“I do know,” she said. “But we’re all finding it hard, Tavi.” She paused to look at him. Her eyes were glazed over with a sheen of unshed tears, but her face remained stony. He’d seen her earlier, how stressed she had been. Now she had her game face on, like there was no time for her grievances.
“I’m sorry for leaving, Fola,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she replied as they turned right instead of left.
“Where are we going?” he asked. He hadn’t been gone so long that he’d forgotten the way to his father’s office. They turned once more, and standing there, in different degrees of dishevelment, were Romeo, Perdita, and Bilal.
“Thank you all for waiting while I got Octavius,” Fola said as they joinedthe others in the specific dead-end corner that their father used to refer to as Paradise Lost. He had called it that because it was the place they were sent to when they misbehaved as kids. Their “paradise” (playtime, which they rarely got) being temporarily “lost.” Here they were forced to polish all of the animals on the walls for hours and hours until each and every tusk, horn, and antler was spotless. That didn’t make the animal heads any less uncomfortable to be around now.
Octavius felt a hand on his shoulder and looked to find that Romeo was holding on to him like he might float away. He gave his brother a confused look, but Romeo only responded with his sad glassy-eyed gaze.
“Are you sure we’re allowed to be here? Mr. Waxler said we were meant to all stay downstairs,” Perdita said, her eyes red rimmed. She’d clearly been crying.
“It’s fine. Henry summoned us to Eden, so it shouldn’t be an issue with Waxler,” Fola said.
“So why are we here and not in the office?” Bilal asked bluntly.
“Well… I just, wanted us to talk, before we went in. This morning feels like something straight from a nightmare and I… I wanted to make sure we were all okay, or at least as okay as we can be in these circumstances,” Fola said, her voice breaking on the last syllable.
The space around them was heavy and tense, filled with unuttered anguish and grievances.
She wiped her eyes and continued. “Listen.” Her voice was quiet and brittle. “I know we aren’t the type of family to braid one another’s hair and talk about our feelings. But we can’tnotacknowledge it. We need to speak to one another, know what we’re all thinking, put on a united front. So many people are out to get this family—the past day has been proof of that, between the real journalist who tried to break in today and that fake journalist from yesterday who actually did manage to break in and threaten Father. We can’t take any chances. We need to stay on top of this, make sure the police are focused on the right people. I’mgoing to ask Henry to speak to Chief Waxler about looking into that woman from yesterday. At the very least, we need to stick together and—”
“No,” Bilal interrupted, his eyes squeezed shut.
“No?” Fola replied, staring at Bilal like he’d grown a second head.
“I can’t deal with all of this right now,” he said, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache. Just from looking at him, Octavius could tell Bilal was at his wits’ end.
“What do you mean you can’tdeal with all of this right now? All that matters isthis. Andright nowis the only time we have. Do you not care about us? This family? Dad is dead. We have no one left in the world, and we need to think about our futures. We need to plan.”
“No. What weneedto do right now is follow Henry’s instructions and head to Eden. We don’t need to be standing here talking about a situation that can’t change,that won’t change. The police are dealing with it—you can’t take over from them like you do everything else. You have to let things run their course.” Bilal’s expression hardened, though Octavius could see the remnants of dried tears on Bilal’s cheeks. “So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave this alone and let Waxler deal with it. I’ll see you guys in there,” he said, and then pushed himself off the wall and limped off down the hallway in the opposite direction. Octavius silently agreed with Bilal, it was probably best to let this nightmare play out the way it was meant to play out. But he was not about to tell his sister that.
Fola looked like she might actually cry or scream, or both. “He’s so…” Her voice trailed off, as she peered down the hallway Bilal had already disappeared from. She blinked and a single tear rolled down her cheek, which she quickly wiped away. “I’m still going to tell Henry about getting Waxler to look into the journalist,” she continued in her quiet, stubborn voice.
No one else contested or agreed with her.
“We should head over, I think, before they start looking for us,” Perdita suggested finally, breaking the tense silence.
“Why was Henry calling us, anyway?” Octavius asked, hoping that someone would fill him in since Fola hadn’t before.
“We don’t know,” Romeo replied. “He didn’t say much.”
“Henry said he’d tell us more once we were all in Father’s study, and that the lawyers would be there,” Fola said.
“The lawyers? Why?” Octavius asked, swallowing the rising panic inside.
Fola shrugged and folded her arms. “Who knows, Tavi. Maybe the police have already found the killer and want to tell us about all of the gruesome details. That should be fun,” Fola said dryly.
It didn’t sound like fun to him at all.
The four of them started to make their way down the hall, walking slowly side by side like some kind of funeral procession.
“You okay, Tavs?” Romeo asked quietly.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Rome,” Octavius said, not liking the way his brother was looking at him. Like he was a china plate teetering at the edge of an open cabinet. “Why’d you ask?”
“It’s just, you haven’t stopped shaking. Since breakfast.” Romeo’s eyes darted to Octavius’s hands, which were indeed shaking, much like the rest of him.
