The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(39)

But what if—what if I hadn’t?

The thought unsettled me. I’d never been late before. But I also had never been experimented on before. First time for everything?

I stared ahead at the road and asked Stella, “When did you have your period last?”

Jamie crossed his arms, looking smug. “Called it.” I flicked his ear.

“Um, three weeks ago? I think.” She glanced at me. “When was yours?”

“A month ago,” I lied. She shot me a look. “What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She turned back to the road, then swore. “I don’t think I packed any tampons. Did you?”

I shook my head. “Forgot.”

“As delightful as this conversation is,” Jamie said, “can I ask why we’re having it?”

I had no good answer to that question, but as I struggled to come up with some excuse, I realized Stella was pulling off toward an exit.

“I thought we were stopping in Savannah?” Jamie asked. “We’re still an hour away.”

“We have only a quarter of a tank left,” she explained. “And I need a bathroom.”

That liar. She thought I needed a bathroom, and that I was embarrassed about it, so she was covering for me so we could stop. Which was actually extremely sweet.

Thank you, I mouthed to her. And I was grateful. When we stopped, I could ask Stella the question I wanted to ask, just not in front of Jamie.

At the gas station Stella decided she really did have to use the restroom, thankfully, so the two of us went inside while Jamie filled the tank. I bought tampons I unfortunately didn’t need and followed Stella into the bathroom. She was about to walk into a stall when I stopped her.

“Are you sure it was three weeks ago?”

“Yeah. I remember having to ask Wayne for tampons. His face turned so red, I actually thought steam might start coming out of his ears.” She grinned, but it quickly faded. “Why? What’s wrong?”

I bit my lip. “I’m late.”

“How late?”

“I don’t—I don’t really know. Time is sort of screwed up for me—maybe, maybe two weeks?” Or three.

“That’s pretty late,” Stella said quietly.

I said nothing.

“I’ve never been that late.”

I still said nothing. Apparently, whatever was going on with me wasn’t going on with her.

Stella’s expression quickly changed from curious to concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” But I wasn’t fine. I was a lot of things, but definitely not fine.

“You look weird . . . ,” she said.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked awful, was how I looked. My face was nearly white, and my lips were gray, and the shadows under my eyes were like bruises.

Stella didn’t look like this. Stella looked healthy. Normal. If she was different, like me, why didn’t I look more like her?

“You look like you’re going to pass out.” She glanced back at the door. “Should I get Jamie? I’ll get Jamie.”

I started to protest but the room began to spin, and I couldn’t speak and stand at the same time. I grabbed the sink, but my knees felt shaky, and I slid down to the floor.





24


BEFORE


London, England


AUNT SARAH KEPT HER PROMISE. She treated me as if I were her own child. Better, perhaps. She had always secretly wanted a daughter, she said, a girl who would be docile and gentle, unlike Elliot and Simon, rough young boys, always tumbling in the dirt and battling each other with sticks.

I dined with her at nearly every meal. She would brush and braid my hair, though I had a lady’s maid to do it for me. I was her Indian princess, she said, a gift her husband didn’t even know he had given her, to keep her company after his death. I spent nearly every moment with her as she taught me every rule.

Rules about what to eat and when and how. What to wear and how to dress. How to behave. How to address women, how to address men, how to address men of title, the differences among the servants, among the butler and valet and the different types of maids. She taught me whom I could be seen with, and what I could be seen doing.

We dined together in the morning, took calls together in the afternoon, and she taught me to dance and play cards in the evening before she retired for bed. I could never have imagined a life like this. I became accustomed to the tastes of rich foods prepared painstakingly, of clean linens that I did not myself have to clean. I took long walks with Aunt Sarah. I spent time with the little boys. And three times per week, in secret, the professor came to me during the day.

The first time I met him, I was startled by how familiar he seemed. He was dark and handsome, and I could have sworn I had seen his face before, but he made no mention of it, and it would have been rude if I had.

Mr. Grimsby ?ushered him into the house without ceremony, and he bowed when I arrived. I bobbed a curtsy, and he smiled. We were to study in the library, Mr. Grimsby said, and showed the professor the way.

It was my favorite room in the house. I loved the smell, and the quiet, and the way shafts of light trapped little motes of dust. It felt like another world.

We sat down. “Well, Mara,” he said to me in English with just the faintest trace of a foreign accent. “Tell me everything you know.”