She’s great at her job. She’s just…not Agatha.
Lark’s grandmother is what you’d see if you were to imagine a stereotypical housekeeper: in her later years, round, cheerful and sharply witty. She was basically Betty White fromGolden Girls.
Melinda, on the other hand, ismaybeforty, but has also had a ton of "work" done: lip fillers, Botox, I’m pretty sure a minor face lift, anddefinitelya boob job. She also prides herself on being very fashionable, even if she’s dusting the library or cooking Dad some extravagant meal.
“Good evening, Melinda,” I say with a smile.
Her brows pinch slightly as she stands backlit in the door to her quarters. Her eyes slide up to my pink hair for a minute, which I know she hates, before she refocuses on my face. “What can I do for you?”
“I, uh…have a bit of an odd question for you.”
She frowns. “Yes?”
The garden apartment where Melinda lives is also where Lark and Agatha lived while they were still alive. It’s ahugeapartment by New York City standards, with three bedrooms, three full baths, a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room. The three of them were able to comfortably share it, put it that way.
I have vague flashbacks from that somber, nightmarish time after I was brought home, of men I didn’t recognize just…clearing the space of most of Lark's and Agatha's things. The couch that Lark and I used to sit on while watching horror movies we werewaytoo young for. The framed Basquiat print that hung in the dining room.
Weeks later, I was able to bring myself to go into Lark’s room and pack up whatever was left. But it wasn’t much. Just a few books, some vinyl records, and Boo, the little purple stuffed elephant she’d had on her bed since she was two.
But I’m not here tonight looking for mementos or memories. I’m looking for answers that back then I maybe didn’t even know to lookfor.
I clear my throat and smile at Melinda. “I was wondering if you knew if any of the Peltiers' things were still stored here. Like, anything that the movers may have missed, or you packed up?—”
“There are a few boxes in Agatha’s old room,” Melinda says crisply. “I…” Her usually calm demeanor breaks for a second as she glances down at the floor. “I wasn’t sure if they had any distant family who might come looking for…well…anything.”
She smiles a very tight, Botox smile and places a manicured hand on my arm.
“Come, I’ll show you.”
My heart stills.
The first three boxes I opened didn’t have anything by way of clues in them. Some old knitting supplies, a few cookbooks, clothes, trinkets. But when I get to the fourth box, I freeze.
“Heartbreak” is written in messy, jangled sharpie on the top of it. The B is backwards. I poke my head out of the room and catch Melinda’s eye as she sips a cup of tea in the kitchen.
“Find what you were looking for?” she asks politely.
“Do you know about thisheartbreakbox?”
Her face clouds. “Agatha,” she says quietly. “The poor thing packed it in a moment of lucidity a few days before she passed. I believe it’s some things from Lark’s room.” She winces. “I… I know how close you two were. I’m sorry, Dove.”
I bite back the bitterness in my mouth and smile tightly. “Thanks, Melinda.”
There’s not much in the box—some more records, Lark’s old bronze and green desk lamp that I remember so well, and a fewphotos of her and me that I remember being tacked to her wall. Those hit me hard.
But then I see it, and my breath catches.
Holy shit.
I remember the little blue bookvividly, if for no other reason than it was theonepart of herself that she kept hidden even from me.
Her diary.
A twinge ripples through me as I reach into the box for it, barely touching it, as if doing so would dishonor her even in death.
But I also want answers. Ineedanswers when it comes to her and Bane. I have to know what I’m getting into with him.
Why he’s so fixated on me, and why I both flinch from and ache for his rough, villainous touch.
