“This one had been added,” he said, holding it up, still swaddled in its wrapping. “Someone left it on the table during the festivities.”
“Well, what is it?” Rhys asked immediately. “What does it say?”
“It says ‘Felicitations,’” Hattie answered, frowning. “That is all.”
Errol held his hand out, a polite and patient request to see the thing. Once he had it, he carefully pulled the tissue paper away and turned it over in his hands. “It also says Brighton,” he pointed out. “It has a sketch on it.”
“I told you,” Malcolm said, a snapping, impatient quality to his voice. “I told you I saw her.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Rhys replied, frowning. “You didn’t.”
Mal rounded on him with a glower. “I’m not the liar here.”
“Oh, please,” said Rhys with a yawn. “You gamble. You do business. Your entire being is lies.”
“All right,” said Monica in a calming voice, stepping between the two. “Let’s not bicker. Whom did you see, Mal?”
He didn’t answer, only blinking at her like he’d been caught doing something naughty.
Hattie was watching him, her heart thick in her chest. She wanted him to say it. And she didn’t.
“I saw her too,” Elias said, from next to her, drawing everyone’s attention around. “On the shore.”
Hattie stared at him, her hand reaching out of its own accord to find his. “You did?”
He nodded, turning to meet her eye. “During the eulogy.”
“Eulogy,” Libba muttered. “Kangaroos.”
“Libba,” Ruby snapped. “Not now.”
“You think she is not only alive, but in Brighton?” Errol said, still staring down at the card in his hands. “You think she came to her own funeral and didn’t make herself known?”
“I don’t know,” Elias confessed with a shrug. “I don’t know what to think. It’s like you said. She was always unknowable.”
For a time, they all simply existed in the silence.
Errol passed the card around, hand to hand, and let each of the wards examine it.
“It doesn’t look like her handwriting,” Rhys said.
“It isn’t handwriting,” Monica pointed out. “It is calligraphy. More like a drawing than script. It wouldn’t match her natural penmanship.”
“No one of note was ever known for their penmanship,” Hattie said quietly, her healed hand seeming to ache from a burn that had long, long healed.
“Where did shego?” Libba asked, shaking her head. “When she initially left the house seven years ago. Where was she going? Did she tell any of you?”
One by one, they shook their heads.
Only Errol looked uncertain, frowning down at his hands as he sought out the memory. “She had her things packed,” he said. “She told us she would be away for a while. She reduced the staff like she would for a longer trip. But that was all.”
“How much did she pack?” Ruby asked. “How much did she take?”
Errol shook his head and shrugged. “Trunks, like always. She left from the wharf. I should have asked more questions.”
“It never should have been only you who was here to do so,” Malcolm said, frowning. “That wasn’t fair.”
Elias was looking at Hattie; she could feel him doing it, could feel somehow, without a single word spoken, the weight of what he was thinking. She turned and met his eye, considering it, considering that she might say what she had told him once in confidence. And somehow, she knew that he would not mind if she did or did not.
