Page 17

He laughs. “Just hear me out. I know a thing or two.”

I finish the planks and crash to the floor, laying my head on the cool wood.

“I met Chrissy and didn’t have any interest. She wasn’t my type, or at least she hadn’t been my type. But I kept running into her. And then, one day we were the only ones at the gym at four in the morning. She offered to buy me a coffee to pick my brain about fitness, and the rest is history. Chrissy is my type. I just didn’t know it until I met her.”

His words resonate in my mind even though I don’t want them to. He pats me on the back.

“Go run on it for a bit. You gonna see this lady again?”

I get up and look him in the eye.

“In two days, she’s been invited to the Summer Palace by my father.”

“Good luck with that, then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he adds as he heads off toward his office. Gerard isn’t just my trainer. He trains all of us and most of our staff. He runs classes and has experts come in when say, my sister wants to learn Pilates. He’s a cool dude and apparently a fucking Jedi master.

I spend the rest of the day contemplating Gerard’s words. All through lunch with Anna, and all through dinner, and even when I crawl in bed, especially when I crawl in bed. It’s not bedding day, so the bed has been made but the sheets haven’t been changed today. When I roll over to the side of the bed where Kate slept, I can still smell her on my pillow.

I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. I need a distraction. My mind wanders back to my mother’s crown.

I’m about to fall asleep when Anna tiptoes into my room from the secret passage in my closet.

“Late night?” I ask her.

She jumps and puts a hand on her chest. “Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me!”

“I scared you. You are the one walking out of my closet at…” I look over at my phone. “One thirty in the morning.”

She shrugs and comes to lie down on the bed next to me. “Why are you up? Contemplating your drinking schedule at the Summer Palace?”

I turn to her. “When you said you still keep feelers out on Mom’s crown, what did you mean, exactly?”

She sits up, her face transforming from silly to serious. “It means that I still occasionally look into leads. Why?” she says and frowns.

“What if…I want to find it,” I whisper to her. It feels like a weight has been lifted off my chest. I’ve been wanting to find that bloody thing since…well, forever, I just have never admitted it aloud until this very moment.

Anna’s eyebrows knit together. “What? But…you always tell me to forget it. I…don’t understand.”

I sigh and sit up to face her. “I can’t explain it, Suzy Q. I just…I need to do this. Will you help me?”

The grin on my sister’s face says more than any words could.

“Fuck yeah, I will!” she says way too loudly for one thirty in the morning. She covers her mouth but can’t cover her grin.

She frowns then.

“What?”

“There’s something I need to show you, but I need to make you an honorary girl first.”

I stare at my sister as if she has grown a second head or third arm.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She looks around and grabs an umbrella in a stand in the corner of my room.

“Kneel,” she says.

I frown and give her a sharp look; I don’t kneel for anyone.