If the funeral service had been full of dignitaries and officials, the wake was a more personal affair: neighbors, family, friends. As soon as Ivy was distracted, I ducked out of the house. I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t my grief.
Outside, the air smelled like fresh-cut grass and forthcoming rain. The justice’s house was easily as large as Ivy’s, but he had more land. Staring out at it, I tried the number Ivy had given me for my grandfather. A nurse answered and put me on with Gramps.
It wasn’t a good day.
When I eventually said good-bye and hung up, it felt like leaving him all over again. I started walking, aching with a constant, uncompromising sense of loss. I didn’t realize how far away from the house I’d wandered until I noticed that I wasn’t alone.
“Where are we going?”
I turned to see the little girl who’d been glued to Mrs. Marquette’s side at the funeral. Her dark hair had been liberated from a headband. She was wearing a black dress.
“Aren’t you supposed to be back at the house?” I asked her.
Her chin jutted out. “This is my grandpa’s house. I get to go wherever I want.”
“Fair enough.” I stared at her for a moment, then kicked off my shoes. “You want to ditch yours?”
“We can do that?” She sounded skeptical.
“It’s your grandpa’s house. You can do whatever you want.”
Accepting my logic, she sat down in the dirt and peeled off the Mary Janes.
“You’re supposed to tell me you’re sorry about my grandpa,” she told me.
“Do you really want me to?” I asked her.
She pulled at the tips of her hair. She was older than I’d originally thought—maybe eight or nine. “No,” she said finally. “But you’re supposed to anyway.”
I said nothing. She plucked a blade of grass and stared at it so hard I thought her gaze might set it on fire.
“You got a pond around here?” I asked her.
“Nope. But there are dogs. Two of them,” she added, lest I mistakenly think she’d said dog, singular.
I nodded, which seemed to satisfy her.
She plucked another piece of grass before casting a sideways glance at me. “What would we do with a pond?”
I shrugged. “Skip rocks?”
Twenty minutes later, Thalia Marquette had mastered the art of skipping invisible rocks across a nonexistent pond.
“If it isn’t two lovely ladies, off by their lonesome.”
I turned, surprised to see Asher here—until I remembered that Emilia had attempted to hire me to keep him out of trouble until his best friend got back to school to take over the job.
His best friend, Henry. As in Henry Marquette.
“We’re skipping rocks,” Thalia informed Asher. “This is Asher,” she told me. “He’s okay.” She smiled.
Undeterred by the lack of either rocks or a body of water on which to skip them, Asher plopped down beside us on the ground. “I,” he said tartly, “am a master rock skipper.”
Ten minutes later, the cavalry arrived. The cavalry did not look particularly pleased to see us sprawled in the grass.
“You’re not very good at this, Asher.” Thalia was blissfully unaware of her brother’s arrival. Asher shot Henry a lazy grin as he skipped another imaginary stone.
“Five skips,” he declared archly.
I leaned back on my palms. “Two,” I countered. Thalia giggled.
“Surrounded by vipers on all sides,” Asher sighed. He turned to Henry. “Back a fellow up here, my good man.”
Asher’s “good man” looked as if he was considering having the lot of us committed.
“Henry, watch!” Thalia ordered, unaware of—or possibly used to—the dour expression on her brother’s face. She flicked her wrist.
“Excellent form,” Asher commented. “It’s too bad the stone got eaten by an alligator after the second bounce.”
Thalia slugged him. “It did not!”
“Sadly, it did.”
“Henry! Tell him it didn’t.”
There was a beat of silence. “I see no alligators,” Henry allowed.
“Et tu, Henry?” Asher held a hand to his chest. Henry didn’t bat an eye. He was clearly used to the dramatics.
“You’re not wearing shoes,” he told his sister. His gaze went to Asher’s bare feet and then, briefly, to mine. “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?”
“We took them off,” Thalia clarified helpfully. Asher’s lips twitched slightly.
“Why did you take them off?” Henry went with a more specific question this time.
“Does a person really need a reason to take off their shoes?” I asked.
Henry’s head swiveled toward me. Yes, his disapproving eyebrows seemed to say. Yes, a person does.
“Tess,” Asher said with a flourish, “meet Henry. Henry, meet Tess.”
“We’ve met.” Henry clipped the words. I thought met was a pretty generous description of our encounter outside the church.
“I appreciate your sister’s assistance,” Henry told me stiffly, “but I think it’s time for the two of you to go.” Henry Marquette clearly didn’t want Ivy here—and just as clearly, he didn’t want me near his sister. He inclined his head slightly, staring down at me. “Don’t you agree?” The words were issued more like an order than a question.
I stood, brushing the grass off my legs. “You know, I think I do.”