The Price of Inheritance Read online

  “That’s a compliment.”

  “It’s supposed to be. You’re intense. You’re passionate. You’re selfish and you’re driven and I haven’t met many girls like that. A few in the military. But they didn’t look like you.”

  “I bet they would if they got to ditch the camo and slap on some mascara.”

  “Nah. Even normal people don’t look like you.”

  “Thanks, Tyler. It’s too bad you’re so ugly. It must really be a hindrance for you.”

  “I get that a lot,” he said, smiling. He looked down at me and put his hands in my coat. “Are you hungry? You must be. It’s almost three and we haven’t eaten.”

  “I am, actually. But where do you eat here? Do you have to hunt your own food?”

  “That would be awesome, but no. There are some places to eat. But actually, you’ve probably had enough of all this. Why don’t we go off base.”

  “Do you live here?” I asked after we walked to his car and he drove his 4Runner out the gates.

  “No,” he said. “I live off base in a town house. It’s a lot like the Breakers. But bigger. More platinum on the walls. More servants.”

  I did not laugh.

  On our way toward town after we grabbed food, Jane texted me and said that they were having surf and turf and that I had to come over for dinner. I texted her back that I was with Tyler, to which she answered, “Now you have to come. And so does he. See you at seven. I’m turning my phone off now so you can’t say no.”

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked as he turned the corner away from the water.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked, looking over at me and putting his hand on mine.

  “My best friend Jane just invited me over for dinner. Her husband will be there, too. He’s a really larger-than-life kind of guy. You’ll like him, I promise.”

  “Larger than life. Is that a compliment or a dig?”

  “A little of both. You’ll see. If you like big lives on a big stage, you’ll like him. Trust me, Carter married Jane because that’s exactly what he wanted.”

  The four times I had seen Tyler, I had managed to keep some of my clothes on, but I knew that that was going to end soon. Tyler pulled into his neighborhood, so he could change before dinner. He lived in a complex of similar-looking white town houses near base.

  “A lot of guys live here with their families,” he explained as we walked up the drive. “I’m one of the only single officers here. It’s a sad and lonely existence,” he said, letting me in.

  “I absolutely don’t believe you. I bet you’ve had women propose to you.”

  “Only when intoxicated.”

  He grinned at me, showing off his lines of perfect white teeth. He caught me looking and held his smile for a beat longer.

  “I’m twenty-nine, you know,” he said, his face turning serious. “I can’t keep living like this forever. I need a good girl to come save me one day.”

  “I’m twenty-nine, too,” I said, refusing to look at him.

  “Are you? You look younger. But come to think of it, you act much older.”

  “Well, thanks, I suppose,” I said, walking inside. Alex used to say that about me and I hated it, but it felt important when Tyler said it. He’d been to Iraq, to war, four times; he seemed to need an old soul.

  Tyler’s apartment was very clean and he had the requisite leather sectional and huge TV and one picture framed on a bookshelf. It was of a young girl, which I guessed was his sister Katie. He caught me looking at it and said, “Don’t worry, that’s not my kid or anything. That’s Katie.”

  “I know.”

  “I have lied about it before,” he admitted. “But just to the girls who won’t leave.”

  “You know, the way you talk about women is pretty disgusting.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I let my eyes scan his apartment again. I knew there wasn’t going to be a picture of Hannah, but I looked anyway. I tried to make out the titles of a few books on his shelf. Most seemed professional. There were a few typical Dan Browns and Lee Childs and there was a King James Bible. I immediately thought about Blair Bari reciting the passage from the King James Bible and asking if the marine who owned the bowl had been religious.

  “Are you religious?” I asked, trying my best to sound breezy.

  Tyler followed my line of sight and saw the Bible.

  “I’m not particularly. I’m probably your standard amount of religious. But my mother asked me to take a Bible with me to Iraq so I took a Bible. If you’re going to war and your mama asks you to do something, you do it.”

  “Did you take that Bible?” I asked.

  “That exact one.”

  I stood up and walked to the shelf and picked it up. It was not a Bible that had never been opened. It looked well read. I flipped to the back section and saw the Book of Revelation. Before I could flip farther, Tyler walked past me and I put it back on the shelf.

  “Well, it must have been good luck,” I said, running my hand down the binding. “You came back in one piece. Four times.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I’m thankful God made guns and armor.”

  Tyler walked toward the bedroom, took his shirt off, smiled at me, and turned around. I tried not to look. I really tried. But there were so many tan muscles screaming at me that it was impossible. Who had a tan in Rhode Island in March? And what man in my world ever had muscles like that? The men I knew had bank accounts with muscle. Jobs with muscle. But they didn’t actually have muscles. Tyler was packed full of them. I couldn’t take my eyes off his back. Then his arms, his chest. Was it fair of God to give him that many? Shouldn’t he have passed around the wealth for other sex-starved, underemployed women to enjoy?

  He opened his closet, thought better, and walked over to me, taking my coat off, then my sweater, and pulled me onto his bed.

  “Take your shirt off. Let me look at you.”

  I was suddenly very aware of how thin I was. How pale I was in winter. Of how small my breasts were.

  I lifted my silk shirt over my head and he looked at me, with an expression I hadn’t seen before.

  “You are perfect,” he said before grabbing me, holding me against him, taking off my bra, and moving his mouth all over me.

  I reached for his belt, and undid it as he groaned in my ear. When his pants were off, I saw that he had another tattoo on the back of his calf. He had two on his right shoulder, one on his forearm, and another in the middle of his shoulder blades. It was the first time we had taken off our clothes in the daylight together. I ran my hand over his shoulder, almost expecting it to feel different.

  “Your body . . .”

  Instead of answering, he transferred his weight on top of me and put his hand back where it had been that afternoon in the Breakers’ garden. This time I didn’t stop him. I didn’t care about Hannah. I didn’t care about everything Tyler was not telling me. Every single inch of my skin, of my insides, wanted him.

  He moved his hand to the back of my head and pulled me in hard, grabbing my hair as he kissed me and bit my lip. He put his mouth on my breasts and stayed there until I started to moan.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered in my ear.

  I nodded yes.

  He held my face in his left hand while he pulled down my tights and my skirt and fingered the waistband of my underwear before reaching down for me and moving his fingers inside me. He kept going, his entire body, two hundred pounds moving on top of me until I felt like I was floating toward the ceiling, moaning and ripping the skin from his neck in tiny scrapes with my nails.

  My breathing quickened to a point where I felt like I was sprinting.

  “No, I . . . ,” I said as he put his mouth on my neck. But as soon as he was against me, I didn’t care. I had never wanted anyone more. So what if
I had only been out with him four times and hadn’t known him for fifteen years. Why was I the way I was? I didn’t need to be some monogamous turtle that never had any fun. I could be the kind of girl who slept with beautiful, mysterious men, even if everyone we knew in common warned me not to.

  “Turn around,” said Tyler as I released my arms from around his neck. He took out my braid, ran his hands through my hair, and looked at my body. I didn’t turn around and he moved back from me so that I saw his entire body. Every muscle in his chest, in his stomach, his arms looked taut, used. His chest was moving with the force of his breath and then he put his hand under my stomach and turned me over slowly. He moved his hands on my back, then up to my arms, moving my hands until they were holding his bed frame. He put his over mine and had me grip the wooden slats. I could feel him on my bottom half, holding his weight slightly off me. I turned my head to say something but he ran his hand over my mouth.

  “Don’t say anything. Not now. Let me look at you,” he said. I felt his eyes on me. I wanted to pull the sheets over my body, to hide myself from the afternoon sunlight pouring in through his window, but I knew that if I moved my hands, he would move them back.

  A few seconds later, I felt his mouth on my back, and then his entire naked body lying on me. He moved against me, spreading my legs. I was about to say yes but before I could, he stood up and pulled the sheet on top of me.

  “Not yet,” he said, pulling on his underwear. “I told you, I’m not that guy anymore.” He went into the bathroom and let me pull on my clothes. I spent the rest of the afternoon lying against him. Letting him take off my clothes again, but he didn’t say a word about sex. And when we headed to Jane’s that night, he didn’t mention anything about our afternoon.

  Like everything in Newport, it didn’t take long to drive from near base to the Dalbys’ on Bellevue. On one of the widest streets in town, we drove past the homes that had long been left by the families, donated to the Newport Historical Society for public consumption. The Elms, Rosecliff—the houses that were once filled with summer and money were now packed with tourists consuming tiny corners of a lifestyle that had faded out of fashion years ago. But the Dalbys hadn’t lost their grip on it. The iron gate out front extended into a pair of gold-tipped double doors, one for entering and one for exiting. I didn’t point my little house out to Tyler, instead telling him to drive past the fountain and the lawn tennis court, all perfectly illuminated with the last rays of the evening sun.

  My house, which was intended to be and was first used as a carriage house, became a guesthouse in the early 1900s, before becoming the Everett house in the eighties. It had not been kept as a guesthouse after my parents left and now served as storage space for the gardeners. It was Newport’s most glamorous shed. I opened the door once when I came home with the Dalbys for spring break my freshman year and had seen several green lawn mowers sitting in what had been our living room. It was worse than if they had just torn the building down.

  Tyler looked nervous. He didn’t seem like a man who could get nervous, the kind of guy who could take a gun in his face and not flinch, but I was sure he was. Something about his posture and the way he was talking a little too fast. I was suddenly sorry I had invited him. I should have had Jane meet us at a restaurant, or not at all. I shouldn’t have broken us out of our little quiet, intimate world that we’d created in the last week.

  “I probably should have told you, it’s a pretty big house.”

  “This isn’t a house. It’s a museum.”

  I said his name and he repeated it. “It’s strange to hear that. Tyler. Everyone calls me Ford.”

  “Should I call you Ford?” I asked as he parked the car.

  “No, you can call me Tyler. But only you.”

  When we got out of the car he came to my side to help me out and looked down at what he was wearing. “Maybe I should have worn something else,” he said of his jeans and boots. His blue shirt was perfectly pressed and tucked in.

  “Jane will be in jeans,” I promised, and when Jane came to the door, she was barefoot and in black jeans. I smiled, satisfied, and introduced her to Tyler.

  “Carter’s in Boston,” she said apologetically. “I’m so sorry. He’s going to be here in an hour or so, but Daddy needed him to do something in the Boston office, so he drove up. I hope you don’t mind, Tyler. I promise you’ll have male company soon.”

  “I think most men would commit a few crimes to be in my place,” he said politely. “I can’t think of better company. Carolyn said you’re her best friend.”

  “Oh, I’m more than that,” said Jane, smiling. “Carolyn grew up just right over there.” Jane pointed toward the yard. “She probably spent more time in this house than I did. But of course she’s too cool to stay with me now.” I looked around the Dalby living room. At the Manet over the fireplace and at the couch we sat down on, tufted and stuffed like a sausage. And then I looked at Tyler. He was perfectly clean-shaven. He had the kind of face I imagined you had to shave three times a day to get it to feel like that. I bet if he wasn’t in the Marines he would barely shave at all.

  Jane did most of the talking as we waited for Carter, drinking wine and eating meats and cheeses that someone had put together on a marble platter earlier that afternoon. The Dalbys brought in a cook from New York every summer, as Florentine needed help handling the large number of people the family entertained in the warmer months, but now Jane had her here all year round.

  It was just past nine when Carter walked into the house, delightfully yelling, “Honey, I’m home!” as he came through the door.

  “We’re in here, Carter!” Jane yelled back, making a face at both of us. “He’s a brute, but you’ll like him. He’s a likable brute,” said Jane.

  “That’s true,” I agreed.

  Tyler and I stood up with Jane as Carter came in the room. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave his wife a kiss. He then looked at Tyler, paused, and walked over to him. Jane and I waited for him to extend his hand, but he stood far enough away from Tyler that he didn’t have to.

  “I know you,” said Carter, looking directly at Tyler, who was at least two inches taller than him.

  “No, you don’t,” said Jane playfully. “This is Tyler Ford. Carolyn’s friend. I told you they were coming to dinner. Marilynn cooked all that—”

  “No, I know this guy,” he said, turning his head toward his wife and interrupting her. He looked back at Tyler and took a step toward him. “I know you from the Blue Hen. You’re the guy who punched that girl. The pretty girl. I was there that night.”

  Jane looked from Carter to Tyler, confused. “You two know each other?”

  “No, we don’t know each other,” said Tyler stoically.

  “I guess we don’t know each other. Right. No, you’re right,” said Carter haughtily. “But I saw you that night. When was it, last July?” He leaned down toward the food on the coffee table, cut off some pâté, and put it in his mouth. Then he sat on the couch, crossed his ankle over his leg, and said, “I saw you punch that girl in the face. But you weren’t going for her. She just got in the way, right? You were trying to hit someone else.”

  “That’s right,” said Tyler, not moving or raising his voice.

  “Yeah. Well, that was my friend you were trying to kill.”

  That put it together for me. “Wait. Carter, why in hell were you at the Blue Hen?” I asked.

  Jane looked at her husband suspiciously. Her Yalie husband who had chastised me and Brittan last week for putting a toe inside the unsanitary establishment.

  “I was with Mike Fogg,” Carter told Jane, putting his arms out on the back of the couch. His body language, his speech, everything about Carter at that moment was what I liked least about the very rich.

  “Mike liked this girl who used to hang out there. I wingmanned for him that night and then this guy punched her in the face. He cr
ushed her. Broke her nose. More. Didn’t you break her jaw, too?” He looked up at Tyler, who was still standing in the middle of the room, unmoving.

  “Mike Fogg was the guy who was hitting on Hannah?” I asked, starting to get upset. Mike Fogg just happened to be part of a hugely influential New England family. His uncle had even been mayor of Boston. They had two houses on Ocean Avenue, one that jutted out so far it looked like it owned the Rhode Island Sound.

  “I certainly didn’t know he was your friend at the time,” said Tyler, walking toward the three of us. “Not that it would have made a difference. He should be in prison.”

  “Isn’t it you who should be in prison?” said Carter. “Or did that nice girl decide not to press charges? Wonder what you had to do to make that happen. Play the war hero card? A little officer charming? She was pretty cute. Wouldn’t be the worst way to get out of something.”

  “Are you kidding me, Carter!” Jane hissed angrily. She looked at me, concerned.

  “Carter, you don’t know anything about anything, so don’t pretend you do. And please stop playing the pompous prep. It’s appealing to nobody,” I said angrily.

  “I don’t know anything?” said Carter, pointing at his chest. When he got going, Carter could really play the part. “Neither do you, Carolyn. Who the hell is this guy? I can tell you who. He’s a military nobody who punched a girl in the face. A girl! You should have seen her. She was knocked out cold. Blood all over her face like in a boxing match. Pretty girl, too. Bet she never looked the same after that.”

  I stared at Tyler, panicked.

  “I think you should go,” said Jane, walking away from Carter, fuming. “I’m sorry,” she said heading toward the door.

  “No, it’s my fault, Jane,” said Tyler, turning to follow her. “I appreciate the hospitality. But your husband has his story wrong.”

  “So you didn’t punch a girl in the face?” asked Jane, turning around.

  “I did. Hannah Lloyd. She was my girlfriend at the time and I will never forgive myself for that. But that punch was meant for your friend. What’s his name, Mike? Yeah, it was meant for him, and if he ever comes back here, I will beat his ass down. You can go ahead and tell him that.”