Twenty-Three
Grace tried not to feel like a burden, but Victoria wasn’t making it easy. When she’d come into the library and find Grace reading to her wife, she’d abruptly turn and leave the room. When they crossed in the hall, Victoria and Heron would make brief conversation, but Grace was lucky if she got so much as an “Enjoy your lunch.”
“She’s never been a conversationalist,” Heron assured her. “She hates small talk, and unlike Nora, she thinks asking for personal information is intrusive.”
“Still,” Grace said from the flat of her back. Something plopped into the pond beside them, a toad, she suspected. “I can’t stay here forever, Heron.”
Yet she also had nowhere else to go, and she knew that.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “We won’t be here forever. We can go anywhere you want
