Ivy took a beat to absorb that information, then locked her hand around Adam’s elbow and pulled him to the side of the room for a hushed conversation. In less than a minute, Ivy was on her phone, barking out commands.
Glancing back over her shoulder at me, she lowered her voice. “Sorry, Tess. Something’s come up. When I have an update on Gramps, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, Bodie can take you shopping for anything you need.”
I should have been grateful for the reprieve—but really, it was just a reminder that Ivy could and would ditch me at the drop of a hat. I might not have known what my sister’s job was, or why news of some guy’s heart attack had sent her into hyperdrive, or even why the name Theo Marquette sounded vaguely familiar in the first place. But the one thing I did know was that Adam was right—Ivy never should have brought me here.
It was only a matter of time before she dropped me for good.
I didn’t say a word when Ivy shut herself in her office, or when she left the house, power walking like the devil was on her heels. I let Bodie make me pancakes. It wasn’t until later, after I’d eaten four of them, that I realized suddenly where I’d heard the name Theo Marquette before.
Theodore Marquette was the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.
CHAPTER 6
Ivy was still in crisis mode the next morning, but—lucky me—she managed to carve half an hour out of her schedule to take me to school. In the back of my mind, I’d expected the illustrious Hardwicke School to look like Hogwarts. Needless to say, I was severely disappointed. The Upper School—because heaven forbid they call it a high school—looked like nothing so much as a granola bar turned on its side.
“The facilities here are just fantastic,” Ivy told me as we walked down a stone path toward the historic home that served as the administrative building. “The Maxwell Art Center has one of the largest auditoriums in the city. The Upper School just added a state-of-the-art robotics lab. And you should see the new gymnasium.”
I gazed out at the nearby playing fields. The wind sifted through my hair, lifting a few strands upward, and for a moment, looking out at the massive stretch of green in front of me, I could almost forget where I was.
“Now or never.” Ivy’s voice brought me back. “And you’re not allowed to say never.”
“You don’t have to come with me,” I told her, hooking my thumbs lazily through my belt loops. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
As if to accentuate the point, Ivy’s pocket began to vibrate.
“It can wait,” Ivy told me, but I could practically see her fingertips twitching to answer it.
“Go ahead.” I gestured to the phone. “Maybe there’s an update on Justice Marquette’s condition. Or maybe the president has a head cold. You get calls for that, too, right?”
Ivy looked up at the sky. I wondered if she was asking God for patience. “That moment,” she said under her breath, “when you realize that sarcasm is hereditary.”
Before I could formulate a suitable reply, the door to the administrative building opened, and my sister and I were ushered inside.
“Ms. Kendrick.” The headmaster’s assistant had suburban-soccer-mom hair. She was wearing a peach twinset, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to offer us lemonade. Or cookies. Or possibly both. “And you must be Theresa.”
“She goes by Tess,” Ivy said, as if I were five years old and incapable of speaking for myself.
“Tess it is, then,” the woman replied gamely. “We were so sorry to hear about your grandfather, dear.”
I couldn’t help feeling gut-punched. I’d spent the past year hiding my grandfather’s condition. Ivy, apparently, had taken out a billboard announcing it to the world.
“But we’re very happy you’ll be joining us here at Hardwicke,” the woman continued, oblivious to my train of thought. “I’m Mrs. Perkins. If you’ll wait just a moment, Headmaster Raleigh will be—”
A compact man with dark hair and a beard made his way around the corner. Mrs. Perkins cut off her previous sentence with a smile. “And here he is now.”
“Ivy.” The headmaster greeted Ivy by name and reached both of his hands out to take hers.
“Headmaster Raleigh,” she returned, in a tone that made me think that under typical circumstances, she’d leave the headmaster off. “I appreciate you making this happen.”
“Yes, well . . .” Headmaster Raleigh plucked his glasses off his face and began polishing them against his shirt. “We think that you—and Tess—will fit in with the Hardwicke family quite well.”
“I know my way around Hardwicke,” Ivy replied, in a tone that made me wonder what experience she’d had with the school—and why the headmaster looked uncomfortable with the reminder. “This is the right place for Tess.”
“And, of course,” the headmaster added, “you can expect us to respect your sister’s privacy. Just as we respect the privacy of all of our students.”
There was subtext there—a warning.