She took a gulp of breath, shaking her head. “I never thought she was dead,” she said suddenly. “I never felt she was gone.”
The others heard it. They looked at her.
“No,” said Ruby, frowning. “Nor I. I tried to grieve, but… It felt dishonest.”
“We cannot assume that she is alive just because of a phantom bit of art,” Rhys said, his voice breaking. He shook his head, digging his fingers into his hair, and gave a humorless laugh. “It is not that I can’t believe in miracles, but by God, I know how easy they are to fake.”
“We don’t know anything,” Errol agreed, placing a hand on Rhys’s shoulder. “We can only suspect and wonder.”
Libba sniffled, rubbing impatiently at her eye with the heel of her hand and turning her head. “Fine,” she said. “We will wonder. For a year, as she commanded.”
“A year, yes,” Monica repeated, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps something will happen when the year has ended, if we meet our end of the bargain.”
“Perhaps nothing will happen at all,” Rhys said sternly. “We must be prepared for that too,chwaer. Just as prepared.”
“Agreed,” said Monica, softening as she studied his face. “Agreed.”
In the end, they wrapped the card back in its tissue but did not send it to the master suite for safekeeping.
Instead, it remained in the parlor, propped on the hearth, facing the sun.
Just in case.
Chapter Thirty-One
Elias could notsleep.
And judging from the amount of rolling about that was happening on the far side of the bed, Hattie couldn’t, either.
It was odd, after spending so much of the day exhausted, to have any trouble at all, but he imagined they both had quite a lot on their minds, and for a time, he even thought he oughtn’t interrupt her thinking, as disruptive as it appeared to be.
Finally, she sighed, flopped onto her side, and squinted at him in the dark.
“You are awake,” she declared, as though he’d done something amiss.
He chuckled, turning his head on the pillow to face her. “So are you.”
“Yes, well,” she said sourly, “I am not the one who enjoys torment.”
He laughed fully at that, moving to roll over to face her and prop his head onto his hand. “When I said that,” he told her, “I did not meanalltorment. Only one very specific kind.”
“I don’t believe you,” she returned. “You enjoyed that puzzle box, and that was torture carved in wood.”
He laughed again, harder this time, his chest shaking with the action as she glared. He could not help it.
“Libba and Ruby took it,” he told her. “After we reassembled it. They are going to try next.”
“Fine,” said Hattie, flinging herself back onto the pillows and staring at the canopy ahead. “Let them. I never shall touch the thing again.”
“Hattie,” he said seriously, “I think I love you best when you are having a strop.”
She only hissed in response, which made him grin so wide, his face ached.
“Especially,” he added, “when it is my fault.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, crossing her arms, which looked perfectly absurd, prone as she was and haloed in shuttered moonlight. “You are insufferable.”
“Am I?” he asked, flattered despite himself. “I always thought the same of you.”
