads—which has prevented me from successfully putting any up—and how long it took for us to put the LLC paperwork through. It probablydoesn’t help that I blew the income from our biggest gig on paying for a cat to be put under sedation.

Mrs. Rosings snorts. “That makes two of us.”

There’s a strange kind of camaraderie that’s developed between us as a result of our mutual disdain. “If I were bored enough to look for this documentary, how would I find it? And, follow-up question, should we air it in its entirety after the hour-long slide show?”

She grins at me, showing all of her teeth. “Now, there’s a thought. It’s forty-five minutes long, dull as dust, and they don’t talk about the Heart of the Mountain until the last five minutes.”

I get a flash of Todd, talking about that Yankees bat until the people in front of him had fight-or-flight coming off them in their sweat, beaded at their brows. At least Mrs. Rosings has an objective other than pissing people off just because she can, I guess. I have to admit that if I had a son, I probably wouldn’t want him marrying Nina either. Her intentions are, at a guess, not to love and cherish Anthony until the day he dies.

“Would you like to see the necklace?” she asks, something flashing in her eyes.

I wonder if she’s only offering because she wants to see a greedy look inmyeyes—confirming everything she suspects aboutme.

If so, she’ll be disappointed. I have plenty of jewels and gems from Todd, which I’ve been slowly but surely selling on eBay.

“Sure,” I say. “Are you going to pull an old woman in Titanic move and throw it into the mountains at midnight or something?”

“Maybe,” she says, lifting her chin. “It would certainly create a stir.”

And I find myself smiling at her—genuinely smiling. “Yes, I’d like to see it.”

I watch as she rises from her chair, wearing one of her signature kaftans. They’re the kind of clothes people wear for the same reason they tell long, pointless stories and subject other people to boring documentaries. Because they can. Because their status has given them power, and they want you to know it.

I grit my teeth, then my mouth falls open. Mrs. Rosings is approaching the fireplace, where, beneath portraits of her two children, is arranged a row of urns on top of the fireplace mantel. One for every husband she’s buried—three of them—along with a special bequest from Claire’s biological father, whose death resulted in us moving here.

A gasp escapes me when she opens the second urn. My grandparents were buried in plots economically purchased decades before they died, so my knowledge about them is limited, but I’m pretty sure it’s against urn etiquette toopenthem.

“Oh, relax,” she says with a smile that seems genuine. “I poured out Adrien’s ashes underneath the apple treedecadesago. It seemed only appropriate since he died picking from it.”

It’s not the most lovelorn thing a person could say. Then again, Mrs. Rosings admitted to Claire that she married the man because she was a gold digger, just like the town suspects. She also told her that Adrien Smith was not the hero he’s venerated for being. While Mrs. Rosings is a piece of work, I believe her.

Todd is universally beloved too—forgiven for his “quirks,” like the boring-as-fuck story about the Yankees bat, or his inability to lose at anything, even Pretty Princess, which his niece insisted on playing at Thanksgiving last year. Todd pouted for half the afternoon because he didn’t get the crown. But the people who flit through his life don’t see the man he really is—the one behind the smile his parents bought him at the orthodontist.

Cold, withholding, punishing, cruel.

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