“What?” Maisie said. “You speak French now?”
“Geez,” Felix said, “everyone can say thank you in French.”
Great-Uncle Thorne gently placed his special mussel-plucking fork onto the edge of his bowl.
“You really are an unpleasant young woman,” he said. “Penelope has gone to great lengths to get you the most lovely moiré silk for your junior bridesmaid dress, and all you can do is complain. Complain and demand and scowl.”
With that, he resumed eating.
Maisie watched him chew. He chewed like an old man, she decided, which of course he was.
“It’s rude to stare at someone who is eating,” Great-Uncle Thorne said without even looking at her.
“I wish I could just fly away from here,” Maisie announced, even though she didn’t really wish that because then she wouldn’t get to be the lead in The Crucible.
“If you do,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, “please wait until after the wedding.”
Her mother was no help at all. Even though she had been the instigator of the divorce, now that Maisie’s father was getting married, she acted like he had no right to do that.
“Um,” Maisie had reminded her mother, “didn’t you want the dumb divorce in the first place?”
“It’s one thing to want a divorce and to get a divorce and to actually be happier divorced, and it’s another thing to realize that your husband is going to marry another woman,” her mother had said, which made no sense at all to Maisie.
“Ex-husband,” Maisie had said.
“I know,” her mother had agreed with a sigh. “I guess it’s just the reality of the situation.”
Maisie had chalked this up to one of those weird adult things she didn’t understand.
Earlier, Maisie had asked her mother’s opinion of what a junior bridesmaid’s duties were. Did she think they were different than a bridesmaid’s duties? Did junior bridesmaids get to walk down the aisle with grown-up men? Or was there some kind of junior-male thing as well? She imagined someone younger, shorter, in every way more junior than herself. Would she have to hold his arm? Sit with him? Dance with him?
“I really don’t want to discuss your father’s wedding, if that’s okay with you, Maisie,” her mother had said primly.
“Well, then can we discuss this in terms of Great-Uncle Thorne’s wedding, where I am also a junior bridesmaid?” Maisie demanded.
“I have a brief to write,” her mother had said, picking up her briefcase and heading upstairs, which wasn’t an answer; it was an excuse.
As if he’d read her mind, Great-Uncle Thorne said, “Where is your mother? Out with that Fishbaum fellow?”
“She’s working,” Felix said.
“All of a sudden the reality of her divorcing Dad has hit her, and she does not want to talk about it,” Maisie said.
Great-Uncle Thorne looked perplexed.
“I think all the wedding planning is wearing on her,” Felix added.
“Ah,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, nodding. “Ditto Penelope.”
He ate more mussels.
“I’ve done some research,” he said after he rang the bell for the table to be cleared.
“On?” Maisie asked.
“Your friends. Your . . . what’s their surname? Zinger?”
“Ziff,” Felix said.
“Yes, them. The Ziff twins. Amy Pickworth’s descendants.”
He paused.
Maisie and Felix waited.
“As you know, we always assumed that Amy Pickworth met her demise in the Congo.”
They nodded.
“She and Phinneas had gone there to acquire artifacts for The Treasure Chest,” Great-Uncle Thorne continued. “According to my father, they spent the night in a hut with some natives, and in the morning she had vanished. He claims that he searched for her along the river and in the jungle, but not even a trace turned up. Except . . .”
He paused again and began fumbling in his pocket.
“Except?” Maisie asked eagerly.
“Except for this,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, and finally removed from his pocket a piece of heavy vellum paper with two words written on it in faded black ink: gone black A O
“‘Gone black’,” Felix read out loud. “‘A O’.”
“What does that mean?” Maisie asked.
“We assumed of course that it meant they killed her. ‘Gone black’ standing in for imminent death. ‘A O’ her initials. Amy Olivia.”
“How sad,” Felix said softly.
Maisie shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said, thinking out loud. “She had time to write a farewell note? These natives are . . . I don’t know . . . throwing spears at her or getting ready to eat her or shrink her head and she has time to write that note in that fancy handwriting?”
Great-Uncle Thorne looked at her, impressed. “Bravo. You have to be right. Amy Pickworth wrote that note with care, I’d say. Under duress, even excellent penmanship would waver.”
Felix picked up the note and began to read it silently, his lips moving as he did.
“But what else could it mean?” Maisie wondered.