Page 128 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“Charlie, don’t—”

I hung up. Greyson called back right away and kept calling back, so I put the “Do Not Disturb” function on for his contact on my phone and went back to the dinner table.

I didn’t have a choice. I had to get back in that basement unnoticed, open those suitcases up, and see if they had that telltale rip in the lining. I had to know if they were really my mother’s.

I had started this whole thing alone and I would finish it alone. Because if I had learned anything over the past several months, it was that I could only rely on myself.

Now, as quietly as I could, I lifted back the bedcovers and shifted my weight onto the floor. The floorboards moaned slightly under me. Why did Dalton have to have an old house that creaked and groaned like an elderly person with every movement?

It was a cold evening and the floorboards were like ice under my bare feet, so I crept over to the dresser and put on socks and a hoodie over my pajamas. Then I tiptoed to the door and slowly opened it, holding my breath when the hinges shrieked in protest.

Making my way down to the basement was a slow and arduous process, as I had to stop every time I made a noise and listen for any sounds elsewhere in the house that might alert me that someone had heard me or woken up. I guess the one good thing about the house being so loud was that, just as anyone could hear me making my way down the old staircase to the ground floor, I could hear anyone making their way down the old staircase after me.

The house was dark, and I made my way forward blindly, relying on my memory of the general layout and my groping hands to guide me. When I reached the ground floor, I kept one hand on the wall, sliding along it as I made a right through the hallway into the den, which housed the door to the basement. Just as my hand grasped the doorknob, the front doorbell rang.

The Daltons had one of those annoying grandiose doorbells that went on forever and echoed throughout the whole house. I froze where I was in the dark. I knew I couldn’t risk running back up to my room right now—not when Margot would no doubt be making her way down those very stairs to answer the door. I got on my hands and knees and crawled behind a couch to hide.

The doorbell rang again, followed by several loud, thunderous knocks, as if someone were pounding on the front door with their fists.

Who would be visiting at this hour and making such a commotion? It was nearly two in the morning.

I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and then caught the flicker of a light being turned on in the back hall. Margot rounded the hall into the den, and I held my breath as she passed me on the floor, praying she wouldn’t see me there behind the couch. She had on a cream terry-cloth robe, her hair loose around her shoulders. She passed into the sitting room and when she turned into the foyer, I lost sight of her. I heard her pull the front door open.

“I don’t know what the hell kind of stunt you’re trying to pull here.”

It was a man who was yelling. I heard the voice echo through the walls, a deep, rumbling bellow.

Next came Margot’s voice, some reply that was too muted for me to hear. I got up and padded into the sitting room, closer to the foyer, so I could make out what they were saying to each other.

“—not trying to pull anything. I didn’t know she didn’t tell you. But, really, if you could take a moment to calm down,” Margot said.

Was it Dalton’s father at the door? He was supposed to arrive sometime today. But what could he have to be so pissed about?

“Where the hell is she? I want to see her this instant, Margot, I swear to god.”

My heart stopped. It wasn’t Dalton’s father—it was mine.

I heard his heavy footsteps plodding into the foyer and up the front grand staircase and I froze. What was my father doing here? How did he know where I was?

“Charlotte?” he yelled. “Charlotte!”

I walked numbly into the foyer and was about to call out to my father, who had just reached the second-floor landing, when I saw Dalton standing there in his pajamas, hair all mussed from sleeping.

“What’s going on?” Dalton asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“You!” my father yelled, coming at Dalton with his finger shaking and his face darkening three different shades of red.

“Alistair!” Margot shouted, bolting up the stairs.

“I’ve heard all about the stunt you tried to pull,” my father said, stopping just short of Dalton, but still pointing at him and shaking. “You’re going to stay the hell away from my daughter. You won’t text her, or call her, or come near her. And if you so much as touch a hair on her head, I’ll rip your fucking arm off.”

“Dad,” I said. “Stop.”

At the sound of my voice, my father halted and he turned on the landing and looked down at me at the base of the stairs. For a second, his anger seemed to drain from his face, and he looked relieved.

But then, just as quickly, the anger was back. Possibly even amplified.

“Charlotte, get your things,” he said. “We’re leaving.”