by Erin Bowman
Piper went to work, and her father went back to smiling, and she never thought about the guards again. Not until today, on the four-poster bed at Mallory Estate, as she reflected on Julius’s explanation of affinities.
She shook her head. This was dumb. There was nothing magical about those men or the way she’d hidden. Julius’s trick with the spyglass was simply too good, his acting so convincing that she was looking for magic where there wasn’t any.
She grabbed her phone and drafted a quick e-mail to Aunt Eva, letting her know that she’d been shown to a room, but that Grandma Mallory wasn’t even at the estate. Then she tried to get on the Wi-Fi. There was only one network—MalloryEstate—and it was locked. Grumbling, Piper tossed her phone aside and collapsed backward.
Before her head even hit the quilt, the door to her room burst open.
“Knock much?” Piper cried out, jolting upright.
The girl standing in the doorway was Piper’s age, with brown skin and dark hair that was gathered in a tight bun at the top of her head. The few curls that had escaped the elastic corkscrewed wildly. She wore flip-flops, a denim skirt, and a T-shirt that said THE SASS IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE in the Star Wars font. In her right hand, she held a gold coin. No, held wasn’t the right word, Piper reasoned, because the girl was making the coin dance—passing it from knuckle to knuckle like a casino gambler.
“Julius sent me to get you,” the intruder said. “It’s dinnertime.”
“I’m Piper Peavey,” Piper said, holding out her hand.
“I know. We all do.” The other girl tucked the coin into her skirt pocket and looked at her nails, bored. “Are you coming? If they burn something while I’m gone, I will lose it.”
“You’re Camilla,” Piper said, remembering how Julius had mentioned a twelve-year-old chef.
The girl gave a very exaggerated sigh. “Yeah, Camilla Cortez. And let me just get this out of the way: you’ll see Julius later and he’ll say, ‘Camilla really isn’t so bad once you get to know her,’ but I am. I’m not nice. I’m not looking to make friends and I definitely don’t want to be yours. Princess Piper who’s come to live at her grandmother’s estate, thinking she’s better than everyone and can beat us to the prize?” Camilla rolled her eyes. “Pu-lease.”
Piper had no clue what prize Camilla was even referencing.
“If you don’t have to keep this place running like the rest of us …” The girl let the thought die, but her lips curled slightly, and the look she was giving Piper was pure fire.
“Spite,” Piper said. “It should have said ‘spite.’ ”
Camilla frowned. “What should have said ‘spite’?”
“Your shirt.” Piper brushed past a speechless Camilla and into the hall.
* * *
At the bottom of the stairs, Piper paused. When Julius had shooed off Kenji earlier, the boy had run down the hall that Julius said also held the dining room. To the left. But she’d been facing the stairs then, not coming down them, which meant now she had to go …
“To the right,” Camilla snipped, catching up to her.
Piper headed right. Her sneakers were soundless on the rug; Camilla’s flip-flops made a muted thwick-thwack, thwick-thwack as they walked. Passing a set of French doors that led to the library, Piper caught a quick glimpse of towering bookshelves and work desks with small desk lamps and upholstered chairs.
“What are you doing in the hall?” Camilla snapped. Piper looked up to see Julius waiting to greet them. “I told you to make sure the ham came out at exactly seven. If it dries out, not even the honey glaze will save it.”
“The ham is fine,” he said pointedly. To his left, a set of double doors were propped open, revealing a grand dining hall with polished floors and velvet curtains of rich emerald that framed floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the patio. A table large enough to seat thirty (but set only for two) was positioned in the center of the room. To Piper, he added, “I see you met Camilla.”
“Unfortunately,” Camilla mumbled before Piper could say anything.
“Don’t let her scare you,” Julius insisted. “She’s really not so bad once you get to know her.”
Camilla cocked an eyebrow at Piper, as if to say, Did I call it, or what? and for the briefest moment a smile spread over her lips. Then she seemed to remember that she was set on despising Piper and flattened her smile into a grimace, huffed past the dining hall, and disappeared through a small, unimpressive door at the end of the hall.
“She told me you’d say that,” Piper said to Julius. He shrugged awkwardly. “Where’d she run off to?”
“That,” Julius said, pointing to the door Camilla had taken, “leads to a corridor that accesses the kitchen—and Camilla is in her element in the kitchen. It’s her happy place.”
“Yeah, she sure seemed thrilled to glaze the ham,” Piper said sarcastically.
“Everyone’s on edge this week. Things have been a little … off.” He scratched the back of his neck and became very interested in the wallpaper.
“Why?”
“You should really sit down. Mrs. Peavey hates waiting. At least, she’s been super impatient this past week.”
“She’s in there already?” Piper hadn’t seen anyone at the table, and her pulse quickened as she checked the dining hall again. She wasn’t sure she was ready to meet her mother. What do you say to someone you haven’t seen in seven years?
“No, of course not. When she arrives, she’ll expect dinner to be served immediately. Now, please, will you just go in before …”
Julius’s face paled. His body went very still. His eyes widened.
“Good evening, Mrs. Peavey,” he said, gaze fixed over Piper’s shoulder. “Dinner is almost ready.”
Striding up the hall, heels silent on the rug, was Piper’s mother.
Piper’s heart beat wildly in her chest. She stood straighter, pushed her shoulders back.
Will she recognize me? Has she missed me?
Piper couldn’t help it. She should hate her mother for leaving—and for years she had—but now that she was standing just feet away from the woman, Piper found herself smiling, desperate for Sophia Peavey to like her.
Polished.
That was the only word Piper could come up with for her mother. From her red hair (smoothed into an elegant French twist) to her clothing (wine-colored blouse and dark pencil skirt), all the way down to her heels (shiny black patent leather), there wasn’t a crooked hem or stray thread or loose hair out of place. She looked more like a model than a parent. Piper didn’t feel any motherly warmth from her—not for herself, or for Julius, either.
She felt foolish, grinning there like a puppet, and wiped the giddy smile from her face.
Nothing about this woman looked like the one pictured inside Piper’s locket. That woman smiled; the woman before Piper kept her lips pursed tightly. Piper had never realized how a smile could change someone, bring life to their skin and joy to their eyes. She should have. She’d noticed how these things had been slowly leached from her father. But until now, she hadn’t put together that it was his smile that had truly caused the change. That these days, when her father smiled, it was only an attempt at one, and in that attempt, the joy didn’t reach his eyes. When he stopped smiling altogether, would he look like this woman before Piper? A soulless stranger?
Sophia Peavey stopped an arm’s length from Piper and looked her up and down.
“Why are you not sitting?” she asked. Her voice was cold and distant, her green eyes rimmed with flecks of gold.
“What?” Piper said, which was silly, because she’d heard her mother just fine. She simply couldn’t believe that after not speaking for so long, this was the first thing her mother chose to say to her. She’d expected a hug. Or at least a kind hello.
“Sitting,” Sophia drawled, accentuating the t’s with annoyance. “I’m hungry. You should already be at your place.”
“Yes, right this way,” Julius muttered, and he shoved Pi
per into the dining room with a palm between her shoulders.
Chapter Five Small Talk After Seven Years
Piper had only two real memories of her mother from their time as a family of three.
The first was a nice one—a moment that always made her chest ache when she recalled it.
Her mother was already spending most of her time at Mallory Estate, but that afternoon she was home, sorting through her closet. Piper, roughly three, had no idea this was because Sophia would soon be leaving for good. She’d simply been content to play peekaboo from behind her mother’s hanging dresses, teetering around in a pair of Sophia’s heels.
Sometimes in the dark corner of the closet, Piper felt like a different person. A princess lost in a cave. No, a knight off to fight a dragon!
“Piper?” her mother called. “Where’d you go?”
The dresses parted, revealing her mother. She looked through Piper—more at the back wall than anything else—and shifted through more clothes. “Piper?”
Piper giggled to herself, uncertain how her mother had overlooked her, then burst from between the dresses. “Boo!” she yelled.
Her mother jumped, a look of surprise on her face, then laughed. “Oh, that is lovely,” she said, eyeing the ensemble Piper had donned: a pair of red heels, a sun hat with a floppy brim that she’d found on the floor, and a small leather purse that she was wearing around her front like a necklace.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Sophia said.
“Boo!” Piper repeated. “I’m right here!”
Again, her mother smiled.
The other memory was closer to the divorce, just days before it was finalized. Piper had come to her parents’ bedroom early that morning. Her father was still in his pajamas. Her mother sat at the edge of the bed, back to the doorway, with a suitcase at her feet.
Piper pushed the door open a crack, and her parents glanced briefly in her direction. She froze, half hidden behind the doorframe, but they must not have seen her, because they resumed their conversation.
“You don’t have to do this,” Atticus said to Sophia.
“I do.”
“You and I both know there’s no way that is actually true.”
Sophia shook her head. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
There was an awkward silence.
“What about Piper?” her father asked.
“I have to do this,” Sophia said firmly, not answering Atticus’s question. “So that I can come home.” Then she picked up the suitcase and left the room, flinching when she found Piper spying from the hallway. “It’s early,” she said to her. “Go back to bed.” Then she kissed Piper’s forehead and left.
In the coming years Piper would revisit this memory, certain she’d heard her mother wrong. I have to do this. This isn’t my home, she probably said. Because her home was never Atticus and Piper. How could it be, when she’d abandoned them and never looked back? How could she have ever loved them when she made leaving look so easy?
This was the moment Piper was thinking about as Julius half guided, half pushed her to a seat at the end of the long mahogany dining table. Crystal chandeliers cast flashes of light on the glossy surface. Piper slumped into her chair. Her mother slid gracefully into her own at the other end of the table. It seemed like a football field separated them.
Pacing at the edge of the room, tail leaving long white hairs on the velvet curtains, was the Persian.
The doors at the rear of the dining hall burst open and Camilla and Kenji marched in. Camilla carried the first course—two bowls of golden butternut squash bisque—which she set before Piper and Sophia. Kenji approached with a large decanter. It took Piper a minute to realize it was filled with wine.
“Um, I think I should have water,” she whispered to him as he filled her glass.
“This is what Mrs. Peavey requested,” he said, practically trembling. Wine sloshed in the decanter. Piper had the distinct feeling that if he spilled any, her mother wouldn’t hesitate to assign him basement duty.
“Oh, that’s fine, then,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.” Kenji smiled meekly as he poured, and when he left, Piper moved the wineglass off her place mat.
At the other end of the table, Sophia picked up her spoon without so much as a glance in Piper’s direction and began to eat. Stomach grumbling, Piper did the same. The bisque was delicious; creamy and thick and flavorful. It was hard to believe a bunch of schoolkids could cook this well.
“You found it okay, then?” Sophia said from across the table.
“What?”
“The estate. You found it easily?”
Mallory Estate was tucked away at the end of a quarter-mile gravel drive on a 120-acre plot of land, but Blackburn itself wasn’t exactly hard to find. It was only two towns northwest of Piper’s hometown. The driveway had been a bit hard to spot from the main road—crowded with growth and lying in shadow—but Piper assumed her aunt had acquired detailed directions, because they’d arrived without incident.
“Yes, Aunt Eva brought me.”
Sophia stared at Piper for an uncomfortably long beat.
“Evangeline. Remember her? Daddy’s sister.”
Sophia sighed as if this detail bored her, then set down her spoon. “Let me get a few ground rules out of the way. You are not allowed on the second floor or in the estate’s turret. Dinner is served at exactly seven every day. This is the only meal I’ll be taking with you.”
“Every day or just to—”
“Just today,” Sophia spat, the gold rimming her eyes practically flashing like fire. She took a long sip from her goblet and Piper sat deathly still, afraid to breathe too loudly. “After tonight, you will help prepare meals with the others, as well as complete routine chores. They’ll fill you in on the details.
“You’re on your own for breakfast and lunch, which should be eaten promptly at eight and noon. I will get those meals at my own leisure. Use the servant corridor to access the kitchen, and eat back there as well. I don’t want to see you in the dining hall, nor do I want to see you around the house. If you’re inside and have free time, make yourself a ghost. If you need to scream or run or do anything decidedly childlike”—her lip curled—“go outside. Curfew is nine p.m., after which you should be in your bedroom and no place else for the remainder of the evening. Any questions?”
“What about the garden?”
Something came to an abrupt halt in the corner of Piper’s vision. Julius. He was bringing in the next course. She wondered briefly if his trick with the spyglass would get him in trouble. Piper’s mom didn’t seem like the type who could appreciate a good prank.
“What about the garden?” Sophia’s forefinger traced the rim of her goblet.
“It looks …” Piper glanced out the windows, to the blackened oak trees beyond the steps. “Dangerous. I heard there was a fire a long time ago, but … is it safe now? Can I explore it?”
“A fire is only dangerous when it’s burning. Ash is harmless. I thought you were supposed to be bright.”
Piper didn’t know how her mother knew that her grades were exceptional. It wasn’t as if she ever checked in or visited. Maybe Grandma Mallory updated her.
“Any other stupid questions?”
Piper felt a lump form in her throat. Don’t cry. Change the subject. Talk about something else.
“Where’s Grandma?” she managed.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Attending to business. She might be held up for the rest of the summer.”
“The entire summer?” From what Piper could remember, her grandmother’s job as an archivist didn’t involve a lot of travel. When she wasn’t doing research from her office at the estate, she was at the Blackburn Historical Society in town. But even if she was held up there, it didn’t make sense for her not to return home for a meal or shower every once in a while.
The Persian mewled from the edge of the room, and Sophia narrowed her eyes at Piper. “She’s
doing some research out of state,” she clarified. “She’ll be back when she’s back.”
Julius took Piper’s soup bowl and slid a salad before her. At the opposite end of the table, Camilla did the same for Piper’s mother. The Persian leaped onto the table, and Sophia scratched the pet behind the ears, then lowered her lips to its forehead and whispered sweetly.
Piper’s blood went hot.
It wasn’t just this one moment with the Persian—though it was infuriating to see her mother show more love and attention to a cat than her own daughter—it was all of it. A lifetime of being ignored, and being belittled over dinner, and the fact that the only parent she loved and wanted to be with was hours away at the hospital, slowly losing a fight with cancer, alone.
“So that’s it?” she screeched. “That’s all you have to say to me? Stay out of the turret and avoid the second floor and be invisible in the house? That’s how I’m supposed to spend my summer?!”
Sophia went very still. When she raised her eyes to Piper, the Persian did the same; two sets of eyes—one green rimmed with gold, the other a brilliant yellow—stared at her for an uncomfortably long time. Then Sophia set her napkin on the table.
“I’m tired,” she said blithely. “I’m going to bed.”
“But this is only the second course,” Piper protested.
Her mother said nothing, only stood and strode from the room, with the Persian padding after her clicking heels.
Piper stared at the open doors, certain her mother would reappear. Her lip trembled, and when it was clear Sophia wasn’t returning, she pulled her locket from beneath her shirt and cracked it open.
The woman within was planting a kiss on a chunky baby’s cheek while Atticus squeezed them both. Even mid-kiss, it was obvious the woman was smiling, so much so that she was practically laughing.
A tear trailed down Piper’s cheek and landed in her lap.
“Way to go, princess,” Camilla said. “All that work in the kitchen, and for what?”
But for all her sass, Camilla brought out the third course—roasted ham with a honey glaze and a side of sweet green beans—and when Piper found the strength to look up, she realized she wasn’t alone. Julius, Camilla, and Kenji had all gathered at the table to eat with her.