Tess looked at the cat’s eye marble sitting on the table. It wasn’t spinning, now, and she didn’t know whether it had been her or the marble, but she was certain it required further examination or at least should be given an opportunity to be reunited with its owner, if she ever did see the boy again. She sort of hoped she might. She very quietly reached her hand out, folded it quickly around the cat’s eye marble and deposited it safely in the right front pocket of her jeans.

~ CHAPTER FIVE ~

hiding away

Evie had wanted both Tess and Max to come down to the restaurant for a proper dinner, but Tess begged off, saying she was tired, worried she might be getting a cold. Max had dutifully chimed in, “I’ll meet you Aunt Evie. I’ve been looking forward to Shepherd’s Pie for weeks.” Shepherd’s Pie was a particular English dish, a pie filled with ground meat layered on the bottom with mashed potatoes and sometimes peas. It was very comforting. Max was still hungry, even after the enormous amounts of tea sandwiches, scones, and petits fours he’d consumed at tea. And, he didn’t want Aunt Evie to eat alone. Their mother said part of Evie’s problem was that Aunt Evie spent so much time alone that she was getting good at it, and their mom didn’t think that was necessarily a good thing.

Tess liked being alone sometimes. She called it “collecting her thoughts.” It was one of the things she didn’t like that much about boarding school—that there was always somebody around. She’d been known to take walks up the mountain, even if it was cold and snowy, for just this reason. She was happy to be alone in the hotel suite for an hour or so. Someone had built a fire for them in the living room and it was extra cozy even in the bedroom. She took a bath, put her pajamas on, and her slippers. And then she reached for her jeans which she’d thrown over the back of the armchair. She wanted to take a look at the marble that she’d found. She held it in her hand and studied it. It wasn’t doing anything, at all. Not at the moment, anyway. It just looked like an old-fashioned marble possibly made out of hand-blown glass with a red circular pattern inside. It was pretty.

She turned the switch for the overhead chandelier so that she would have more light. It, too, was an elaborate thing, with glass prisms hanging from it and an intricate array of light bulbs in the shape of candles, shedding a soft glow. She set the marble down on the coffee table directly underneath the light fixture.