Chapter 6: The Headstone

Breakfast was eggs, silver and a long silence.

My father buttered his toast and talked about the weather.

My mother kept her eyes on her plate.

Rhett watched me eat and said nothing.

Perry's chair stayed empty.

Ask him what he did with it, my grandmother had said.

"Where is Perry?" I asked.

My father did not look up from his toast.

"Unwell."

My mother's fork rang against her plate.

Rhett smiled into his coffee, and I knew then that Perry had something to hide, and that this table knew it.

I excused myself the second the maid cleared my plate.

Before I left the table, I sent the recording from last night to the only number I knew by heart.

Dutch's phone.

The screen said: Sent.

Then I went out through the glass doors at the back of the house and down into the garden.

I knew where to look.

My mother had always kept her roses by the south wall, where the morning sun came over the stones.

There was a new stone among them.

It was white marble, a hand high, with fresh lilies at its foot.

THORA ROSE THORNQUIST

BELOVED DAUGHTER

AGE 12

Under it was a little carved lamb.

I stood there for a long time.

I had been alive the whole time, and my family had been laying flowers on a rock.

I knelt and put my hand on the stone.

It was cold and wet from the dew.

"I picked the lamb," my mother said behind me.

I did not turn around.

She came down the path in her robe and stood next to me, wringing her hands.

"They gave me a book of designs. I looked at them for three days. I thought a lamb was..." Her voice trailed off. "I thought you would like a lamb."

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