The Glass Ballerina Who Danced On Knives

The Will Reading

The will reading

My fingers itched to pull out my phone and start taking pictures, but I resisted. Libby had no such compunctions.

"Mademoiselle..." Xander - Trinity seemed to have disappeared into thin air, side-stepped to block one of Libby's shots. "May I ask: What are your feelings on roller coasters? "I thought Libby's eyes might actually pop out of her head.

"This place has a roller coaster?" Xander grinned.

"Not exactly." The next thing I knew, the "baby" of the Hawthorne family—who was six foot three if he was an inch—was pulling my sister toward the back of the foyer. I was dumbfounded. How can a house "not exactly" have a roller coaster?

Beside me, Grayson snorted. I caught him looking at me and narrowed my eyes."What?"

"Nothing," Grayson said, the tilt of his lips suggesting otherwise. "It's just...you have a very expressive face."

No. I didn't. Libby was always saying that I was hard to read. My poker face had single-handedly been funding Harry's breakfasts for months. I wasn't expressive. There was nothing remarkable about my face.

"I apologize for Xander," Grayson commented. "He tends not to buy into such antiquated notions as thinking before one speaks and sitting still for more than three consecutive seconds." He looked down. "He's the best of us, even on his worst days".

"Ms. Ortega said there were five of you." I couldn't help myself. I wanted to know more about this family. About him. "Five grandchildren, I mean."

"I have three brothers, and one sister," Grayson told me. "Same mother, different fathers. Our aunt Zara doesn't have any children." He looked past me. "And on the topic of my relations, I feel as though I should issue a second apology, in advance."

"Gray, darling!" A woman swept up to us in a swirl of fabric and motion. Once her flowy shirt had settled around her, I tried to peg her age. Older than thirty, younger than fifty. Beyond that, I couldn't tell. "They're ready for us in the Great Room," she told Grayson. "Or they will be shortly. Where's your brother?"

"Specify, Mother."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Don't you 'Mother' me, Grayson Hawthorne." She turned to me. "You'd think he was born wearing that suit," she said with the air of someone confiding a great secret, "but Gray was my little streaker. A real free spirit. We couldn't keep clothes on him at all, really, until he was four. Frankly, I didn't even try." She paused and assessed me without bothering to hide what she was doing. "You must be Ava."

"Avery," Grayson corrected. If he felt any embarrassment about his supported past as a toddler nudist, he didn't show it. "Her name is Avery, Mother." The woman sighed but also smiled, like it was impossible for her to look at her son and not find herself utterly delighted in his presence.

"I always swore my children would call me by my first name," she told me. "I'd raise them as my equals, you know? But then, I always imagined having girls. Four boys later and only one girl..."She gave the world's most elegant shrug. Objectively, Grayson's mother was over the top. But subjectively? She was infectious. "Do you mind if I ask, dear, when is your birthday? "The question took me by surprise. I had a mouth. It was fully functioning. But I couldn't keep up with her enough to reply. She put a hand on my cheek. "Scorpio? Or Capricorn? Not a Pisces, clearly—"

"Mother," Grayson said, and then he corrected himself. "Skye." It took me a moment to realize that must be her first name, and that he'd used it to humor her in an attempt to get her to stop astrologically cross-examining me.

"Grayson's a good boy," Skye told me. "Too good." Then she winked at me."We'll talk."

"I doubt Ms. Grambs plans to stay long enough for a fireside chat—or a tarot reading."