My mother was beautiful when she smiled. Daddy says it could run the world like a power generator if we could capture it. They say I look like her.
Or rather, looked like her.
Today was coal, and there was no changing it.
I wish they hadn’t bothered with the open-casket. I don’t need to see her one last time—not like this. Not dead. The funeral home tried to make her look natural in a pretty, floral dress she’d worn to garden parties last spring, her blond hair curled softly and pulled back at the ears like she always wore it. Her lips are painted with her favorite shade: Dolce Vita. I stole her tube from the vanity in her bathroom, but I’m not wearing it. I couldn’t even look at it.
Dolce Vita. The sweet life.
Not anymore.
It’s been a week since I got the call—a week since my life shattered into pieces so small I’ll never put it back together. I want to erase the night. I want to forget everything about it. I want it to have never happened at all. But I can’t erase the black dress I’m wearing or the memory of this morning’s open coffin.
Someone must have given them a photo to help the undertaker prepare her body. They’ve gotten everything right, except that smile—the one that could power the world. I know now that it was never the smile, but the light behind it. It’s missing. No, not missing. Gone. Extinguished, just like her.
The house is full of people, but, despite the lingering summer heat outside, I feel so cold I sneak off to find a jacket. And take a break from the well-wishing strangers, some of whom I’ve known my whole life. My room is in the east wing but at the top of the stairs, my feet carry me in the opposite direction. I find myself in her bedroom. Everything looks like it did that morning. The maids haven’t been cleaning in here. I would guess my father had warned them not to, and no one goes against Angus MacLaine’s wishes. That probably means I shouldn’t be in here either. If he found out…
Slipping into the closet, I tell myself she would have a more appropriate jacket than I do. Half my closet is still prep school uniforms from last year. The other half is haute couture. I had to borrow a black dress from my brother’s fiancée, because Dad said I couldn’t wear one of Mom’s. He’d kill me if he knew I was in here now. My fingers trail across the neatly hung clothes, rippling the fabrics and releasing the scent of her: lavender and vanilla and a hint of Chanel No. 5. It’s all color-coded, the clothes flowing like a rainbow in the large walk-in, ending in a pool of black. Mom owned black clothing, no doubt for events like this. But she never wore it daily, unlike most women. She preferred color, everything from muted creamy yellows to audacious scarlet red. You could always spot her in crowd of her peers, blooming like an exotic flower in the midst of their sophisticated neutrals. I bypass all those and focus on the darker stuff in the back. Coal black pieces that feel like my heart, except they’re still intact.
I grab a cashmere sweater and pull it over my shoulders as heat pricks my eyes. Swiping at it furiously with the sleeve, I catch her scent again and now there’s no stopping the tears. Part of me wants to sink to the floor, surrounded by her, and fall apart. But I don’t. Instead I force myself out of the closet. The sooner the reception is over, the sooner I’ll be one step closer to the end of the second-worst day of my life.
Pausing at the mirror, I take a moment to collect myself. But it’s my mother’s face staring back at me. We have the same wide forehead dusted with freckles no makeup will cover up. My light copper hair might be the same color, but it’s not nearly as well-behaved as hers. I had to shove it into a ponytail this morning when it wouldn’t cooperate. I got my green eyes from her. It hurts to look at myself. Because no matter how much I might see my mom looking at me from the reflection, I can see the truth. My cheeks are too round to be her high-angled, regal cheekbones. I’ve never gotten the hang of eyeliner. I’m a half-baked version of her at best. And now there’s no one around to help me finish growing up.
It takes effort to force myself out of the room, but as soon as I’m in the hall, I walk straight into someone snooping around.
“What are you doing up here?” My heart pounds against my rib cage like a bird trying to escape a snare. Inhaling deeply, I will it to calm, but before I can even hope to catch my breath, I realize I’ve made the same mistake twice. Why do I keep finding Sterling Ford where he doesn’t belong?
His eyes go wide, as if I’ve yanked him back in time to the moment we met, too. They’re no longer full of the casual arrogance that had burned in them the first time we met. He is still infuriatingly hot, though, even dressed in a borrowed black suit and tie. I can tell they aren’t his by the way the cut hugs his torso. His muscles strain the fabric a bit too much. The pants are a smidge too short. It’s far too expensive a suit to be poorly tailored. No, it doesn’t fit him any more than he fits in with the people downstairs. I like him better in jeans with a chip on his shoulder.
He has potential, though, beneath that hostile frown. Even full of poorly suppressed disdain, his eyes are brilliant blue, the color of the sky on a clear summer day. He’s tamed the black mop on his head into obedience,
