A lingering hope pricked the back of her mind. That maybe Walt would come today.
Lillie greeted her and after showing their ticket booklet for entrance, they crossed through the Exposition turnstiles. Lillie looked tired and a little gaunt. Her hair was pulled up beneath her hat, her embroidered gown and gathered skirts draped to accentuate her figure.
Grace’s stomach chose that moment to growl noisily.
Lillie laughed. “That was rather monstrous,” she teased.
Grace smiled, laughing it off. But Lillie caught something in her face. “Wait. When was the last time you ate something?”
Grace swallowed, her mouth dry. She had promised she wasn’t going to lie to Lillie, not anymore.
“Our lunch yesterday. I may have… recently run out of money,” she admitted. Her pride made the words feel like nettles on her tongue.
“Grace Covington!” Lillie said, looking horrified. “Are you saying that you would rather go hungry than ask your own flesh and blood for help? I’ve never been more offended in my life.”
“Be gentle,” Grace said. “My pride already feels quite wounded, and you know how beastly I get when I’m hungry.”
Lillie marched them through the fairgrounds to one of the two restaurants flanking the Cascades and ordered Grace a feast. They had steaming coffee and popovers with sweet raspberry jelly. Thick slices of maple bacon, cinnamon buns, salty smoked salmon, and plates of fresh fruits arranged like flowers. Grace ate until she was stuffed.
When Lillie paid the check, she also slipped a coin purse across the table.
It was flush with cash.
“You’re looking into things for Oliver,” Lillie said. “Let me at least pay you for that service.”
Grace was drowsily full. “Lillie—”
“Please let me do this. Money is a small thing for me, but it’s a big thing to be able to help you.”
Grace sighed and tucked the purse into her bag.
“Thank you,” she said. “This will quite literally buy me several more days.”
“Good.” It was the first time Lillie looked truly happy in the last week.
They stood, and Grace took Lillie’s arm. With her hunger quenched and her cousin at her side, Grace could almost forget all the rest of theirtroubles. As they walked, her eye caught on the front page of the newFair’s Fare.
The seller seemed prepared to repeat his threat from the other day, but she didn’t give him a chance.
She had already seen that Harriet Forbes would be buried tomorrow.
“The funeral is at First Lutheran,” Lillie said, noticing her interest.
“Will you go?” Grace asked.
“Mother, of all people, insists we should,” Lillie said, holding her parasol so that Grace could join her beneath it.
“She’s found her compassion at last?”
“I’m not sure that’s a bone she was born with. No, she thinks it will look worse if we don’t go.”
“Ah,” Grace said. Children were laughing and flying kites in the breeze. As she passed the lagoons and the gondolas that were floating beneath the Cascades and Festival Hall, Grace made plans to be at Harriet’s funeral herself. She wanted to say goodbye, to pay her respects to a girl who had been like a brief, bright flare in her life.
And because Grace had a sneaking feeling the murderer would be there, too.
“It does grow tiresome, living life not by doing what is right, but by the filter of how it appears to other people,” Lillie sighed. “Ah, Earnest!”
Grace’s face promptly heated when she saw Earnest. He was leaning against a lamppost, and he appeared to be waiting for them.
