Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
My lips pulled up on one side. “You should add that into your vows.”
Her face lit up. “Quick, pass me your laptop.”
I opened a new document and slid it over to her, and she quickly tapped it out onto the document and saved it.
“Can you email that to me later?”
“Of course. It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”
She sighed and closed the document, then paused.
Shit. I’d been looking at our old photos. Dad had scanned them all to an online drive and various other physical storage methods in case the originals ever got lost, and the drive was what I was currently in.
“What are you looking at these for?” Freya asked, turning the laptop towards me slightly. “Gosh, these are old photos. What was I there? Nine?”
“Ten,” I replied. “They’re from the summer before we moved.”
“What a strange set of photos to be looking at. Hey, wait.” She squinted, leaning closer to the screen. “Are these at the Loxford estate? Is that a birthday party?”
“Yep.”
“Hold on.” She zoomed in the photo and pointed at the redheaded girl with a gap in her teeth. “That looks like…”
“Grace,” I finished for her.
Freya jerked to look at me. “Grace?”
“Yep. That’s Grace.”
Confusion flittered across my sister’s features, then slowly morphed into realisation.
“That’s why she looks so familiar,” she said after a moment. “We were friends when we were kids. But when we moved back her parents had already divorced and she wasn’t living at Loxford House anymore. I think you were at university.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Yes, I remember it. We were good friends, and there was one summer a couple of years before that that you, her, Max, and Fred and his sister were inseparable.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You might have been a bit too young to remember it clearly.” She clicked to the next photo. “But I remember that it was like she disappeared off the face of the Earth, and after we moved back to Oxleigh, I was already up here at university,” she recalled. “So I didn’t see her again. Did you not?”
“Not until we walked into each other outside a coffee shop and, apparently, didn’t know who the other was.” I took my laptop back and looked at the photo. It was of a smattering of kids at someone’s birthday party—probably Grace’s, given the location of Loxford House, and I could name everyone there.
All upper-class kids, destined for a peerage of some kind, whether by inheritance or marriage. Failing a peerage, a very comfortable life with someone with money, just like my sister.
It was like a snapshot of privilege.
No wonder Grace wanted nothing to do with it anymore.
“So you’re really not actually in a relationship,” Freya surmised.
“No. I needed a date, and she agreed to be it for the weekend. I didn’t tell her who our grandparents are, and she didn’t tell me who she was. She didn’t find out until we were pretty much here.”
“How did you find out this was Grace?”
“Well, after you decided you knew her and went on your little tirade, I think Mum went looking, too. She recognised her because of Grace’s mum.” I flicked through the pictures until I found a photo of Mum, Freya, Grace, and a lady about Mum’s age who looked exactly like Grace did now, just a few years older.
“Whoa,” Freya breathed. “Grace looks exactly like her. Didn’t her mum die a while ago?”
“Over ten years ago. Either way, Mum recognised her and spoke to her, and Grace admitted it. Then she told me last night.”
“Are you pissed she didn’t tell you?”
“No. I didn’t exactly tell her who I was, and she was right when she pointed out that if I’d just told her who I really was, then she wouldn’t have come and none of this would have happened.”
“Why wouldn’t she have come?”
“It’s complicated,” I answered. “I only told you who she is because you need to know. And you invited her grandmother and step-mum.”
“Who’s her grandma?”
“No idea. I didn’t ask, but you know her step-mum.”
“Ugh,” Freya muttered. “I only invited Carmen because Mum said I had to. Honestly, I only invited Edward because I thought it would be the nice thing to do since he and Dad haven’t seen each other for a while. Then Mum made me invite them all.”
“Did you have Grace on the invite?”
“Yes. We invited all four of them. They told us Grace couldn’t attend.”
I laughed, rubbing my hand over my jaw. “She thought they’d said as much.”
“Did they lie?”
“No. Her dad knew she’d say no.”
“Would she have said no? I’ll yell at her.”
“Probably, but only because she tries to pretend she’s not actually the upper-class.”
Freya frowned. “When this wedding is over and I’m back from my honeymoon, she and I are going to have a little chitchat about telling me lies. She was my friend!”
“She was my friend, too,” I reminded her.