Then she made her way back to Santiago. “For your trouble,” she said, handing him a dollar. “And… could you send the message here, too? Just in case.”
She wrote down the address to the artist’s studio.
“Thank you,” she said, and hurried back down to the ground to join her party.
Lillie was dressed in a silk day dress when Grace stepped into the Carters’ foyer later that afternoon. There was barely any color in her face. Her dress spilled around her in panels of embroidered flowers, while real ones were placed elegantly in her hair.
Lillie never cared what she looked like, unless she was really sad. And then she did it to cheer herself.
The sight of her in her fancy dress, sitting alone in the dim parlor, made Grace’s heart fissure, a thousand delicate cracks.
“It’s good of you to come,” Lillie said bravely. She rose to greet them.
“Where’s Frannie?”
“She couldn’t make it,” Theo lied. “Though she wanted to.”
In truth, when they had met up with Frannie and Copper again outside of the Pike’s “Creation” ride, she had forbidden Earnest to go to the Carter house.
“It isn’t good for you to be seen with them,” she said, pulling him aside. “Why do you do this? Put our family name at risk?”
He had jerked his arm away. “People remember who was there in their time of need. She was there for me. I’d like to be there for her.”
But Frannie looked nervous. “Society will turn on them,” she said. “You’ll see.”
Copper steered Frannie away from Earnest. “I’ll see her home,” Copper whispered.
“Better you than me,” Earnest said angrily.
When he turned back to the group, he had muttered, “Is it possible to love someone and dislike them all at once?”
“It’s more common than you’d think,” Theodore said, catching Grace’s eye with a dark smirk in a way that she was horrified to discover made lightning strike through her body.
She did not look at him again until they were standing together in the Carters’ parlor.
“You were at the fair?” Lillie asked, looking at them in confusion. Unable to imagine that they could go and have fun, when her world had abruptly stopped turning.
Grace stepped forward and took her hand.
“We’re looking into Harriet’s death,” she said quietly. She met her cousin’s red-rimmed eyes. “Anything that might exonerate Oliver. We have a few leads. And we’ll go visit Oliver tomorrow. Would you like to come?”
Lillie’s gaze rose to meet Grace’s. “My parents can’t know,” she whispered.
“Has that ever stopped us before?” Grace asked.
Flushing, Lillie reached out for Theodore’s hand, too. Looking surprised, if not a little confused, he stepped forward and took it, so that they formed a broken chain of sorts. They just needed Oliver there to complete it.
And for the first time, standing in the fading light, Grace felt a fierce swell of belief that this small, unlikely group might actually do it.
CHAPTER TEN
MAY 6, 1904
Three Days After the Murder
THEODORE’S CARRIAGE STOPPEDoutside of the artist’s studio at ten past ten the next morning. It was gray and drizzly, and Grace pulled down her hat. She had dressed conservatively for the visit: a crisp white blouse, unadorned with lace or embroidery. A wool skirt to keep out the chill, a gray hat with a spray of white flowers. If Lillie had been in a better mood, she might have called them drab. But Grace knew that the last thing she needed to do that day was draw attention to herself.
The door to the carriage opened and Theodore helped her inside to join Lillie and Earnest.
