Read Online A Dress to Die For by Christine DeMaio-Rice - Free Book Online
Authors: Christine DeMaio-Rice
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“Who took these?”
“I did.”
Laura looked up at her mother. “You went out?”
“Sweetheart, please. You think I dropped dead when I had you two? That entourage took us out every night they were here. A month. And what fun people.”
Laura looked back at the pictures, catching it then, out of the corner of her eye, a shape in the cheek and chin, the curve of the eyelid. She gasped. She could never unsee him once he revealed himself. “Ruby looks like him.”
“You have his nose.”
Laura devoured the pictures, seeking every hint of his face and body, trying to piece together a man from bits of emulsified paper. “Holy crap. He was hot.”
“Probably still is, for all I know.”
“So you were hanging out. You were friends, and he was a dad, for whatever that was worth. What happened?”
“Brunico happened.”
**
Brunico had inspired Rat Pack songs and black-and-white films over the decades, solidifying the tiny South American island nation’s reputation as a world-class destination for imprudent carousing, gambling, and money laundering.
The happenings there had been the downfall of many an actor and actress. An inaccessible Las Vegas, a godless Sodom, a den, a haven, an unspoiled blossom on a perfect ocean, Brunico had three months of stunning, perfect weather and nine months of bitter, wet cold. The island lay just east of Argentina, far enough away to be its own little kingdom and close enough to get supplies for a hospital qualified to treat hangovers, broken limbs, small lacerations, and unwanted pregnancies.
During the hundred years following its discovery by a lost beaver-hunting team in 1787, it was a prison colony, proving yet again that the after-dinner social solution to the world’s problems—putting all the people you don’t like on an island and ignoring them—never works and will garner either a prosperous democracy or an abandoned hunk of rock on the shoreline. Brunico stood as an example of the latter until it was purchased in 1880 by the Forseigh family as an investment in the future of the island’s chief asset: peat moss.
Herge Forseigh, the family scion and next in line to inherit ownership, noticed that the island’s proximity from Argentina and the criminal diaspora that called the place home made it a perfect destination for illegal activity. After spending four years of his life being brainwashed by English Calvinists in university, he decided that wealth was fine if one only wanted to influence people’s actions, but righteousness would rule the hand and the soul, as well. His father’s death wasn’t going to transfer just ownership of the island, but the rule as well.
That was managed at a deathbed signing, where the elder Forseigh made himself high prince, closed off the currency to foreign trade, made Christ the eternal king, and pronounced an unbreakable monarchy with no parliament. Anyone who didn’t like it could leave. No one did. The rock of an island produced both peat moss and blind loyalty in seemingly unlimited quantities.
Thirty years later, everyone on the island wore brown, herded sheep, harvested moss from the riverbed, ate turnip soup, and behaved. Then the bottom fell out of the peat moss market. They could harvest their calloused little hands off. They could ship it three times a week instead of two. They could pray. Yet nothing made a difference. The money that the Central Bank switched to the Brunican currency, the tonk, was always the same.
Herge Forseigh, who wasn’t entirely without a heart, hated to see his people starve. He ate peat moss soup to share their yoke of hunger, which any idiot on the island could have told him was a very bad idea. He took on a spore from eating the soup and died three months later after a crippling bout of dysentery and the eruption of crusty boils on the palms of his hands.
He left behind a wife, three adult daughters, and an eight-year-old son. The son inherited the throne because not only was Herge a
“I did.”
Laura looked up at her mother. “You went out?”
“Sweetheart, please. You think I dropped dead when I had you two? That entourage took us out every night they were here. A month. And what fun people.”
Laura looked back at the pictures, catching it then, out of the corner of her eye, a shape in the cheek and chin, the curve of the eyelid. She gasped. She could never unsee him once he revealed himself. “Ruby looks like him.”
“You have his nose.”
Laura devoured the pictures, seeking every hint of his face and body, trying to piece together a man from bits of emulsified paper. “Holy crap. He was hot.”
“Probably still is, for all I know.”
“So you were hanging out. You were friends, and he was a dad, for whatever that was worth. What happened?”
“Brunico happened.”
**
Brunico had inspired Rat Pack songs and black-and-white films over the decades, solidifying the tiny South American island nation’s reputation as a world-class destination for imprudent carousing, gambling, and money laundering.
The happenings there had been the downfall of many an actor and actress. An inaccessible Las Vegas, a godless Sodom, a den, a haven, an unspoiled blossom on a perfect ocean, Brunico had three months of stunning, perfect weather and nine months of bitter, wet cold. The island lay just east of Argentina, far enough away to be its own little kingdom and close enough to get supplies for a hospital qualified to treat hangovers, broken limbs, small lacerations, and unwanted pregnancies.
During the hundred years following its discovery by a lost beaver-hunting team in 1787, it was a prison colony, proving yet again that the after-dinner social solution to the world’s problems—putting all the people you don’t like on an island and ignoring them—never works and will garner either a prosperous democracy or an abandoned hunk of rock on the shoreline. Brunico stood as an example of the latter until it was purchased in 1880 by the Forseigh family as an investment in the future of the island’s chief asset: peat moss.
Herge Forseigh, the family scion and next in line to inherit ownership, noticed that the island’s proximity from Argentina and the criminal diaspora that called the place home made it a perfect destination for illegal activity. After spending four years of his life being brainwashed by English Calvinists in university, he decided that wealth was fine if one only wanted to influence people’s actions, but righteousness would rule the hand and the soul, as well. His father’s death wasn’t going to transfer just ownership of the island, but the rule as well.
That was managed at a deathbed signing, where the elder Forseigh made himself high prince, closed off the currency to foreign trade, made Christ the eternal king, and pronounced an unbreakable monarchy with no parliament. Anyone who didn’t like it could leave. No one did. The rock of an island produced both peat moss and blind loyalty in seemingly unlimited quantities.
Thirty years later, everyone on the island wore brown, herded sheep, harvested moss from the riverbed, ate turnip soup, and behaved. Then the bottom fell out of the peat moss market. They could harvest their calloused little hands off. They could ship it three times a week instead of two. They could pray. Yet nothing made a difference. The money that the Central Bank switched to the Brunican currency, the tonk, was always the same.
Herge Forseigh, who wasn’t entirely without a heart, hated to see his people starve. He ate peat moss soup to share their yoke of hunger, which any idiot on the island could have told him was a very bad idea. He took on a spore from eating the soup and died three months later after a crippling bout of dysentery and the eruption of crusty boils on the palms of his hands.
He left behind a wife, three adult daughters, and an eight-year-old son. The son inherited the throne because not only was Herge a
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