Bellacorde

Domaine Beauvigne – royal palace

I was still giggling with Eloise when Luc nudged me — a subtle, elegant gesture only a man raised in palaces could pull off without disturbing a soul. He inclined his head toward my clutch on the table, where a faint vibration buzzed insistently.

My wine-softened brain lagged a beat before I realized: My phone.

I dug for it, still smiling. “Hey, Mom…” I chirped, expecting another round of have you heard about…?

But her voice — her voice was wrong.

“Briony, I need you to make arrangements to come home. To Brindleton Bay. As soon as possible. Something has happened.”

The words sliced through the haze. I straightened so sharply Luc’s hand hovered at my back.

“Mom… what happened?” Her tone told me everything before she said a word.

And when she did — the world folded in on me. My ears filled with cotton, the room stretched away, and then everything went black.

I woke — again — on the old chaise in the Sitting Room. Luc was pacing, phone to his ear, posture taut with controlled urgency. When his eyes met mine, relief softened his features.

“Yes, she’s awake,” he said quietly. “We will be ready. À demain matin.”

He ended the call and came to me, kneeling so we were eye level. “Luc…?”

He took my hand, thumb brushing my knuckles. “Je suis désolé, mon cœur. So very sorry.” His voice was low, steady, devastatingly gentle.

“So it’s true,” I whispered.

“I am afraid so. There has been a terrible accident during a vacation abroad. A fire. It has been confirmed… it was your stepbrother, Graham Cunningham. My deepest condolences.” A pause, a breath. “The plane is being prepared. We leave in thirty minutes.”

“I have to pack—” I said, my voice robotic and automated.

“It is already being done for you.” His tone shifted into sovereign command, but soft. “I need you calm, ma chérie.”

“Brad?” My voice cracked.

“He is not well. Your mother is heartbroken. So are the siblings. The grandparents arrived. The house is full of grief.” Another pause. “His fiancée suffered a severe breakdown. Understandably. Her parents had to go and bring her home; she was in no condition to fly by herself. From what I understood she witnessed the accident and couldn’t help.”

“Oh God… Whitney. Fiancée? So he finally proposed probably on that damn vacation. He had that ring forever. He kept putting it off, said he wanted the timing to be perfect. First, he wanted to be done with med school then propose, but then he wanted to get through his residency first, then the penthouse had to be perfect and done and ready for her… he kept changing his mind about what to do first…” My throat closed. “Ask her to move in and then propose or propose and then ask her to live with him for a few years. Goddamn it Graham, why do you always do this, drag things out, always wanting everything to be perfect, why do you do that? Why did you do that.”

That single word shattered me. Past tense. Luc caught me as I folded, holding me until the royal physician arrived. I barely felt the injection — only the slow, heavy quiet that followed. Sedative.

Shock, they said. The word felt meaningless.

Brindleton Bay

Rosebriar Haven – Cunningham estate

Time blurred. A plane. A car. The familiar iron gate of my childhood home — though I only lived here part‑time, splitting my youth between Brindleton Bay and San Sequoia. Still, this place held pieces of me. And pieces of Graham and Lauren, who had been my constants despite the complicated web of step‑this and half‑that.

The driver stopped, and something inside me knew — knew — nothing would ever be the same.

Mom and Brad’s butler greeted us with a somber bow. Anderson Stevens, Brad’s stepfather — the man who became a father figure like Brad never had, after his own father had died, unfortunately for Brad was he already grown up and married with kids by the time he came into his life — stepped forward too. He’d always been a steady presence, the quiet patriarch behind the scenes. I wasn’t related at all to Brad’s mom, but ever since I was a little girl I only ever called her Grandma Bel. Her name is Belinda and that was too much for me to keep straight. And she didn’t like being called Linda.

Inside, grief hit like a wall.

Mom rushed to me, sobbing, pulled Luc and me into a tight hug, slamming us together like sardines. Brad was wrapped in Lauren’s arms, shaking. Molly Winthrop, Graham and Lauren’s mother, Brad’s ex-wife number one, cried into her husband’s shoulder. The younger siblings clung to Brad’s mother. Everyone was breaking. Someone told me ex-wife number two, or three if you count Brad’s first marriage to mom, Viola wanted to be here but couldn’t. She was pregnant and on strict bedrest for preeclampsia. Her daughter with Brad, Charlotte Joy, Charley, was currently sobbing into our brother Nate’s hoodie. Lines were very blurred about blood relationships in this patchwork family.

Luc explained something about the sedative to someone, but my brain wasn’t grasping much. I drifted, untethered.

Someone murmured about coffee — the Cameron cure-all which the Cunninghams had all been infected with and adopted — but I wandered instead, stopping at a recent family photo. One without me in it, since I couldn’t get away so much anymore. Felt strange. Like their world was moving on without me. Well, some of theirs, anyway. Graham’s world had stopped moving on. My heart bled at the thought, wishing I could have been there when this photo was taken. One last time, next to the brother by choice, rather than blood. As if he could hear my thoughts, Graham looked back at me, older, confident, alive. Oh, serious, reliable, calm and sweet Graham.

Suddenly I was eight again, and he was fourteen, patiently teaching me how to sit on a horse because I insisted I already knew, since my dad was a cowboy. I didn’t know a damn thing. Graham and Brad taught me what little I know about horseback riding.

I set the photo down and walked outside, drawn by memory. I turned toward the stables. I don’t know why. Just maybe thought I could feel near to Graham again that way?

Except… they weren’t there.

No stables. No horses. No hay. No familiar smell.

Just empty space, disturbed earth and smaller construction gear lined up out of view.

I stared — then screamed. A raw, animal sound.

Arms wrapped around me — Anderson murmuring something I couldn’t process — until Luc pulled me into his chest, lifting me effortlessly. I sobbed into him as Anderson explained the horses had passed recently, and the family couldn’t bear to go through the loss again, so they gave up on horse ownership, which had been too much to juggle for Brad’s busy schedule anyway. It was another nonsensical tradition started by his late father which he finally shook off, coming out the other side relieved. Anderson said they were constructing an event space instead, useful, as Mom and Brad often hosted events, fundraisers and such.

But still, I felt like losing Graham twice.

The Final Goodbye

Funeral and Service

The weather mocked us — brilliant blue skies, sunlight sharp enough to sting swollen eyes.

The chapel was small, intimate. I sat beside Luc, his hand warm around mine. He wasn’t the Sovereign Prince of three nations today. He was simply Luc — my anchor.

Whitney sat with her parents and younger brother. Pale. Shaking. She kept getting sick. Me too, girl, I thought numbly fighting off another bout of nausea. I saw mom and Lauren politely gag as well. Coffee and sedatives on an empty stomach were a terrible combination.

Lauren sat near Brad, her face hollow. Just weeks ago she had been newly engaged — Blaine Cameron Jr. had proposed, and she’d said yes. She was planning a move to Del Sol Valley to live with him and do her residency in Brad’s medical center there or in San Sequoia.

But now?

Mom had quietly pulled me aside earlier to make sure I don’t accidently put my foot in my mouth, as Lauren had already ended it with Blaine, leaving him absolutely devastated. She said couldn’t leave Brindleton Bay. She couldn’t leave her father like this. She couldn’t imagine building a life across the country while Brad buried his firstborn. Blaine had tried to plead with her, and when she wouldn’t even listen, things had turned very ugly from the sounds of it. Not surprise. He and his dad, the other Blaine, weren’t exactly famous for handling adverse situations well. I can only imagine the amount of cursing coming down like an avalanche on poor Lauren. It might be extreme, but I did get it. I had grown up always separated from at least one parent, if not both, as well as my twin brother. Didn’t make it easier but I didn’t have a choice. She did. Sorry Blaine.

It wasn’t a small detail. It was a seismic shift — the kind that changes the trajectory of a life.

The service blurred. The preacher’s words floated past me like smoke.

But the pallbearers — that just about send me again.

Nathaniel, my little half-brother, Brad and Mom’s son. Fourteen now, probably not really strong enough for this but he was determined. I knew he had idolized his big (step)brother so much. Opposite him was Brad. Then Anderson. And Donovan Banks, Whitney’s father. Oh God.

Brad whispered “No, no, no…” as they lowered the casket into the grave. A sound no parent should ever make. Poor Brad. He was such a family man, everyone knew how much he loved kids, especially his own. He loved me like his own and we weren’t even blood-related. Why did this have to happen to him. And to Graham? Of all people, him?!

Molly collapsed into her husband’s arms, inconsolable.

Mom read the eulogy with a shaky voice, despite all her stage training — Brad couldn’t. Neither could Lauren or Molly.

Then came the earth. The ritual. The finality.

Mom tossed in a white hydrangea after the shovel of dirt — Graham’s favorite since childhood. There are a lot of hydrangeas all over Brindleton Bay, along with dogwood trees, including on Brad’s property. When Graham was a toddler, he used to hide in the hydrangea bushes and when he got in trouble for it, he would break a flower off and give it to whomever was yelling at him. Somehow, it became a running joke and his signature flower, if men had those.

Whitney stepped forward just ahead of me. She dropped her handful of earth… then bent down and placed something gently on the casket. A photo.

“I will always love you,” she whispered. “And I will carry a part of you into forever.”

She walked away, trembling, sobbing.

My turn.

I lifted the shovel — heavy as grief — and looked down at the photo.

It wasn’t a snapshot.

It was a sonogram.

A strangled, involuntary sound tore out of me — something between a gasp and a sob, sharp enough to cut through the murmuring crowd. Within seconds Mom was at my side, Brad right behind her, Lauren clutching his arm. All three stared down at the sonogram with me, their faces collapsing in fresh, stunned grief as the truth settled over us like a second burial.

Brad leaned closer, blinking hard. His hand trembled as he reached out, picking up the image.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

We all froze.

“Two,” he said again, voice cracking. “Twins. GA 12 weeks and 5 days? Almost 13 weeks along …”

And then, for the first time in his entire medical career — Brad Cunningham, trauma surgeon, Owner and Chairman of the Board of a world-wide medical empire, the man who had held lives in his hands more time than any of us could count — simply fainted at his late son’s grave, as the sonogram slipped from his grasp and drifted like a feather down into the grave, landing softly atop Graham’s coffin.

In Memoriam