Chapter 5
“You really searched for that for seventeen years?” Annie asked.
Arthur nodded.
“My wife, Eleanor, lost it during a charity reception at the house. We had nearly forty people in the garden that evening. Landscapers dug around the roses the following week, but no one found it.”
“Maybe it fell deeper,” Annie said.
“Apparently.”
“Was she sad?”
Arthur looked at the ring.
“She pretended she wasn’t.”
“Grace does that.”
Arthur lifted his eyes.
“What?”
“She pretends things don’t bother her when they do.”
I nudged Annie gently.
But Arthur didn’t seem upset.
Instead, he said, “Eleanor did too.”
A doctor came through the door before anything else could be said.
She was a woman with silver-streaked dark hair and quick eyes.
“Caleb? Annie?”
We both stood.
“I’m Helen Mercer.”
She shook our hands as though we were adults.
“Your sister is going to be all right. She needs rest, fluids, antibiotics, and at least a week of not pretending she can work.”
“That last part might be difficult,” I said.
Helen smiled.
“I gathered that.”
Then she glanced at Arthur.
“And I have already informed Mr. Whitmore that paying someone’s medical bill does not give him the right to organize the rest of her life.”
Arthur frowned.
“I offered assistance.”
“You issued instructions.”
“They were practical instructions.”
Helen turned to us.
“He has never understood the difference.”
Something about the way she spoke to him made the room feel less frightening.
“Can we see Grace now?” Annie asked.
“Yes.”
Grace looked tiny beneath the hospital blanket.
Her brown hair was tied badly behind her head, and there were shadows beneath her eyes, but when we walked in, she immediately pushed herself upright.
“Where have you two been?”
There it was.
Annie smiled.
“You’re mad.”
“Of course I’m mad!”
Grace looked at Arthur.
Then at me.
Then back at Arthur.
“What happened?”
I told her.
Not everything at first.
Just the garden, the food, the ring.
Grace listened with one hand covering her mouth.
When I finished, she looked as if she didn’t know whether to hug us or lecture us.
May you like
Probably both.
“You walked all the way to Bellweather Avenue?”
