I had never aspired to start a casting agency. “Right place at the right time,” my husband used to say when I told the story of how my tooth broke and I landed in my dentist’s waiting room with the president of Warner Bros. on the same day his assistant quit. My husband called it “serendipity” when the head of casting OD’d with five greenlit TV pilots still needing leads and my boss asked me to “help.” People called it a “lucky break” when the $10,000 unlawful termination settlement came in on the same day the deposit on my new office space was due. But I never used the words “lucky” or “coincidence.” I didn’t believe in fate. Upheaval was a fact of life. You could either be defeated by it or take advantage. Walking into one’s so-called “destiny” was the ability to see disruptions not as obstacles, but as road signs, then follow them where they led.
“I believe everything happens for a reason,” Ashley said brightly. “I guess we have that in common.”
“Yes,” I said simply. There was no point in correcting her that I was not, in fact, a fatalist. Her arrival on my doorstep was fortuitous; opportunity literally knocked, so I let it in, simple as that. I suppose you could say I’d been waiting for her, though I hadn’t known it until she appeared. Whether she arrived at the perfect time, or I decided the time was perfect, didn’t really matter. She was here now, which meant—like her father and my husband—I would get my too-early death.
PART 2
* * *
BEFORE
NATHAN & JORDAN
CHAPTER 11
* * *
NATHAN
“You didn’t have to make me dinner,” I told my aunt as she pulled two pieces of herb-encrusted baked trout out of the oven. The woman was a pill, but a great cook, probably because she had to be to get anyone to come over. I know that’s an unkind thing to say, but I don’t imagine she would deny it. Being “nice” was not her MO, never was.
“If I didn’t, who would?” I knew that was a dig, but I didn’t take the bait. Louisa was constantly up in my grill about getting a girlfriend. It came from a good place—she didn’t want me to be alone. I couldn’t explain to her why I wasn’t dating, not if I wanted to stay in her good graces.
We made small talk while we ate. Her garlic potatoes were the best I’d ever had, crunchy on the outside, smooth as velvet on the inside—I always had seconds and it was never enough. She asked about my dad （her brother） as she always does. And I felt sorry for her, because he never asked about her.
After dinner came tea and cookies. I was on my third Lorna Doone by the time she finally got down to business. “I’m going to change my will.”
I didn’t know why she was telling me this, so I asked, “Are you asking me to do it?” I was pretty sure she had an estate lawyer, but maybe they’d had a falling-out?
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m leaving everything to you.”
I was so caught off-guard by the pronouncement I nearly choked on my cookie. “Sorry,” I said, grabbing a napkin to sweep up the shortbread bits I’d coughed onto the table. “You know I can’t let you do that.”
I knew Louisa was mad at her children, that she felt they’d abandoned her. And I knew why she favored me. I did more for her than all our other family members combined. Charlie and Winnie were so messed up after losing their dad they could barely take care of themselves, so someone had to hold the poor widow’s hand. Louisa was helpless. She’d earned the family money, but her husband had done everything else—run the house, managed their investments, weeded the garden, changed the light bulbs. When Charles Sr. died, Louisa didn’t know where their checkbook was, or what bank to call to get a new one. She needed help, and I guess I needed to be needed. My mother had my father, and I didn’t have a girlfriend （as we’ve established）， so helping Louisa was a way to fill the hole that was always waiting to swallow me up. I did everything she asked, from updating her operating system （phone, computer, tablet, repeat） to unclogging her kitchen sink. She called me the son she never had, and that made me feel good, but also bad, because she had a son—he just wanted nothing to do with her.
I should have been thrilled that my wealthy aunt wanted to make me her heir, but I knew what would happen if Louisa left her money to me instead of her children. Our family would become The Hunger Games, with everyone out for blood. Charlie and Winnie would accuse me of manipulating, tricking, coercing, even outright stealing. Plus my father would never stand for it; he’d make me give it all “back” to my cousins, even though it was never theirs in the first place.