Claire’s shoulders slumped and she nodded, accepting her obvious fate. “Yes, Mr. Button,” she said, sounding miserable. If only she had been more competent, then things wouldn’t have had to end this way. Now she was being replaced by Henry, something that happened quite often when staff members weren’t up to par. Sometimes Henry was doing the job of nine people at once, on the occasions when Father had his mass-firing sprees.
Claire skulked away, a false smile in place but her bleary eyes revealing all too much.
It’s a shame, Fola thought. Claire was very good at her job. Usually, anyway. She was an award-winning publicist, after all. Too bad this would most likely be her last day as one.
Without another glance at Claire, Fola’s father placed a hand in his pocket and began walking toward the double doors that had been opened to the long, drafty hallway and the adjoining east wing staircase beyond.
Fola hastily veered around the table, wanting to stop her father fromleaving. She needed to ask him a question, one she had been hoping to ask all week. She sped up behind him, standing on her tiptoes to tap him on the shoulder before he could reach the doors.
“Father,” she said in a breathless voice. He stopped and turned around. Fola knew that her father’s attention was hard-won, and she could just as easily lose it again, so she quickly launched into her practiced speech. “I’ve been struggling a lot lately with making this really big career decision and I’d really appreciate your advice on—” Her father’s phone rang loudly in his palm.DR. BENSONflashed up on the screen. The family physician.
He sighed and waved her off. “Not now, Fola. I’m busy.” Mild annoyance laced his words as he turned coldly away from her and stalked out of the room, a slight hobble to his step.
A rapid sinking feeling, which Fola quickly realized was embarrassment, came over her. She immediately tried to shrug it off, hoping no one had seen that interaction. But when she turned around, she was greeted by an audience of two a few paces away.
Her brother Romeo stood there, predictably eating what appeared to be two stuffed éclairs, and next to him was a girl.
Fola folded her arms, trying to look composed as she walked over to the pair.
“Hi, Fola,” Romeo said, his mouth full of éclair. She paid his greeting no mind; she was too busy staring down his companion. There was something familiar about the girl. Fola took in her dark brown skin and soft features, sorting through the complicated filing cabinet system in her head. Mere seconds later, the answer smacked her in the face.
“Evelyn Gray,” Fola said.
The girl seemed to brighten at the sound of her own name. “You remember me?” she asked.
Fola tilted her head a little, as a few memories filtered through. One prominent memory hovered above the rest. “Hmm, vaguely,” she replied, ignoring the subtle heat rising in her face.
This answer seemed to please the girl. “I’m Mr. and Mrs…. well,ChefGray’s daughter,” she clarified. But Fola didn’t need the clarification. Evelyn and her brother had sometimes joined the Button siblings for tutoring. Fola only vaguely recalled those sessions with the Gray siblings, as they were pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but she did remember one significant occasion a few years ago when she’d been left alone with the Gray girl…
“I thought Mr. and Mrs. Gray’s daughter was in Italy doing jazz or something,” Fola said, disturbing her own memory by saying the first thing that came to mind.
Evelyn seemed to find this humorous. “Ballet, actually—though jazz does seem very cool,” she replied with a laugh. It was a very nice laugh, objectively speaking.
“What brings you back here, then?” Fola asked.
Evelyn’s demeanor shifted, an awkwardness settling into the space between them. “Oh, I, uh… got tired of eating Italian pasta,” she said, and then quickly cracked a smile. “Just kidding, I needed a vacation.”
“So you’re here for a few days?” Fola asked.
“Undecided. The only thing I know for certain is that I’m staying for Mr. Button’s… your father’s anniversary ball. Anything after that is up to higher powers—those being the head of my ballet company,” she said.
“Hmm, well, hopefully those higher powers concede,” Fola replied. Now deeming that portion of the social exchange done, she turned to her brother. “Hi, Romeo,” she said, finally acknowledging his greeting from before.
Romeo gestured his head to the exit their father had left through. “Are you… okay?” he asked in a way that made Fola want to hit him.
“Of course I’m okay,” she said, but when his pitiful expression didn’t change, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “He’s just got a lot on his mind right now, with the ball and the conference.”
“I’m sure he’s probably also still distraught over that outburst earlier,” Evelynadded, forcing Fola to look at her once more. “It was pretty intense even from back here. It’s not every day you hear a murder accusation.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Fola replied politely, though her observation of her father had told her otherwise.
But she had to admit, therewassomething off-putting about the whole outburst. It had distorted the mood in the room, and it felt like it might have also colored the rest of the day too, turning their vibrant world from Pantone bright to sepia toned.
Or maybe it wasn’t the annoying activist who had created the shift in the atmosphere. Maybe the shift had preceded her. Perhaps it had come this morning when Fola had picked up Octavius, hungover and temperamental, from Grand Central—especially given how weird he was being and had been ever since.
Or maybe it was neither of these things. Maybe there was just a general sense about the day, a sense that something was going to go terribly wrong.
Statistically speaking, the Prodigy Ball had, over the past ten years, far surpassed all of the calculated odds ofunexpectedthings happening. There had been the year that someone had accidentally set her father’s hair on fire, nearly causing his early death and the destruction of a prestigious ballroom. The year when the ball had been held at the botanical garden in the Bronx and was swarmed by rogue bees, leading to multiple guests being stung and hospitalized. And then, of course, there’d been the year when one of the invited prodigies had died directly after the ball. Each incident had been swiftly taken care of so that there would be no reports directly tying any of the tragedies to the Buttons in any way shape or form, the cracks papered over, but still left a lingering sting in her overactive hippocampus.
