As usual, I get dressed before breakfast. It’s what I grew up doing, and breaking a long-ingrained habit doesn’t just feel alien; it feels plain wrong. I picked out a midi-length green polka-dot dress with short sleeves and a thin brown belt. After slipping into a pair of brown sandals, I braided my hair and came down to eat.
There are days I want to pad down the stairs with unbrushed teeth, tangled hair, and wearing a scruffy pair of ugly PJs. The Harrington in me, or maybe it’s my mother’s voice demanding perfection, won’t let me. Maybe one day I’ll silence my mother’s voice, but it is not this day.
“The dining room,” I tell Veronica.
She nods. “I’ll have everything set up for you there, Miss.”
I release a quiet sigh at her refusal to call me by name. It’s been a month since I walked out of the games room after Archer’s terrifying words scared me out of leaving this house, and, as usual, there is no trace of my scent matches. If I didn’toccasionally hear the sound of their laughter or footsteps on the stairs, I’d assume that I lived in this house on my own.
As she walks into the kitchen, I head for the dining room, my preferred eating place. With my sister living full time at Haven Academy, where students aren’t allowed to keep cell phones, and my parents doing whatever kept them so busy they had nannies raise River and me, Veronica is my only friend in the world.
I try not to think about how pathetic that is.
With eight chairs in the dining room to choose from, I pick one that will give me a view of the garden through the double patio doors, so I have something to look at as I eat my breakfast. I’ve been here long enough now not to expect any company for meals.
Veronica walks in carrying a large silver tray and sets it on the table beside me. It’s my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast with cherry jam, and sliced melon, along with a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
“Enjoy, Miss,” she says as she places it down in front of me.
“Thank you, Veronica.”
She picks up the silver tray and leaves me to eat alone. I asked her to stay once. I was that desperate for company, I’d have talked to a cat if there had been one around. She smiled sympathetically and said, “It would not be right for me to do that.”
I apologized, and she’d left me to eat alone. I haven’t dared ask her again.
Despite my belly grumbling from having picked at the fish she served me for dinner last night, I play with my breakfast. I should eat, but I have no interest in food. I’m too restless to want to sit still.
After three bites, I get up from my chair and wander over to the doors when a figure outside catches my eye.
I’d thought it was one ofthem.
My scent matches.
I don’t know where they go, what they do, or even where they sleep. It’s as if they spend their days avoiding me.
The gardener, a broad-shouldered olive-skinned man in dark green pants, a green t-shirt, and brown mid-calf-length boots, is watering roses.
I watch him for a bit, curious about where he stays. In my parents' house, the servants lived in the servants' quarters on the third floor. I got used to seeing them every day, learning a bit about them, or as much about their lives as they would want to share with a curious, sheltered omega.
Here, it’s different.
The servants aren’t an extended part of the family.
Veronica is there when I need something from her, and she keeps the house clean and tidy, but I know nothing about her. When I ask about her family, she gently but firmly turns the conversation back to me.
This is the first time I’ve even seen the gardener. Does he live in the house, or does he come every day to work on the gardens and then leave?
I chew on my lip, my eyes lingering on him. He might talk to me, at least for a bit, turning another lonely day into one where at leastsomethinghappens.
I glance at my barely touched breakfast, and push the garden doors open and step outside to sate my curiosity.
“You spend a lot of time alone.”
Startled, I jerk my gaze up from the grass, meeting the gardener’s brown stare.
I’d come outside to ask the gardener about himself when I remembered Veronica’s polite refusal to be anything other than a housekeeper to me. Not wanting to be rejected again, I’d sat down feet away to toy with a blade of grass instead.
The gardener must have finished pruning the roses and wondered what I was doing sitting on the grass, staring at nothing. At least it’s a nice, sunny morning, so I’m getting some sun even if I failed to start a conversation.
