Today's Reading
I stab one of the forks into the thick cream of what I suspect is potatoes dauphinoise from the Tesco freezer section. "Right. Anyway, Great Aunt Frances has spent her whole life convinced this is going to come true."
"That's...I can't figure out if that's tragic or very savvy of her," Jenny says. She turns to Mum. "So, Annie's really never met this lady?"
Mum sighs and picks at the onions. "Mostly we just let Frances live in her big house and get on with things."
"Wait, so you have an aunt with a country estate and you just ignore her?"
Mum waves a hand to swat Jenny's comment away. "Everyone ignores Frances. She's nutty. So much so that she's a local legend—the weird old lady with a huge country house and piles of money, just digging up dirt on anyone who crosses her path in case they might turn out to be her murderer."
"So are you going to call this solicitor about the mix-up?" I ask.
Mum pinches the bridge of her nose and hands me the letter. "I don't think it 'is' a mix-up. I'd come with you to Dorset, but that date is deliberate."
I look at it again. "Your show at the Tate," I say slowly. "She's trying to make sure you can't come?"
"Frances may be nutty, but she's very calculating. And she likes to play games."
"Okay," I say. My shoulders sag at the thought of missing Mum's Tate exhibition, but it looks like this meeting concerns our livelihood. I'll just have to hope the opening goes well, so that there will be others. "But then, why me?"
Mum lets out a long hiss of air before she speaks. "She lives her life by that fortune, and for years I was her sole benefactor because of that line—'but daughters are the key to justice.' I'm the only daughter in her family; my father was Frances's older brother."
"The second part of the line," I muse. "Find the right one and keep her close."
Mum nods. "It looks like Frances has decided that I'm not the right daughter anymore."
Chapter 2
The Castle Knoll Files, September 10, 1966
I'M WRITING THIS ALL HERE BECAUSE I JUST KNOW there will be things I've seen that might matter further down the road. Some details that seem small now will turn out to be extremely important, or the other way around. So I'm keeping everything together, and I'm making careful notes.
'Rose still thinks I'm bonkers for fixating on this fortune. But she doesn't know the reason I believe in it so fiercely.'
'Because someone's been threatening me even before we saw the fortune-teller.'
'I found a piece of paper in my skirt pocket that read "I'll put your bones in a box." That threat gives me shivers when I think about it, but I have to keep it close in case there's something I can learn from it. Some clue that might help me stop whatever ill fate is already in motion.'
'And then there was my fortune—"Your future contains dry bones." Two mentions of bones—it can't be a coincidence. And then Emily, vanishing a few weeks ago, almost exactly a year after that fortune was told.'
'When the police interviewed me, I could tell they didn't fully believe what I said. They even asked me if I was feeling like I needed some attention, now that all the focus is on finding Emily. So I didn't bother to tell them the rest. I decided then and there to take matters into my own hands. Because the last people'
'I want knowing about this past year are the police.'
Chapter 3
IT ONLY TAKES THREE STOPS FOR MY TRAIN TO nearly empty—all the commuters leave before the city bleeds away. In two hours the patchwork green of Dorset's rolling hills comes into view, and I feel excitement pooling in my stomach. I take out one of the empty notebooks I brought with me and try to jot down some descriptions of the scenery. This train doesn't go all the way to Castle Knoll, so I've got to find a bus from a town called Sandview, and there's only one per hour.
Finally, the train lurches to the end of the line, and I see that my connection is a classic open-top double-decker bus—the kind designed for tourists heading to the seaside. I sit right at the front of the top level like a little child, and it rattles through a constellation of obscure villages before it finally approaches Castle Knoll. By then I've inhaled the heady scent of manure mixed with distant sea air for a full forty minutes, but the dappled light and country lanes that accompany it make the smell seem charming rather than offensive.
...
