The Lost Girl of Astor Street(51)

I lick a stray drop of jam from my thumb. “He should find better ways to show it.”

“You really shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” Father says. “Especially dressed like this. That journalist has been hanging around here again.”

“I haven’t seen anyone for a week.”

“This isn’t a local one. Nick was talking to her yesterday because she was loitering around the house.”

“Oh, her.” I cram a large bite of biscuit into my mouth. “Hopefully, the people of Kansas City lose interest soon, and she’ll leave us alone.”

Sidekick abandons his pursuit of the squirrel and takes to rolling in a sunny patch of grass. Father and I watch him in silence for a few moments.

“I know you don’t like Nick’s lectures, and I didn’t want to fan the flames and say so in front of him, but I do think you should exercise caution with Mariano.”

I huff out an irritated breath. “What happened to your blessing?”

“You still have it. I’m just recommending you slow down a bit. I believe Mariano is a good sort of chap, but marrying two cultures is always tricky, especially with his type of fam—”

“Whoa.” I put up a hand. “It’s not like that. We’ve never even been on a date.”

Father sucks in his lower lip, like he does when he’s thinking something through. “In my day, if a fellow paid the kind of attention to a girl that Mariano has paid to you, it meant they were going somewhere serious.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t going somewhere serious.”

“You’re just saying I’m putting the cart before the horse.”

“Yes. Miles away from the horse.”

Father’s mouth curls upward. “I won’t pretend that’s not a relief.” He glances at his wristwatch. “Now I really will be late. I’m taking the Chrysler. I don’t think Nick needs the Ford for his lake excursion, so if you want the car left here, you should feel free to ask him.”

I wipe biscuit crumbs off my kimono. “Thank you, but where would I be going?”

“I would rather you not go anywhere. But Jane says I’m living too much in fear, that you’re eighteen, and all that good stuff.” Father clasps a hand to my knee. “Just be careful. Don’t go anywhere alone. Okay?”

My own words from my dream—it was supposed to be me—shudder through my thoughts. “Okay.”





CHAPTER


THIRTEEN


She’s in heaven among the Lord’s angels.” Mrs. LeVine pauses stirring milk into her tea so she can dry her eyes with a handkerchief. “That’s what I have to keep reminding myself. She’s healthy again. She’s with my mother and my sweet Rachel, God bless their souls.”

Rachel. Born after Lydia, but who only lived to see a week.

“She’ll like that.” I stir my own tea because it’s something to do. “Rachel’s death was such a painful memory to her.”

Mrs. LeVine gives me a watery smile. “And she’s with your lovely mother, my dear. Just think. They might be standing together and looking down at us right now.”

I try to smile back, but it feels brittle. I wish I could make myself believe what Mrs. LeVine does. That I could be satisfied with thoughts of Lydia floating on clouds and playing the lyre.

I settle my hand-painted cup onto the saucer. These are the dishes I’ve seen locked in Mrs. LeVine’s china cabinet, which I’ve been shooed away from when being too rowdy. And now I’ve become the guest who deserves their use.

“How’s Dr. LeVine doing?”

Mrs. LeVine’s weak smile flickers and fades. Her fingers take to fussing with the outdated tulle jabot at her throat. “He’s saddled himself with so much guilt, I’m afraid. As if he’s somehow responsible for what happened to Lydia.”

The back of my neck prickles as that old suspicion creeps into my thoughts—that perhaps Dr. LeVine actually is responsible.

Lydia’s laugh fills my ears. Oh, Piper, you can’t think my own father would have done something like this.

“He’s the one who hired that wretched man, after all. But of course Matthew worked for us nearly eighteen months, and we never saw even a moment of suspicious behavior. Why, Lydia thought of him as an older brother. She probably”—Mrs. LeVine’s chin trembles—“had no idea when he lured her . . . Excuse me.”

She presses the handkerchief to each eye.

People can be so willfully blind. With hardly a glance, anyone could have seen that Lydia didn’t feel brotherly affection for Matthew. While the LeVines have always been thought of as a good sort of family, truth telling has never been their strength. Not when the truth dares to color outside the lines of propriety.

I sip my tea and wait for her to lower the handkerchief. “I just wish they would catch him so he could be questioned and we could know the truth.”

Because the truth coming out could only help Matthew. Couldn’t it?

The aftermath has played out just as Mariano predicted that day he came to tell me the wretched news. Matthew had snuck out of town with such stealth, they couldn’t even figure out how he left, much less track him to another location. And with the trail cold and Lydia just one of many dead bodies in the city, the department moved on.