Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

“Please leave, Mr. Crowne.”

Thirteen

STORY

* * *

My uncle died the day before we were going to return to Crowne Point on the third week of September. His funeral was held the first weekend of October. The beach was peppered in a mosaic of fallen leaves. It looked like a fairy tale.

I held in vomit the entire time.

This morning I got my period. I’d had this niggling fear I might be getting pregnant, but then red appeared in my panties.

Blood.

Nothing left to tie me to Crowne Point.

I guess it was the perfect ending.

My grief made me…different. Nauseated. Fatigued. I hadn’t talked to Grayson since the Labor Day party, almost a month, but true to his word, not only did he give Uncle a funeral at Crowne Point, but Uncle was buried there.

Occasionally my eyes flitted to him across the leaf-strewn beach. In a black suit and tie, Lottie wrapped around his arm, his eyes down. Red.

A part of me wondered if my uncle’s death was ripping him up as much as it was me. And I hurt again.

Because I was back to being alone.

The one person I’d bled with now farther away.

The Crowne Family Cemetery was filled with proud granite mausoleums etched with scrawling poems along their sides. Now my uncle had one, the only non-Crowne ever to be buried there. I can’t imagine Tansy or Beryl was pleased. I don’t even know how Grayson pulled it off. My heart crunched, knowing how hard it would have been, but he’d kept his promise.

Servants were in attendance, dressed in their finest blacks. Tansy and Beryl Crowne were even there. West had come, as well as his parents. For this brief period on the beach, we were equalized, as only death could.

Then the ceremony ended.

There was a memorial being held for Uncle in the garden, a poetry reading. I went to my room to gather the materials I’d prepared to read, but when I tried to open my door, the knob wouldn’t budge.

Why wouldn’t it open?

I heard voices.

“Hello?”

Laughter.

My gut sank.

I slammed on the door. “Let me out!”

I repeated it over and over again, knowing it was useless but needing to do something as the last goodbye I would ever say to my uncle happened without me.

I didn’t realize I’d fallen to my knees until the door opened and I fell forward onto the cement. I didn’t look to see who’d opened it. I ran out to the gardens. They were cleaning everything up and taking down his rose-wrapped photo.

“I feel like I should say something about the clock striking twelve.”

I spun on Ellie and slapped her as something inside me snapped. I was fine to take my punishment, because I believed I deserved to be punished. I’d broken a rule, after all, one that we all obeyed.

But for how long was I supposed to sit and take it?