“The, uh, reason I bumped into you… I was hoping you would know where Perdita is? She said she needed to get some fresh air in the gardens behind the drawing room, but it’s been a while and she wasn’t out there when I looked, so…”
Perdita?she thought.Why on earth was Thorin Philips looking for her sister?She wasn’t even aware that the two knew each other enough for him to be searching for her.
She narrowed her eyes at the tall, gangly boy. He swallowed, looking away from her and then jolting with obvious relief at something in the distance. “Never mind, I think I see her. Thank you!” he said, and then sped off, as if he didn’t have a giant stain across the front of his shirt—or at least wasn’t disturbed by it.
With the momentary distraction gone, Fola shivered. She glanced down at her trembling fingers and considered seriously for a moment that her tolerance for coffee had merely decreased in the last week.Thatwas why she felt so awful inside. Why she was shaking so much.
Or maybe it’s because your father is dead and you cannot cope with the facts of this new reality, a voice in her mind crooned.
Fola pushed the voice away. It was nonsense. She could handle the reality of misfortune; she never once allowed herself to break down at the first sign of struggle. So that couldn’t be it.
Then again, it would explain the heaviness in her chest and the incessant urge to cry way more than a sudden bout of caffeine intolerance did. The herd of guests squeezed into the rooms nearby, as well as the presence of several uniformed officers in her home, wasn’t helping the situation either. Sure, the officers weren’t in the foyer with her right this moment, but she knew they were here… lurking around… asking probing questions, like they had during her interview… watching everyone, as officers tended to do. And that made her feel sick to her stomach.
Before Fola could psychoanalyze herself further, a sudden crash nearby disrupted her thoughts. The sound came from the main entrance doors. She jumped back as glass smashed against the black-and-white tiling a few paces from her feet.
Followed by a resoundingbang.
12:47P.M.—THE BUTTON MANOR
Bilal was in the cellar when the crash came.
He startled, looking up at the ceiling as the far-off sound of chaos erupted from above. There were voices shouting, followed by the quick movement of feet and the unsettling creaking of the Manor’s seventeenth-century floorboards.
Whateverthatwas had to be the third or fourth terrible thing to happen in the past twenty-four hours. The first and worst of all being that his father, the only father he ever knew, was dead. A fact that he was not yet willing to acknowledge.
It was so much easier to ignore all of the terrible things that had happened when he was down here. It was easy to ignore the nausea and the knocking in his chest and the guilt in his bones.
As a result, Bilal was not planning on returning to the shit show that was clearly happening upstairs anytime soon.
If it wasn’t enough that his father was dead; in the tragicomedy show that was now becoming Bilal Button’s life, he’d somehow injured himself once again. After breakfast he’d slipped on a piece of fruit in the kitchen, just like in the cartoons, making his already-broken bones probably even more broken, at best, or mildly inflamed at worst.
As strangers filled the Manor, he was underground in what was clearly a medical room that hadn’t been used in a while—as evidenced by the cobwebs—seated on a hospital-style stretcher, waiting for Henry to return with an ice pack. Henry had offered to call the Manor’s off-site nurse or the family doctor, Dr. Benson, but Bilal did not like having people fuss over his well-being and told the secretary that he was fine.
After a few minutes of waiting, Bilal finally heard the sound of footsteps shuffling down the spiral staircase that led to the cellar, and let out a sigh of relief when Henry emerged. The relief was short-lived, however, as behind Henry was the last person Bilal wanted to see right now.
“Your friend insisted on following me down here,” Henry explained, holding the promised ice pack in one hand, while gesturing to the brooding face of Bilal’s ex-boyfriend, Anwar, with his other.
“He’s not my friend,” Bilal said with a scowl.
“I don’t know about that. We were pretty friendly last night,” Anwar said, folding his arms.
Henry cleared his throat, handing Bilal the ice pack while avoiding looking at either of them. “I should check on something… in a room elsewhere… give you boys space to talk. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Henry said with a nod, before scurrying out of one of the cellar doors.
His father was dead and now he was stuck in the basement with his ex.Great.It was harder to ignore all of his problems when they kept violently reminding him that they existed.
“Well done, you’ve scared off my dad’s secretary,” Bilal mumbled, trying not to look Anwar in the eye (and failing). It didn’t help that Anwar was staring at him intently, with that perfect face of his.
“Henry will be fine,” Anwar said, rolling his eyes and placing his hands in his pockets. Bilal noticed then that Anwar had changed out of his formfitting suit from last night and was now wearing jeans and an embroidered sweater with the wordPEMBERLEYwritten on it in bold.
“You don’t know that. People aren’t just miraculously fine, you know? Sometimes you might make more of an impact than you’d expect. Something you’d know if you actually cared.”
There was a tension-filled silence then, sharp enough to sever the stitches in Bilal’s heart.
“I have a feeling this isn’t about Henry,” Anwar said at last.
“What else would it be about?” Bilal replied.
Anwar narrowed his eyes a little. “Seriously, Billy? I thought we could talk about what happened last night like the adults we both are. But clearly, I misjudged.”
