“Mother’s au revoir list.” She tried to keep her voice neutral as she picked the paper up. If she sounded distressed, Duncan would try to help. If Duncan tried to help, Cosima would end up with one more thing to do.
This list of her mother’s was the reason why Cosima had stayed the night at the Getty, curled up in a sleeping bag in the dark beside Phoebe with a laughing Rembrandt looking down at them. Why she’d skydived, buckled to an instructor who smelled like cold air, the wind impossibly loud in her ears. They’d met a “nose” in Paris, who bottled a scent for the two of them. One by one, they’d drawn a line through each of the items, until the time came when her mother needed to rest and be taken care of.
Because it wasPhoebe’slist, it also included her wish for the Castle to be converted from their private home to a center for the performing arts. Who could deny her such a generous bequest? The Castle, of course, had never been for Cosima or Duncan. It was a decadent showpiece, Phoebe’s homage to Hollywood.Phoebe’s.
Cosima was surprised to see an item left on the list. She’d forgotten about it.
Stay at Gregory Place, it said.
An inn, located in a tiny village in England. A long time ago, in the 1980s, it was where Phoebe met and fell in love with Cosima’s father, a dashing Formula One driver who died in a race when Cosima was in preschool. Phoebe had wanted to have the “full-circle experience” of visiting the inn together with Cosima. She’d said Gregory Place was “magic.”
Duncan cleared his throat. “It was such a lovely thing for the two of you to share.”
Was it?Cosima bit back the comment, feeling awful for even having the thought.
Duncan read the list over her shoulder. “Ah. A trip over the pond would be a pleasant escape for you once you’ve made your announcement to the stockholders and we’ve wrapped up filming season one. I was already planning on opening my estate in Dundee for a visit. You could tick this off the list, then come up and breathe clean Scottish air and put pen to paper for ideas for season two.”
“Yep.” Cosima rubbed her thumb over the paper. Her lungs were too tight. Her stomach roared into her throat. “Good idea.”
“Are you all right, darling?”
She closed her eyes, annoyed she’d let her tone be short. “Yes, I’m sorry. The day was too long for these shoes. You’re hearing my arches and pinky toe, not me.” She gave him a practiced smile.
But she wasn’t half the actress her mother had been. When Duncan quickly turned his head toward the dark window, she witnessed his mask slip, his mouth bracketing with grief. All at once, her vision telescoped, framing Duncan’s face at the pinpoint end of a long black tunnel. Cosima shook her head, trying to make the tunnel disappear, but his faraway face didn’t change. From here, she could hear the water in the elephant fountain. She could smell the familiar pompelmo fragrance her mother liked to infuse into the air.
She had never known any other home but the Castle.
Cosima didn’t know why it was still so important—always and forever the most important thing—to make her mother happy.
Her mother was dead.
Duncan turned toward her again. His fond smile had been restored. “We’re both knackered.” He started out of the office, but before he went through the doorway, he squeezed her shoulders. “Breakfast at Lulu’s?”
She nodded, or she didn’t. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Eventually, with a final pat, he left.
Cosima came back into her body enough to notice her feet hurt too much to stand. In that, at least, she had been truthful with Duncan. She collapsed onto the Eames ottoman, staring at the mess she’d made of her mother’s desk. Her phone and tablet buzzed and chimed with notifications while her eyes started to burn with the tears she would not shed.
When her stomach cramped, hard, taking her breath away so completely she couldn’t even gasp, she dropped the list in her lap and picked up her phone. She watched one notification after another slide up the screen while her hand vibrated.
She opened the phone’s browser.
With a fingertip, she filled the boxes with the required information at each step. Her payment confirmed with another notification. Shucked-off heels in hand, she walked barefoot past the elephant fountain, up two flights of stairs, and came back down with luggage she’d packed in the dark, her heart alternately pounding and freezing in place, her stomach so tight it felt numb.
The last thing she did was strike through the final item on her mother’s list and set the paper down on Duncan’s chair.
Then she ran from the Castle. Escaped, really—a princess dashing through the pouring rain into the night.
Not to find magic. Magic didn’t exist anymore.
Chapter Two
Edie sighed over her map in frustration until the innkeeper sighed back.
“If you’re set on seeing a hedgehog, I suppose there’s the road past Baroness Rachel’s manse. She puts hedgehog houses in her garden, so you might look there.” Morag Beveridge retied the strings of her apron. She shoved a dripping collection of branches, leaves, flowers, and possibly mosses—lichen?—into a large jar and then poked at it. Edie guessed it would end up being one of the innkeeper’s “arrangements” for the lobby.
Edie squinted at the map with renewed enthusiasm. The phone plan she’d bought before her trip here didn’t work, and she spent a lot of her time wishing she’d learned how to properly read maps in school. “The road past Baroness Rachel’s—is that Church Street?”
