Page 82 of The Women of Wild Hill
That’s why the bird had demanded her attention. It wanted her to be there with her sister. “Hang on,” Phoebe ordered. “I’m coming with you.”
PHOEBE ALWAYS FORGOT JUST HOWmuch she despised funerals until she arrived at one. She spent the service fighting the urge to flee. It drove her crazy how the so-called normal people got it all wrong. The caskets with their toxic plastic and polyester. The corpses pumped full of carcinogenic chemicals, their faces spackled with paint. The dyed flowers flown in on fuel-guzzling planes from tropical farms that had replaced native rainforest. What should havebeen a ceremony marking a return to nature had been transformed into a desecration of the earth.
She was relieved to hear that the graveside service was family-only. She couldn’t take the sight of Mattauk’s weed-free, water-guzzling cemetery, which could have doubled as a golf course. After the church ceremony, most mourners were directed to the Jacobs family estate instead.
“Liam wants to introduce me to a few people.” Brigid winked as they navigated the path to the garden where guests were gathering. “Wanna come?”
Phoebe looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Do not kill anyone here!” she demanded. “You have to control yourself. The Old One gave us the mushrooms for a reason.”
Brigid rolled her eyes and gestured to the guests milling around them. “If she wants me to be good, why does she keep placing all these temptations in my path?”
“Brigid! You almost got yourself—”
The conversation came to an abrupt end as Liam approached the two of them.
“Ladies.” He slipped one arm around Brigid and held the crook of his other arm out to Phoebe. “Care to mingle? Funerals are second only to weddings for networking. There are people here even I don’t know. I saw the Meat Man a few minutes ago. I’d love to bend his ear.”
“The Meat Man?” Phoebe couldn’t help but ask.
“Dan Wallace. Owns AmStar. Started off as a ranch in Wyoming, now they’re a multinational livestock conglomerate.”
“Oh, I know that company!” Brigid gushed. “Don’t the tree huggers have their panties in a twist now that AmStar is turning the Amazon rainforest into cow pasture?”
Phoebe lifted a brow and locked eyes with her sister. Brigid was getting a little too into her role.
“That’s the one,” Liam confirmed. “Stock rose ten percent afterthe recent protests, thanks to AMN’s coverage. I’d like to see if Wallace is interested in investing some of those profits in advertising. Would you like to meet him?”
“No,” Phoebe said. “I would not.”
Brigid looked up at Liam and rolled her eyes. “Phoebe’s decided to be boring,” she told him.
“Impossible,” Liam replied. “Your sister could sit in a corner reading theFinancial Timesand she’d still be the second most fascinating person here. We’ll send the Meat Man your regards.”
“Don’t,” Phoebe warned her sister.
“It was just a joke,” Brigid told Phoebe. “He wouldn’t know who you are.”
PHOEBE WATCHED, ARMS CROSSED ANDmouth set in a scowl, as her sister and Liam Geddes wove through the crowd looking like Morticia Addams and Don Draper. Somehow the pairing worked perfectly. Even Phoebe had to admit it. Brigid’s weirdness made him more interesting. Liam’s perfectly cut suit and five-hundred-dollar haircut made her appear a little less terrifying. It was a shame the relationship had been doomed from the start. The Old One really did seem to have it in for Brigid.
Phoebe grabbed a glass of champagne off a server’s tray and hurried away from the other guests. As she crossed the estate, the grass beneath her feet was the ideal shade of green, every blade lopped off at exactly one inch. There wasn’t a weed or a dandelion in sight. A hedgerow appeared so perfectly rectangular that Phoebe reached out a hand to see if it might be plastic. Soon she found herself in a garden with rosebushes on either side. These weren’t like the wild roses that scaled the walls of the Wild Hill mansion. They were blooms of extraordinary size and beauty, in colors that spanned the entire spectrum.
When she turned a corner and spotted a man bending over to examine a flower on one of the bushes, Phoebe stopped in her tracks. She’d come to the garden to be alone, but it was too late to sneak away. He’d already noticed her.
“Ever seen one of these before?” he inquired with a light drawl. He waved her over to where he stood. “I’m pretty sure it’s a new cultivar. What do you think?”
Phoebe approached for a closer look. The flower was perfect in every way. Each heart-shaped petal featured all the pinks, oranges, and yellows of a sunset.
“It’s pretty.” It was, though, pretty in a way that struck her as overkill. “But I prefer the ancient varieties. The ones that existed before we started tinkering with nature.”
“You know, I think I might agree with you.” When he stood up, he was about Phoebe’s height. He’d left his suit jacket back at the house, and the sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up to his elbows. “Nothing genetically engineered could outshine the blooms in the Garden of Eden.”
“And yet they keep making roses bigger and brighter. These new varieties don’t even smell anymore.”
The man chuckled. “I agree it’s a shame, but it’s what the consumer is hankering for,” he said. “Same thing in my business. You try to sell people stuff they don’t want, you’ll end up bankrupt and they’ll just go buy it someplace else. Americans want big, colorful blooms and thick, juicy steaks that don’t cost a fortune. All the lectures in the world aren’t going to stop them.”
Steaks. “You’re the Meat Man.”
He held out a hand and she shook it. “I prefer Dan.” The movies had trained her to expect a cigar-chomping final-boss type. There was nothing sinister about this man’s appearance. If anything, he reminded her a great deal of Sibyl’s fifth-grade math teacher.
