Eyes on me.
Something in those blue depths I couldn’t read, but he wanted me desperately to understand.
“You can talk,” Lottie said after a minute. “I won’t…just, just talk.”
“How did I do what?”
“Talk to her that way. Weren’t you scared?”
After a moment, I nodded.
“So why did you do it?”
“That’s why I had to do it. To not be afraid anymore.”
Her brow furrowed, and she turned from me, staring after her mom. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore either…”
“Charlotte!”
Lottie straightened her spine at her mother’s voice, and without a second look in my direction, went to her.
The casket was in the ground, the funeral was over, and everyone was heading back inside.
I stayed as soft snow fell to the sandy grass. I looked around at the looping poetry etched into the various mausoleums.
I walked around the graveyard, reading the various poems.
Miss me one place, find me another…
I froze.
Could this be it? Is this what my uncle meant when he said the coin was buried beneath a poem?
West gripped my elbow, following my line of sight. “See something interesting?”
I really didn’t want to leave it. What if we were so close?
“Um…no.”
I followed West inside, leaving the only clue behind.
West walked a few feet in front of me as we went back inside Crowne Hall. I caught my reflection in the edge of an oil painting’s frame, my rounded stomach warped in the gold. For the first time, I didn’t have to hide my pregnancy. It felt odd. So many months I’d spent concealing it, and now it was on full display.
I slowed my pace considerably, trying to walk beside the triplets behind me.
Their faces were buried in their phones.
I had to hope that because of their mother’s circumstances, they would let me speak. I had to hope even more that they might know something.
“Um…” I looked around to be sure no one else could hear me talk. “Hi.”
“You shouldn’t be talking, mistress,” Jo said, without looking up. Despite the bored apathy on her chiseled, pouty face, she hadn’t spoken with any ire.
She was the only girl of the three triplets, and though named after her mother, was starkly different. Where Josephine was airy and fay-like, Jo was gloomy and unsmiling.
“So…” I dragged my bottom lip between my teeth, working out the best way to approach this.
Hey, you heard any hot goss about a shiny gold coin?