Page 11 of For Better or Hearse
Her jaw drops, along with her stomach.
“Holy shit, you knew,” she hisses. Her eyes snap to Nathaniel, who sits stiffly in front of them.
“I knewofyou.”
“Augustus, you cannot fucking be telling me that I am stuck on vacation with your grandson whose wedding I pretty much atom-bombed.”
“The more the merrier. Isn’t that what you said?” Augustus grins like the Cheshire cat.
She elbows him. “You’re lucky you’re dying.”
In the seat in front of them, Nathaniel makes a kind of choking noise.
Augustus merely shrugs. “I can’t say I agree with what you did, but I’m sure you have your reasons. Camellia was never up to snuff, in my opinion.”
She covers her face and sinks deeper into the seat, her chest constricting. “Oh Jesus, Augustus.”
“I can hear you, Grandpops,” Nathaniel says. He crosses his arms, but he doesn’t turn around.
Hit with a tidal wave of panic, Ash tilts closer to Augustus. “I have to meet your entire family.Tonight. At dinner. And they all know what I did.”
“I’ll be there.” He pats her knee. “You’ll be fine.”
Fine.Right. That’s what serial killers say to their victims before they drive them down an old winding road to meet a garden shed full of meat hooks.
Her CGM alarm chimes again, but the reminder isn’t needed. Her body is already screaming at her. The fire of her blood. The sweat on her brow. Shit. She drops her phone back into her bag and digs through it for a granola bar. Once she’s got one in hand, she tears off the corner and takes a huge bite.
Nathaniel loops his arm over his seat and peers over his shoulder. “Like I said, it’s a rental. If you’re going to eat in the car, can you please try not to fuck up the upholstery with your crumbs?”
“Apologies for the inconvenience of being a type-one diabetic,” Ash says calmly but sharply. “I can drop dead if you prefer.”
Her response is met with nothing but silence from Nathaniel.
Good.
Ash collapses against the leather seat and turns her face to the window. The granola bar sits heavy in her stomach. The jagged cliffs and emerald-green foliage of Honolulu flash by. But she can’t appreciate its beauty, much less concentrate on it. Not with her blood sugar in the shitter and a disaster of a dinner looming on the horizon.
From the corner of her eye, she catches Nathaniel needling his brow like an icepick has just made its mark.
And it has.
She’s the icepick.
Nathaniel can spot disasters from a mile away. A damaged wellhead soon to leak oil. A patient sayingI don’t feel wellmoments before they collapse. And this, this vacation, will be a disaster.
He should have known. When it comes to his family, nothing is ever easy.
Less than a day ago, he decided to take leave from his post as a remote-site doctor on an oil rig and join this so-called family vacation. Typically, he uses the four weeks off to travel the world. Surfing in Australia. Scuba diving in Belize. Family time isn’t his strong suit. Not with the Whitfords. Close confines with his prick father, his mother—who has looked like she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown for years—his horny little brother and his attention-starved little sister? Just the thought is enough to make him itch.
And yet he came. He rallied.
For his grandfather.
A decision he already regrets. This whole situation is absurd.
This girl. Ash. What was his grandfather thinking, inviting her? She wreaked havoc on his world. Wrecked his fucking wedding. Sent his life into a spiral for a good year. He doesn’t know a damn thing about Ash whatever-the-hell-her-last-name is, but now that she’s inserted herself into his grandfather’s life, he plans to make it his mission to figure out what the hell she wants.
Either that or drop her on a desert island and leave her to the birds.