“Thank you for coming.”

I wondered how many times Mrs. Marquette had said those words today. I wondered if they’d started to sound like gibberish to her yet.

Ivy gave the woman’s hand a firm squeeze before letting it go. “What do you need?” she asked.

“We’re holding up.” That, too, sounded like a rote reply, recited over and over again in hopes that it might somehow become the truth.

Ivy caught the other woman’s gaze and repeated herself, her voice soft. “What do you need?”

A little girl burrowed into the woman’s side. The woman’s hand wrapped reflexively around the girl, her hand stroking the little one’s hair. “There’s a wake,” she told Ivy. “At Theo’s house, after the burial.”

Ivy gave a slight nod. “I can head straight there.”

“You don’t have to do that,” the woman said quickly. “The burial . . .”

“I can head straight there,” Ivy reiterated. “Whatever you need, Pam, consider it done.” The woman looked like she might object. “If Theo were here, he’d have told me to skip the funeral and go straight to the house.”

Mrs. Marquette smiled wryly. Apparently, she couldn’t argue with that.

“Mother?” The justice’s grandson appeared at his mom’s side. “Everything okay here?” Henry Marquette spared half a glance for me and seemed to decide I was worth neither his interest nor his concern, before he turned piercing mint-green eyes on Ivy.

“Ms. Kendrick was just offering to help with the wake,” Mrs. Marquette told him.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Henry’s posture was perfectly erect, his tone polished. “The arrangements have been taken care of.”

By you, I thought. Seeing Henry Marquette standing slightly in front of his mother, like he could shield her bodily from grief, I felt a flash of recognition. I knew what it was like to be the one who took care of things. The one who had to be strong.

“Thank you for coming.” Henry gave Ivy a pointed smile that wasn’t a smile at all, then ushered his mother away.

We’d been dismissed.

CHAPTER 19

Justice Marquette’s house was on the Virginia side of DC. Bodie didn’t ask why we were going there. Ivy didn’t elaborate.

Once we arrived, it took my sister all of ten minutes to get rid of the press camped out on the street.

“How does she do that?” I asked Bodie, watching from a distance as she said something to send the last hanger-on running.

“Witchcraft,” Bodie deadpanned.

By the time the Marquettes arrived from the burial, the house was quiet, the food was warm, and a discreet security team had been established around the perimeter.

If the funeral service had been full of dignitaries and officials, the wake was a more personal affair: neighbors, family, friends. As soon as Ivy was distracted, I ducked out of the house. I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t my grief.

Outside, the air smelled like fresh-cut grass and forthcoming rain. The justice’s house was easily as large as Ivy’s, but he had more land. Staring out at it, I tried the number Ivy had given me for my grandfather. A nurse answered and put me on with Gramps.

It wasn’t a good day.

When I eventually said good-bye and hung up, it felt like leaving him all over again. I started walking, aching with a constant, uncompromising sense of loss. I didn’t realize how far away from the house I’d wandered until I noticed that I wasn’t alone.

“Where are we going?”

I turned to see the little girl who’d been glued to Mrs. Marquette’s side at the funeral. Her dark hair had been liberated from a headband. She was wearing a black dress.

“Aren’t you supposed to be back at the house?” I asked her.

Her chin jutted out. “This is my grandpa’s house. I get to go wherever I want.”

“Fair enough.” I stared at her for a moment, then kicked off my shoes. “You want to ditch yours?”

“We can do that?” She sounded skeptical.

“It’s your grandpa’s house. You can do whatever you want.”

Accepting my logic, she sat down in the dirt and peeled off the Mary Janes.

“You’re supposed to tell me you’re sorry about my grandpa,” she told me.

“Do you really want me to?” I asked her.

She pulled at the tips of her hair. She was older than I’d originally thought—maybe eight or nine. “No,” she said finally. “But you’re supposed to anyway.”

I said nothing. She plucked a blade of grass and stared at it so hard I thought her gaze might set it on fire.

“You got a pond around here?” I asked her.

“Nope. But there are dogs. Two of them,” she added, lest I mistakenly think she’d said dog, singular.

I nodded, which seemed to satisfy her.

She plucked another piece of grass before casting a sideways glance at me. “What would we do with a pond?”

I shrugged. “Skip rocks?”

Twenty minutes later, Thalia Marquette had mastered the art of skipping invisible rocks across a nonexistent pond.

“If it isn’t two lovely ladies, off by their lonesome.”

I turned, surprised to see Asher here—until I remembered that Emilia had attempted to hire me to keep him out of trouble until his best friend got back to school to take over the job.

His best friend, Henry. As in Henry Marquette.

“We’re skipping rocks,” Thalia informed Asher. “This is Asher,” she told me. “He’s okay.” She smiled.

Undeterred by the lack of either rocks or a body of water on which to skip them, Asher plopped down beside us on the ground. “I,” he said tartly, “am a master rock skipper.”

Ten minutes later, the cavalry arrived. The cavalry did not look particularly pleased to see us sprawled in the grass.

“You’re not very good at this, Asher.” Thalia was blissfully unaware of her brother’s arrival. Asher shot Henry a lazy grin as he skipped another imaginary stone.

“Five skips,” he declared archly.

I leaned back on my palms. “Two,” I countered. Thalia giggled.

“Surrounded by vipers on all sides,” Asher sighed. He turned to Henry. “Back a fellow up here, my good man.”