My name is Sharon Foster, and looking back, I should have known better than to trust the warmth in my brother’s invitation.
The drive from Vermont to Riverside, Connecticut, had taken us four hours—four hours of winter-bare maples blurring past, of highway signs for familiar towns and unfamiliar exits, of Maverick humming along to classic rock while our daughter Willa read in the backseat, her nose buried in a worn copy of Anne of Green Gables.
Four hours of our son Jude asking every thirty minutes if we were there yet, his excitement about seeing Uncle Reed bubbling over like soda left too long in the sun.
We’d stopped once at a rest area off the interstate, the kind with fluorescent lights, vending machines, and a row of bathroom stalls that always smelled faintly like pine cleaner. Jude had begged for a bag of pretzels. Willa had used her allowance on a little pocket notebook with an American flag on the cover—she said it made her feel like a real traveler.
By the time we crossed into Connecticut, the roads narrowed and the landscape sharpened into old stone walls, clipped hedges, and homes that looked like they’d been there since the Revolution.
Maverick had dressed the way he always did: a soft chambray shirt from L.L. Bean, khakis that had seen better days but fit him perfectly, and brown leather loafers he’d resoled twice because he claimed they were, finally, broken in right.
His salt-and-pepper hair was slightly tousled from the drive, and he wore that easy smile of a man completely comfortable in his own skin.
I’d chosen a simple cream silk blouse and navy slacks, paired with my grandmother’s pearl earrings. Nothing flashy. Just steady.
Willa wore a vintage Ralph Lauren dress I’d found at an estate sale—soft pink with delicate embroidery, the kind of quality that lasted decades.
Jude had on his favorite polo shirt and pressed khakis, looking like a miniature preppy catalog model, though he’d already managed to wrinkle the front by the time we turned onto the long private drive shortly after seven.
The mansion rose before us like something out of a film. White columns. Black shutters. A circle of perfectly raked gravel. Tall windows blazing with chandelier light.
An American flag hung near the front steps, crisp and upright in the cold air, as if even the wind here had been trained to behave.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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