“Agamemnon is over there,” said Meaghan, pointing to a boy in an oversized wool sweater and corduroys.
“They’re adorable!” said Josie. “I promised Mia I’d find her new friends today. So, do you come here often? Um, that came out wrong…”
“Every morning,” said Misty.
“For book club,” said Meaghan, holding up a novel titled Depression, Death, and Narwhals.
“No way, what a coincidence!” said Josie.
“Oh, you’ve read it?” asked Meaghan.
“That? No. I meant that you’re having a book club, because I have a book! With me right now! I’m not much of a reader usually—”
Josie noticed their expressions darken.
“I mean, I totally used to be! Like in junior high! And high school too, at first anyway. I read a ton of books, and not just for class, but actually for fun.”
Expressions got even darker.
Josie dug through her purse for her new book. “It just feels like serendipity, is what I’m trying to say, that on the day I decide to get back into reading I would meet three nannies who are readers and watch kids the same age as Mia.” She proudly held up The Highwayman Came Riding.
“Serendipity, right?” she said again.
No one responded.
“Am I using that word correctly?” she whispered.
Meaghan glanced at Misty before speaking. “Um, Josie?” she said in a patient, helpful kind of tone. “That book you’re holding. It’s a tawdry romance. And a tawdry romance is not the sort of book one would bring to a book club.”
“Oh.”
Misty smiled an equally patient, helpful kind of smile. “You are what you read, you know.”
Josie nodded. She didn’t dare say anything else. Especially as she still wasn’t certain she’d used serendipity correctly.
A silence followed that was only slightly more awkward than the conversation had been. And then Misty said, “Let’s take a look at the passage on page forty-seven, where the narrator describes the orphan girl with such brutalizing detail one fears her bones might break under the weight of our scrutiny.”
The trio opened their books, and Misty began to read aloud. Something about their posture, their intensity, reminded Josie of the Three Fates, perhaps from a painting she’d seen somewhere. She walked away before they could decide her fate.
A surge of anger tingled in her toes and rushed up through her middle, into her face, bringing both a hot flush to her cheeks and a feeling that, if she were a cartoon, her eyes would be blazing red. Don’t they know who I am? came the sincere but also instantly ridiculous thought.
No, Josie Pie, they don’t know who you are, because you aren’t Millennial High School’s precious rising star Josie Sergakis here. Or anywhere, anymore.
She waved to Mia out of guilt for having failed to secure playdates. But the little girl didn’t notice, busy trying to recruit Agamemnon to play pirates by shouting, “Come here, scurvy wench!”
Agamemnon started to cry.
Josie pretended not to notice, busying herself by scouting out a place to sit. The trio had taken the only bench in the shade of the cottonwood trees, but after a month of cold-weather house arrest, Josie was open to sunshine. She spotted a bench conveniently far away from the trio.
The bench was weather-beaten—ancient wooden slats cracked and peeling, metal joints rusted orange, the weeds beneath it tall, their heads nosing up through the slats. One overachieving bush had sprouted up beside it, stretching its arms over most of the bench as if aggressively saving a seat for someone who was clearly very late. Josie scooted the bush over the side and sat down, crunching dead weeds beneath her.
She dialed the bank again.
“All of our customer-service agents are taking other calls. You are FIFTY-SEVENTH in line.”
The hold music started up, and Josie’s head started to pound. Nope, can’t do it right now. She ended the call, leaned back, and breathed.
The sun was warm on her dark hair, the sound of the river at her back soothingly peaceful. There was nothing to distract her, and her brain began to mull. Mull fiercely over one particular thing.
Everybody knows that relationships that start in high school …
She’d worried before that she might be naive. After all, who stays with their high school boyfriend forever? But the way he used to look at her … how could someone who’d loved her marrow-deep suddenly just stop?
Well, what did she think would happen after she practically ran away from him across state borders, not once but twice? A weird, sharp laugh coughed out of her throat.
The trio glanced at her. She saw herself through their eyes—an oddly named, slouchy-dressed, anxious nanny not in college like them, sitting alone on a bench and laughing crazily to herself. Josie quickly picked up her book and opened it.
The words on the page were blurry. She shoved on the wretched glasses and hoped the trio didn’t look at her. And then kinda hoped they did—maybe reading glasses made her look more mature and intelligent.
Or sexy.
She snorted a laugh and began to read.
CHAPTER 1: An Alarming Turn of Events
Lady Fontaine pressed her gloved fingertips to the carriage window as if she could touch the jade-green woods on the other side. She had grown up in the tame countryside of southern France, vineyards and pleasant parks, wandering no farther from home than a walk to the church or a picnic by the tame little stream. And now to leave Ville de Marguerite for the first time, and under such strange circumstances! A hurried letter from her father: Come to me in Paris at once. Bring only your most trusted servants. Tell no one where you are going. Travel safely and hurry.
His words awoke something inside her. Perhaps she had been half asleep most of her life, only now realizing there was so much more to the world than a walk to church. Like secrets. And danger. And dark, mysterious woods that hid who-knew-what. It almost made her want to open the carriage door and …
No. Desires for wild landscapes and mysteries were uncouth and uncivil. She was Lady Fontaine de Marguerite. She was the daughter of the Marquis de Marguerite, a high-ranking nobleman in the French aristocracy. And a lady’s place was not to think and dream but to sit quietly, look pretty, and be ready to serve her father. And, someday, her husband.
She sighed, her bosom swelling in the confines of her corset.
She did not know how beautiful she was. Whenever she caught sight of the carriage driver or footman eyeing her, she assumed there was something amiss. A lock of hair fallen out. A stain on her dress. She could not guess that the men were drinking in the sight of their employer’s daughter and perhaps wishing …
Josie was already so engrossed in the words that it took her a moment to realize the colors were changing—the white page had a tinge of blue; the space around the book was spitting beams of yellow and orange. Instinctively, she let go of the book to grab the bench for stability, but nothing fell from her hand. The book was gone. And so, it seemed, was her eyesight. Was she actually going blind? The colors of the park, greens and browns and grays, were blurs in her shaking vision, swirls like the kaleidoscopic shapes that light took when she shut her eyes tight. She held her breath and waited for the world to come back into focus. Or for death, whichever came first.