Page 31 of The Lost Heiress
Maybe, even, he had helped Ransom orchestrate the whole thing.
Saoirse felt dizzy then and very, very small.
Bass was talking again, only this time, she wasn’t listening. She was a castaway on a remote island, half starved and out of provisions, shooting her last flare to capture the attention of a passing plane. Only, the pilot had seen her and just smiled and waved and passed on by.
“Just trust me that this is for the best,” Bass had said.
He’d been trying to placate her ever since. Frequent visits. Lavish gifts. Saoirse had met each one with icy indifference. A part of her hated the rift that had opened between them—to lose someone she’d loved, a confidant. But a bigger part of her roiled with anger at his betrayal.
Why did men always get to do exactly what they wanted and expect to be forgiven? Why was she never allowed the same courtesy?
And why could she never hurt Ransom and Bass the way that they had hurt her? To make them feel powerless and small? To take away their freedom, their autonomy, the way they had taken hers?
But, of course, that was impossible. What power did she have to take anything from them?
Saoirse sat up straighter. Maybe she couldn’t do exactly to them what they had done to her, but she could certainly hit them where it hurt.
She stood and started to make her way hurriedly up the stairs, back toward the house. She knew exactly what she had to do.
Lunch was served on the beach that afternoon. At noon, the six of them—Saoirse, Ana, Tabby, Salvador, Ransom, and William Bass—set off on horseback from the stables down to the private beach off the highway. There, the servants had erected a tent, and underneath, there was a table dressed with white linen and china and more food than could be eaten by all six guests if they were to feast on it for aweek. There were skillets of clams cooked in garlic and butter, oysters on ice, and mussels in tomato broth, with crab cakes and lobster. For sides, there was grilled zucchini and mushrooms, mashed cauliflower, buttered asparagus, a leafy green salad, and sourdough rolls. Between the food sat carafes of ice water and bottles of wine.
Saoirse sat on one side of the table, between Florence Talbot and Ransom, and on the other side, Bass sat on the end, next to Salvador and Ana. Salvador pulled out Ana’s chair for her, and Saoirse watched him whisper something in her ear. Ana laughed, and Saoirse immediately felt a twinge of irritation. This Ana was proving more challenging to get rid of than she had thought. She shook her head to clear it. That was a problem for another day.
The waiter poured them each a glass of wine, and Bass stood to make a toast.
“On this day, two hundred and six years ago, our proud nation was born,” Bass said. “Let us not forget that it was a group of farmers, mostly, who wrested their freedom from what was, at the time, the most powerful empire in the world. And that is an important lesson for all of us: that no matter who you are, where you come from, who stands above you in the food chain, you can make of your life what you want; you can rewrite the hierarchy, if only you have the grit and the will to do so.”
Saoirse bit her lip to keep from laughing. It was equally irritating and endearing that Bass would find a way to make any speech, any occasion, in some way, about himself.
“To friends, new and old,” Bass said, and they all clinked their glasses.
Saoirse picked up a shell and extracted the meat with a tiny fork, dipped it in the broth, and then discarded the shell into a separate bowl.
“Saoirse, my dear, I’m surprised to see you partaking in your lunch with such vigor,” Bass said. “I would have thought you’d be outraged. Or are you taking a vacation from your diet?”
She set down her fork, a tinge of annoyance racing up her spine. “I don’t think you can take a vacation from a deeply held belief, Uncle, or you must not hold it very deeply,” Saoirse said. “You can betray your values in a moment of weakness, but you cannot part yourself from them completely.”
“You have a philosopher’s soul, my dear,” Bass said.
“My sister is a victim of PETA,” Ransom explained to Ana and Salvador, who looked confused.
Saoirse bristled. “Not a victim, an advocate,” she corrected. She turned toward Ana and Salvador. “I don’t eat anything that can feel pain or experience fear. Shelled mollusks don’t have brains or central nervous systems, so they don’t experience either.” Saoirse turned back toward her brother. “And honestly,” she went on, “after you read PETA’s investigation into the suffering of those poor monkeys at those research facilities in Maryland—and see the pictures, my God,” Saoirse said. “I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t support their cause. Even you, Ransom. And how you continue to eat meat after I’ve shown you the pictures of what happens in those factories to those poor pigs, I’ll never understand.”
“Campaigning for the ethical treatment of animals and not eating meat are two entirely different matters,” Ransom said.
“I hardly see how,” Saoirse said. “How is raising a sentient, feeling being for the purpose of slaughter ethical? You’ve been conditioned by society into a very barbaric practice.”
“Come now, Saoirse, you’d really go so far as to say eating a steak or enjoying a hamburger is barbaric?” Bass asked. “Isn’t that a bit dramatic?”
Saoirse fumed. She knew she was losing her temper, but she couldn’t do anything to stop it. “If we came down to this beach and there was a dog stewed in that pan instead of crab, we’d all be revolted,” she said. “No one would think it dramatic for a display of outrage then. And yet how is a dog any different from the pork that you eat regularly? Pigs are more intelligent than dogs. More intelligent than three-year-oldhumans, even. They feel joy and fear and loneliness. And yet you raise them in factories, where they never know what it is to do anything natural to them—they never run across a pasture or feel the fresh wind in their face. They’re taken from their mothers when they’re only a few weeks old, crowded into a dirty pen, and fed a steady diet of drugs to make them grow fatter, until they’re crippled under their own weight and then inhumanely exterminated. So, yes, I do thinkbarbaricis the right word, and no, I do not think I’m being dramatic.”
She was out of breath when she finished. It was maddening to her, the way her brother and Bass went after her deeply held beliefs, as if she belonged to a brainwashed cult.
“Need I remind you that grilled pork chops with balsamic caramelized pears used to be your favorite meal?” Bass said. “You’d have the cook make it for your birthday.”
Saoirse felt the heat rush into her cheeks. “Yes, well, I’m not pretending to be above reproach,” she said. “But when our understanding changes, so, too, should our actions.”
“Apt words,” Salvador said brightly, clearly trying to steer the conversation into safer waters. “We should all strive to expand the boundaries of our own understanding. I find reading extremely helpful in this regard. Speaking of which, has anyone readThe Heart of a Woman? I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy. I thoughtI Know Why the Caged Bird Singswas illuminating. Transcendent.”
