I pick up a copy and can tell by the first paragraph that it’s steeped in small-town drama, a story that aims to pit us against each other, with a current of subtext running just beneath the surface. Two girls with something to prove.
The perennial favorite versus brand-new blood.
It’s apparent from the photographs whose side the paper has chosen. Eliza is cast in a soft light that makes her look so gorgeous she almost glows. The shadows on me are positively garish, and I look as though I’m getting ready to break into a snarl.
“They could have found a better photograph,” Fitzpatrick acknowledges, echoing my thoughts. I put the paper back so the images are hidden, hoping that Will never lays eyes on either one of them. When Fitzpatrick gives me my change, he whispers, “But my money’s still on you.”
“Thank you,” I say, surprised, and his words make my veins light with renewed confidence. “Are you coming to the Clifftons’ party tonight?”
“I think so.” He pushes the Shakespeare biography across the counter.
“I really wouldn’t miss it,” I say with a meaningful look. “It’s going to be one to remember.”
Then I tighten my grip on the book and run the whole way home.
Chapter Forty-Six
Date: 3/5/1943
Birds can sense storm patterns before we can.
By the time we even start to sense brewing danger, they have fled their nests and disappeared.
I slide into the booth at a back-alley diner in Corrander that’s filled with the sort of people who are too busy looking for their next fix to care who I am or what Larkin and I are discussing.
Victor holds out a stained menu. “Do you want eggs?”
“No.” My head throbs. “Anything but eggs.”
He orders bacon. I order burnt toast and coffee.
“Thought you’d like to see some of our potential customers,” he says as he nods toward the rest of the diner. He takes a sip of coffee. “Partner.”
I survey the people around us. Heavy-lidded. Dead-eyed and gray-skinned, slumped against cracked leather seats and walls coated with old smoke. People for whom the natural world doesn’t hold any more beauty or promise.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Stefen?” When Victor smiles, every angle in his face sharpens, like a mirror breaking. He slides an envelope bursting with money under the table. “Even that meager hit of Peace from the maid worked. The father is eternally grateful. We have to get more.”
“It worked?” I ask. The diner suddenly brightens around me. The smoke peels clean from the walls. Success. Glory. Eureka. Malcolm Cliffton has never done anything so big and so meaningful. What I have done dwarfs the Variants by comparison. I echo Larkin’s smile and scrape off the blackened surface of my toast. “Breakfast’s on me, then,” I say, and he laughs.
“I have another already lined up,” Victor says. “He’s ready as soon as you get your hands on some more.” He turns to his papers. “Good timing, with the tournament this weekend. While everyone’s distracted.”
My eyes fall to the front of his newspaper. I take a bite of my toast, and flakes of it fall like black snow on my plate.
I immediately start to choke.
“Can I see that?” I rip it from his hands.
AILA QUINN, the headline shrieks. Right there on the blasted front page.
“That’s my niece.” I’m still coughing, pieces of toast lodged in my throat. “I’ve been looking everywhere for her.”
And all this time she’s been in Sterling. The very last place I would ever expect for Juliet to send her own children.
“I’m sorry—?what?” Larkin says, sipping his coffee. “You’re Juliet’s brother?”
I nod.
He shakes his head. “I didn’t even know she had a brother.”
