She shrugged. “Honor and Mercy are helping Cook with petits fours for the ball. Berta didn’t want to teach just me.” She nodded toward the triplets’ room across the hall. “I wanted to see if Lenore would sit for a portrait.”
“They’re out with Morella. Final fittings on their dresses.” Ishifted, letting my back close the pedestal’s door.
Her mouth pursed into a rosebud as she studied me. “I don’t think Eulalie will like you being in there.”
“Eulalie isn’t here anymore, Verity.”
She blinked once.
“Why don’t you go see if Cook needs more help?” I suggested. “I bet she’ll let you taste the icing.”
“Are you borrowing something?”
“Not exactly.” I stood up, letting my skirts cover the handkerchief.
“Did you come in here to cry?”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Papa does sometimes. In Ava’s. He thinks no one knows about it, but I hear him at night.”
Ava’s room was on the fourth floor, directly above Verity’s.
She leaned in, peering about the room with curiosity but unwilling to actually enter it. “I won’t tell if you are.”
“I’m not crying.”
She reached out, beckoning me over to her. I left the handkerchief on the floor, hoping she wouldn’t see it. Verity traced one fingertip across my cheek and looked disappointed when it came away dry. “I still miss her.”
“Of course you do.”
“But no one else does. No one remembers her anymore. All they talk about is the ball.”
I squeezed her shoulders. “We haven’t forgotten her. We need to move on, but that doesn’t mean they don’t miss and love her.”
“She doesn’t think so.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She thinks everyone is too busy with their lives to remember her.” She glanced back out into the hall as if worried our conversation was being overheard. “Elizabeth says so too. She says we all look different now. But she doesn’t.”
“You mean when you remember her?”
She shook her head. “When I see her.”
“In your memories,” I pressed.
After a moment, she held out the sketchbook, offering it tome.
Before I could take it, Rosalie and Ligeia rushed down the hall, carrying a tower of boxes marked with the names of several Astrean shops.
“Oh good, you’re both here!” Rosalie said, struggling to throw open their bedroom door. “We need to go downstairs, all of us, right now!”
“Why?” Verity asked, her shoulders suddenly tense, worry evident on her face. “Did someone else die?”
I winced. What other six-year-old worried an announcement meant someone had died?
“Of course not!” Ligeia said, depositing her treasures at the foot of her bed. “They’re here! The fairy shoes! We stopped by the cobbler’s shop, and he was sewing on the last set of ribbons!”
