Letitia looked away, while Isadora frowned slightly.
He set down the letter. “Letitia.”
“Where is she?” Letitia asked. Her expression was not the combative one he was accustomed to. It was something quieter than that and considerably harder to interpret. “Oh, I’ll tell you. She’s gone to Beatrice’s. With a trunk. She kissed me goodbye and told me to give you time, but I can’t.” A pause. “I want to know why she had to go.”
William said nothing.
“She said it wasn’t about us,” Letitia continued. “So it’s about you.”
“Letitia, please–”
“Did you do something? Because she has been in this house for two months, and in two months this house has been–” She stopped, searched for the right word, and landed on it with precision, as though she had been thinking about it since yesterday afternoon. “Alive. Now that she is gone, it isn’t, and I want to know what happened.”
William looked at his coffee. “It is complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it.”
“Letitia.” Isadora’s voice was quiet.
“What?” Letitia huffed. “No. I am not going to sit here and eat toast and talk about the weather while–”
“Letitia.”
This time, Isadora’s tone made Letitia stop and look at her. A silent conversation passed between them that William had been watching for sixteen years and had never been fully privy to.
Letitia sat back.
Isadora looked at William. She seemed hurt. Worse, he could see her disappointment.
“She never acted like any of this was a burden,” she said quietly. “She would ask Mrs. Eldridge about the house before she did anything. She found books for me because she noticed I wanted them and hadn’t asked. She learned Letitia’s story and helped to plant Mrs. Beam’s kitchen garden.” A pause. “She came to the nursery at half past two in the morning because she couldn’tnotcome. She helped me feel comfortable being a girl. That is not how someone behaves toward an obligation, William.”
The words hit him painfully in the chest, but he said nothing.
Isadora looked at him for one more moment. Then she folded her napkin, set it on the table, and rose. “Excuse me,” she uttered, then left.
Letitia looked at him across the empty table. “Fix it.”
She followed her sister.
After sitting for a couple of minutes in silence, William went and sat in his study for a long time.
The fire was going. The correspondence was stacked. The day had the shape of a normal one.
It was not a normal day.
He dragged a hand through his hair.
If I am going to be miserable, I might as well get some work done.
He scooted closer to his desk and looked at the center, where a couple of papers sat. They weren’t his, so he drew them closer and remembered he had seen Cecily holding them. The notes she had set down just before she walked out of his home, his life.
His heart flipped at the sight of her handwriting.
He picked up the notes and read them once, very carefully. They were filled with figures, dates, the trail from the orphanage fund to a supplementary account.
Is this another estate account?
He frowned as he read them again. They didn’t make any sense.
