I smooth my hair back, rubbing my temples as the pressure increases and the memory of the seashore man surfaces. Perhaps this is the way it’s supposed to be, AJ disappearing.
I collapse into the chair as the room spins.
“Twodoctors?” Sabine says, her voice rising again. “Is one of you not intelligent enough to see she’s—” Sabine’s gaze locks with mine through the cracked door.
I push open the door. “I’m what?”
Sabine’s glittering, up-slanted eyes don’t change. Her lips press together then bloom out. “Singular and interesting.” She smiles. “We were discussing your condition, Merryn. Your memory loss. And how it might inhibit your ability to manage—”
“My condition has no bearing on the will.” She’s having me declared mad. What else requires two physicians? The visitors—four police officers and one alienist with a clipboard—observe me. “I’m exactly as I was when Lady St. Laurent made me trustee.”
Sabine is very still. “She wished to see you cared for, of course,” she says, “and you will be. I’ll see to a small fund for—”
“And Cecil?” I keep my voice steady, direct.
She steps closer, placing gentle hands on my arms. “The boy will be cared for, and you, of course. Mama would want that. You were so dear to her.” A flicker of a smile and I see the truth. Shewillhave exactly what she wants. There’s no stopping Sabine St. Laurent. “I’ll see to your care personally.”
“You’ll nurse me yourself, will you? Bring my food, change my chamber pot?”
She stiffens at my vulgarity then pats my cheek as she whispers, “I will not cast my mother’s pearls before swine, you ungrateful lout.”
I fight for self-control. “They were her pearls, and she may cast them where she will.” I pat her cheek back, a bit harder.
Her hand snaps up and clamps on my wrist. “I have only begun to fight, Merryn Forsythe, and you don’t wish to see all the weapons in my arsenal.”
Those words click into place like thethunkof pins as a safe is unlocked. Sabine St. Laurent belongs to this money, much as it belongs to her, and she is a force. Her network of admirers is a wall I cannot penetrate.
I step back and collide with a small human. “Cecil.” I anchor him beside me. “I thought I told you—”
“I don’t listen well,” he whispers back. “Remember?”
My own words echo back at me. An odd mix of amusement and fear twists in me. I rise, hand to his back. “If you’ll excuse us—”
“He’s not going anywhere with you,” says Sabine, her voice low. Commanding.
Sabine gives a quick nod to the police officers and they surround Cecil, prying him away from me. He doesn’t scream this time, but his tiny twig form goes rigid. He clings to me with his eyes the way his arms did, and he waits for me to swoop in with some great rescue—the tumble and roll out of the path of this oncoming automobile.
Like a powerful undertow, that compulsion to lunge for him again sweeps over me. I open my arms and they block me—three of them—as if they were prepared to restrain my hysteria. The uniformed men form a wall between me and the boy who’s holding his bravery together by a thread. But his right shoulder tics a bit, which means the tears will come soon.
Keep calm. No wild demands. And definitely no screaming of any kind. “I’d like to leave, please. You cannot stop this boy’s guardian from taking him.”
“I’m afraid you’re not his guardian anymore, Miss Forsythe.”
A cool panic washes over me. “Of course I am.”
Sabine’s smile is pitying. “I’ve put in for a temporary order to become, as next of kin, his guardian.”
“Have you?” I’m steady. Not trembling at all. “Will this order be granted?”
Her smile widens, and I realize it already has been.
“You cannot leave with him before the competency hearing, miss,” says one of the men.
“But who will—”
“I’ve enrolled him at Cheltenham Prep,” says Sabine. “He’ll be leaving for the Michaelmas term directly.”
“No!” Cecil shouts and crumples at the men’s feet.
