Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(56)

“I’m sorry about Fred.”

She wondered how sorry he really was. Maybe sorry for his sister. “It’s okay.”

“Dotty . . . this is a big shock for her. A lot to handle. I think it’s going to take some time to put the pieces back together, you know?”

Livia nodded. “She told me.”

He tilted his head slightly, as though confused or flustered. “She did? Oh. Okay.”

They were both quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Dotty told me you were pretty upset. That you might benefit from . . . a change of pace.”

“Yes.”

Again, he looked a little flustered. Maybe he was expecting Livia to not know what was coming, to be more reluctant. He was trying to process what it meant that she seemed to know what was going on. And to welcome it.

“So . . . Dotty and I wondered whether it might be better for you to finish up high school in Portland. You know, away from all this . . . tragedy. I mean, you’ve already been through a lot. But we just want what’s best for you. Would you want that, Livia? To live with me in Portland?”

“Yes. Please that.”

He nodded slowly, as though putting together pieces he hadn’t previously recognized were there. “It wouldn’t be like this, you know. Just a small apartment. I mean, there’s an extra room I use as an office now, I could clear that out, move my gear to the kitchen, and the office would be your bedroom. It’s small, but comfortable. But it’s nothing like my sister’s house.”

“It sounds nice.”

“And I don’t know much about . . . about raising a teenager. You know I’ve never had kids.”

She smiled at his awkwardness and thought of the time he had given her coffee with the milk and turbinado sugar. “I think you know more than you realize.”

He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, let’s hope so, right?” He looked at her. “Are you really up for this, Livia?”

“If you are.”

There was a pause. Then he held out his hand. She shook it.

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” he said. “Dotty wanted to get it over with.”

That was good to hear. It meant Mrs. Lone was intent on getting the body in the ground before anyone outside Mr. Lone’s cohorts thought to look at it too closely.

“The truth is,” Rick went on, “I’m glad. This isn’t a great week for me to take off from work. She’s got all the boys here anyway, so she doesn’t need me right now. I’ll come back soon, when they’re gone. She’ll need the support then. But right now, she’ll be okay. That means you and I will drive back first thing in the morning, day after tomorrow. Can you pack by then?”

Livia looked around her room. She almost told him she could leave right now. But she’d already revealed some of her eagerness, maybe even too much. So instead she just said, “I don’t have much.”

And that was true, up to a point. The real truth, though, was that the things she cared about most were things that couldn’t be packed. Things that nothing could separate from her.

Or that she couldn’t take where she was going, no matter how much she might want to.





38—THEN

It snowed the morning of the funeral. There were limousines to drive the family from the house to the church, and a police honor guard to escort them. Livia went with Rick, and as they pulled up, she saw there were mourners standing outside already, huddled under umbrellas against the falling snow, far too many to fit inside. The casket was closed—a good sign, Livia thought, as it indicated Mrs. Lone’s commitment to ensuring no one could see whatever damage might have been visible on his neck—and surrounded by so many flowers, they must have been flown in from out of state. Senator Lone gave the eulogy, going on about the family’s long history with and love of Llewellyn, and how they all owed it to themselves and the town to try to live by Fred Lone’s example, and to continue his great work on behalf of prosperity and blah blah blah. If Livia hadn’t been so glad he was dead, she might have thrown up.

The Lones owned a family mausoleum in Llewellyn’s oldest cemetery, and that was where they buried him, alongside his parents and a sister who had died when he was young. Hundreds of people stood silently on the frozen grass, among the markers dusted in white, while the priest Livia had been forced to listen to so many times at Sunday services said some words about how Mr. Lone, a good and God-fearing man, was now with his Lord.

Livia hadn’t seen Sean or Malcolm at the funeral, and assumed they hadn’t been able to come inside because of the crowds. But they were at the cemetery. She’d never seen them dressed up before. She was surprised at how much older Sean looked in a suit and tie. And handsome.

When the priest was done speaking, they came over and told her how sorry they were, though Malcolm was looking at her in a way that made her feel he understood she wasn’t exactly traumatized by her loss. Then he went off to express his condolences to Mrs. Lone, leaving Sean and Livia to themselves under the gently falling snow.

“I missed you at Katy’s party,” Sean said. “I wanted to call you, but I know you don’t like getting calls at the Lones’ house.”

That was true. A few kids at school had cell phones, but not her. Mr. Lone had claimed they were frivolous. Probably he just didn’t want her to have more access to the outside world than necessary.