“But she was invited,” answers Hannah, holding up the letter.
“By whom?” demands Matthew, snatching the thin paper from her hand.
“Your father.”
All the light goes out of him. All the heat, and the fury. In that instant, he looks young and frightened. And then his face slams shut, and he surges to the hearth and casts the letter into the fire.
Olivia lunges forward, but he forces her back as the paper catches, burns. Her uncle’s words to her gone up in smoke.
“Look at me,” says Matthew, gripping her shoulders. His eyes, a lighter gray than hers and shot through with blue, are haunted. “My father did not send you that letter. He has been dead for more than a year.”
Dead. The word rattles through her.
But it doesn’t make sense. She closes her eyes, recalls the steady hand.
Come home, dear niece.
We cannot wait to welcome you.
“Matthew,” coaxes Hannah. “Could he have written it before . . .”
“No,” he bellows, the word as heavy as a door.
He scowls at Olivia, his hand tightening around her arm. He’s thin and looks as though he hasn’t slept a night in weeks, but there is something in his eyes that scares her.
“He said I was the last of them. He said there were no more.” His voice splinters, as if in pain, but his fingers bite into her skin. “You cannot be here.”
She twists free of his grip. Or perhaps he pushes her away. Either way, there is suddenly a stride’s length between them, a narrow but uncrossable chasm. They stare across it.
“You should never have come to Gallant.” He points to the door. “Go.”
Olivia rocks back on her heels. Hannah and Edgar share a look.
“It’s too dark now,” says Edgar. “She cannot leave tonight.”
Matthew swears under his breath. “At first light, then,” he says, storming out. He calls back over his shoulder. “Get away from this house and never come back.”
Olivia stares after him, angry and confused. She looks to Hannah and Edgar, hoping for some explanation, but neither speaks. The three of them stand there in the sitting room, silent save for the sound of Matthew’s stomping boots, the crackling fire, Olivia’s unsteady breath.
She stares into the flames, the letter gone, taking her dreams of Gallant with it. She looks to her suitcase, then to the door. Where is she supposed to go?
Hannah sighs. “No sense in worrying tonight. We’ll sort it all out in the morning.” She leans back against the sofa, and Edgar rests a hand on her arm. Olivia notices the way she leans into the touch. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Matthew is not himself these days.” Then, “He was a sweet boy, once.”
Olivia has a hard time believing that. She tries to catch Edgar’s eye, to ask what happened, but he won’t look at her, so she kneels to pick up the pieces of the broken vase. Hannah shoos her away. “Leave that,” she says, and then, with a small grin, “You did me a favor. I always thought it was ugly. Now,” she says, shoving up to her feet again, “you must be hungry.”
She isn’t, really, but Hannah doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll go and see what I can rustle up,” she says. “Edgar?”
“Come on, then, child,” he says, lifting her case. “I’ll show you to a room.”
The stairs are old, but sturdy, their steps barely sounding as Edgar leads her up.
She catches his eye and signs. How long have you been here?
“Too long,” he answers with a tired smile. Then, “Longer than Matthew, but not as long as Hannah.”
Did you know my mother? she asks.
“I did. We were all heartbroken when she disappeared.”
Olivia’s heart quickens, her mother’s words rising to her mind.
Free—a small word for such a magnificent thing.
I don’t know what it feels like, but I want to find out.
Her mother wasn’t stolen away from Gallant. She left this place on purpose. Olivia’s hands move quickly, the questions spilling out.
Where did she go? Do you know why? Did she come back?
Edgar shakes his head, a slow and steady pendulum.
Is she dead?
That last question is the one she has always been afraid to ask, because the truth is, she does not know. Whenever she reads the final pages of the journal, she pictures her mother backing away toward the edge of a cliff. Step after step after step until the ground is gone and so is she.
There was a goodbye stitched into every word, and yet—
Is she dead? she asks again, because Edgar’s head has stopped moving. His shoulders rise. His face sags.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know.”
Frustration prickles through her, not at him, but at her, at Grace, the woman who vanished, leaving only a tattered notebook and a silent child on a stoop. At the way the story trails off, without the promise of an end.
They reach the upstairs landing, and Edgar leads her down a wide hall lined with doors, all of them closed.
“Ah, here we are,” he says, stopping at the second on the left.
The door whispers open onto a beautiful room, larger than any of the matrons’ quarters and twice as nice. Her eyes go to the bed—not a cot but a grand four-poster, pillows stuffed with down. Wide enough that she could fling out her arms and not touch the sides.
Edgar retreats, but not before Olivia signs thank you.
“For what?” he asks, and she gestures at the room, and the house, and herself before shrugging. For everything.
He nods, mustering a smile. “Hannah will be up shortly,” he says, and then he’s gone, drawing the door shut behind him.
Olivia stands there a moment, uncertain what to do. She has never had her own room, has always wondered how it would feel to have a space entirely hers, a door that she could close. And despite the strangeness of the scene downstairs, her cousin’s cruelty and the questions mounting in her mind, she twirls across the floor and flings herself onto the bed. She expects to rouse a plume of dust, but there is none, only her limbs sinking into soft down. She lies there, arms spread like a snow angel.
My room, she thinks, before reminding herself that it is only hers for the night.
She sits up and looks around, taking stock. There is an elegant wardrobe, and an ottoman, and a desk before a large window, the shutters latched. Across the room there’s a second door, and she opens it expecting to find a closet, or perhaps another hall, but it is a bathroom, a glorious space with a mirror and a sink and a claw-foot tub. Not a steel drum and a foot of tepid water but a massive porcelain bath, large enough to soak in.
There are no other girls elbowing their way to the sink, taking up the hot water and shouldering her so they can do their hair, examine their faces, so she lingers, studying her reflection, as she has so many times, scouring it the way she does her mother’s journal, searching for clues about who she is, where she came from.
Here are her eyes, slate gray. Her skin, pale but not porcelain. Her hair, the almost-black of charcoal.
Olivia notices a small hair comb on the counter, the spine patterned with blue flowers. She runs her fingers over the delicate tines, then takes up the comb and fastens it above her ear. The blue flowers are bright against her hair, which hangs dead straight and just long enough to skim her shoulders. She cut it that spring, in a fit of pique. She hated the solemn plaits the girls at Merilance were forced to wear, so she stole a pair of sewing shears and cut it to her collar, just short enough to make the braids impossible. She smiles a little whenever she thinks of the look on Matron Agatha’s face, the impotent rage.