Chapter 13: Ask Your Father

The silence after my question lasted long enough for a horse to cough in the paddock.

Four hundred people looked at the dais.

Then they looked at the woman in the pale blue coat.

Renata stepped forward, lifted the second microphone off its stand, and tapped it once.

"The Queen has asked the household a question," she said.

"I'm its hostess, and I'm happy to answer."

She turned her head, not her body, toward my father.

"Ask your father."

A sound went through the crowd, low and wide, like wind in a hay field.

My father stood behind the velvet cushion with his hands still half raised.

"My daughter is upset," he said.

His voice was the farmer's voice, deep and warm, the one he used on guests.

"She's been gone nine years, and she's come back to a house in mourning.

"Her mother fell from that loft ladder.

"The sheriff said so, and God knows I've said it every day since."

"She fell," he said again.

Nobody in the crowd answered him.

"That isn't an answer," I said into the microphone.

"I asked who was in the barn."

"Nobody was in the barn."

"Then say it as the household's answer.

"The rule is the rule."

I turned to the guests.

"A host who refuses the Queen's Question may never host this Cup again.

"My mother won this crown three times.

"She knew that rule better than anyone alive."

"It's the rule, Warrick," a man called from the rail.

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