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Prologue
TESS
20 Years Ago…
The woman who whispers to her friend in the hallway doesn’t know I’m listening.
She says what happened to Ethan Lyonne is something that should only happen to people who live in the city and never to someone who comes from West Emerald.
All my father told me was that Micah’s dad had been killed by bad men and I shouldn’t ask people any questions today. I wish something like that would never happen to anyone, whether they live here or in the city.
I’m the only one at the funeral who wears yellow.
I do have a black dress and I was wearing it this morning. But after I dropped my toast jelly side down in my lap at breakfast, my father shook his head and said I was ‘disappointing’.
I wanted to crawl under my chair.
He made me leave the table and change to my yellow Easter dress. He said I’d better be careful and not get it dirty.
I’ve been careful. I haven’t gotten my dress dirty.
“I beg your pardon.” By accident I’ve bumped into some legs in a black skirt.
The owner of the legs peers down at me. She smiles. I know who she is. One of the sisters of the dead man’s wife. “What a little princess you are.”
I never know how to answer when adults say things like that. I repeat the words my father told me to use. “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
She’s already forgotten me. She drinks red liquid from a glass that looks like a small bowl, tipping her head all the way back to swallow great mouthfuls.
I don’t ask her where my father is. I can find him myself.
My broken shoe buckle flaps against my foot as I keep moving through the crowd of people. Micah’s house is huge, much bigger than my house just down the street.
“The Ballerini girl,” sighs a woman’s voice when I squeeze past another group of people. “Mayor’s daughter.”
“Yes.” Another woman makes a tsk-tsk sound. “And Stuart is stuck raising her all on his own.”
“Ever since Diana died.”
My cheeks burn. I move faster through the legs and the perfume smells in order to escape hearing whatever they say next.
People have always felt sorry for my father.
They feel sorry for me too.
I don’t remember my mother. Sometimes I think maybe I do but my father says this is impossible because I was only a baby when she died in a pool accident and babies remember nothing.
The room up ahead is bright and sunny. There are not as many people in here and I don’t need to push my way through in order to see the long table where Matilda sits. Sometimes I’m jealous of Micah because he gets to have a beautiful mother who probably tucks him in at night and fixes him his favorite snacks.
Matilda is still beautiful today even though it’s a very bad day. Ethan Lyonne was her husband and now he’s buried at the West Emerald Cemetery. He won’t be far from where my mother lies beneath a statue of a crying angel.
Once a month my father brings me there to leave flowers for the angel. On those days I know I’ll have bad dreams later. The dreams are all the same. I can hear the angel crying. When she screams, as she always does in the end, I wake up and yell for my father.
At least I used to.
The last time I did this in the middle of the night he was mad, standing in the dark doorway of my room in his flannel pajama pants. “You’re a big girl now, Tess. Have some self-control or you’ll never accomplish anything.”
Then he shut off my light and went back to his room.
