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“Chill, Celia. It’s not the end of the world,” Desmond told her, but she bit the inside of her lip and didn’t reply.
I glanced over at Mom. She was talking to her mother and siblings. Simon was with her. I felt a surge of gratitude that he was here. We’d been on our own for years. I’d known my mother was lonely. It was one thing to be a single mom, another thing to be cut off from your whole family with a daughter who was—well,troubledwas putting it mildly. Then Simon appeared, and he was just—perfect.
“So, Simon, what do you do for work?” I could hear Caleb asking, halfway across the room.
“Oh, I’m a homemaker,” Simon said with a chuckle. “That is, I’m between jobs.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled with that sense of being stared at, and I glanced to my right. Roman was looking at me again, though he’d moved over to the clump of conversation that included my aunt Victoria and the older man—Eli. Roman’s jaw tensed, a tendon flaring, and his dark brows drew together.
“For god’s sake, Roman, you look like you’re going to go after the girl with a cleaver,” said Sandra, Caleb’s wife, punctuating this with a swig of her wine. Silver bracelets clinked at her skinny wrists.
“Sandra,” my aunt Victoria said chidingly, but didn’t follow it up.
Sandra snort-laughed, a startlingly unsophisticated noise in the stiff atmosphere of the room. “Don’t you know we’re supposed to make the girl feel welcome?”
Caleb laid a gentle but restraining hand on her wrist. She twitched it away.
“Get out while you still can,” she hissed in my direction, and then laughed, a braying sound that cut off as Caleb murmured something sharply to her. She reached for the wine bottle on the sideboard to refill her glass.
“Maybe you’ve had enough of that,” Victoria suggested.
“Not nearly,” Sandra shot back.
Victoria shook her head. “This is a difficult time for all of us,” she said apologetically, and it seemed like she was talking to me but couldn’t quite bring herself to look in my direction. My mother narrowed her eyes but said nothing.
“What I find difficult to understand is pretending that girl is in any way part of this fam—” Roman began in a voice clearly used to being the loudest in the room, but Iris clicked her cane against the floor, a barely audible sound that somehow commanded the room into utter silence.
“It is time,” she said simply.
Time for the funeral, she meant. Time to put my grandfather to rest.
Somewhere above us, a bell rang, deep and sonorous. The sound permeated the room, filled my body until it overtook the beating of my heart. I could feel it vibrating in my bones. It felt as if it were lifting me, pulling me upward—and dragging me down.
“Helen?” Simon said.
I staggered, blinking. Everyone was already heading out of the room, conversation a low tumble of noise. I had no idea where the last ten seconds had gone. “Sorry. I’m a bit out of it,” I said, shaking my head to clear it.
“The funeral is in the ballroom,” Mom said, sounding distracted. “Let’s head in.” She put an arm over my shoulders, and we trailed after the rest of the guests. We went deeper into the house, down a wide hall to a set of double doors. Beyond the doors was a huge room, the walls pale cream and gold, a crystal chandelier glittering above. A modest set of chairs had been arranged in the center of the room facing the casket.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the funeral might be in the house itself, but somehow, it made sense. The Vaughans and Harrow—they were entwined, inseparable. Even in death.
Mom touched my elbow gently and tipped her head toward some chairs near the back on the right. I headed toward them, but Iris’s voice stopped me. “You’ll sit by me, Helen.” She stood at the front row.
I froze. I looked over at my mom—but she only tightened her lips. I swallowed and plodded over. My heels clicked dully on the parquet flooring, and I felt everyone’s eyes tracking me. Iris took a seat. I sank down next to her, picking up the program that had been left on it. From my chair, I had a perfect view of the casket. And the body.
Leopold Vaughan, my grandfather.
Your grandfather is a man with high expectations, and he doesn’t tolerate people who don’t live up to them, Mom had once told me on a rare occasion when she let slip something about her family. Even now he seemed to scowl, his cheekbones jutting out from a face made gaunt by age.
I looked away quickly, dropping my eyes to the floor. I didn’t want to see something I shouldn’t—or rather, that I shouldn’t be able to.
Eli walked up to stand in front of the casket. He was probably in his seventies—a strangely colorless man, with thin hair and papery skin that made him seem like a pale copy of a person. He cleared his throat. I glanced at the program.
The Recitation of the Mastersit said. The what now?
“Today we mark the passing of my brother, Leopold AnthonyVaughan, the sixth Master of Harrow,” he said. His voice had all the warmth and character of wet concrete. “He was born in the winter of 1953. He was guardian of Harrowstone Hall for twenty-one years and sacrificed so that it might stand and so that his family might flourish. His father was Lawrence Eustace Vaughan, fifth Master of Harrow, born in August of 1931. He was guardian of Harrowstone Hall for thirty-three years...”
Were they going to list everyone who’d ever owned this place? Old dead men who didn’t mean anything to me. I tuned out the droning voice, my eyes fixed on the casket so that I wouldn’t look at the body—but my eyes strayed, and I couldn’t help but see.
