“If anyone brings me another drink from the silver tray, you are not to touch it.”
“Why?”
“Because I no longer know whom I can trust.”
Lily frowned.
Adults often spoke in sentences that sounded important but explained nothing.
Harrison reached into the pocket of his robe and removed a narrow bottle. A small amount of dark amber liquid remained inside.
He wrapped it in a white handkerchief and placed it in Lily’s hands.
“Hide this somewhere no one will search.”
“What is it?”
“Something that may prove I was right.”
His voice became weaker.
“If anything happens to me, give it to your mother. Only your mother. Do you understand?”
Lily’s heart began beating faster.
“What’s going to happen to you?”
Harrison looked at her for a long moment.
Then he forced a smile.
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps I am simply an old man who has become suspicious.”
But he did not sound as though he believed it.
That same evening, Harrison Blackwood collapsed in his study.
By morning, the family announced that his heart had failed.
Lily had initially hidden the bottle inside the bottom drawer of the desk in the guest bedroom. When she returned the next day, the drawer was open and everything inside had been disturbed.
Someone had searched the room.
But the bottle was no longer there.
Lily had moved it during the night and hidden it inside a hollow compartment in her wooden music box.
Whoever searched the room believed they had arrived too late.
They were wrong.
At the funeral, Reverend Hale continued speaking.
“Harrison understood that family was the greatest legacy a person could leave behind.”
Lily looked toward Celeste.
The widow lowered her head, waiting for everyone to see her grief.
Then Reverend Hale invited her to speak.
Celeste approached the lectern with slow, measured steps. She placed one gloved hand over her heart.
“Harrison was not merely my husband,” she said, her voice trembling beautifully. “He was my closest friend, my protector, and the center of my world.”
Several guests bowed their heads.
Lily lifted hers.
“No.”
The word was so quiet that Hannah initially thought she had imagined it.
Celeste paused.
Lily spoke again.
“That isn’t true.”
This time, everyone heard her.
The chapel became silent.
Hannah turned toward her daughter.
“Lily, please.”
Grant Blackwood frowned from the front row.
“Someone should take the child outside,” he said. “She is clearly overwhelmed.”
Meredith sighed dramatically.
“This is precisely why children should not attend funerals.”
A few relatives whispered behind their hands.
One elderly aunt murmured that Hannah had always been incapable of teaching her daughter proper behavior.
Lily climbed down from the pew.
“I know what Grandpa told me.”
Hannah reached for her.
“Sweetheart, come back.”
But Lily stepped into the center aisle.
She walked toward the front of the chapel while dozens of adults watched her with irritation, confusion, and embarrassment.
Her small shoes made almost no sound against the stone floor.
Even so, every step seemed to echo.
When she reached the casket, Lily looked up at Harrison’s portrait.
Then she faced Celeste.
“My grandfather didn’t believe you loved him.”
Celeste’s expression softened into something almost maternal.
“Oh, darling. Grief can make us remember things incorrectly.”
“I remember everything.”
Grant moved closer.
“That is enough. Hannah, control your daughter.”
Hannah rose from the back pew, but two relatives blocked the narrow aisle as though her presence would only make the situation worse.
Lily continued.
“Grandpa said he was afraid.”
A murmur spread through the chapel.
Celeste’s gloved fingers tightened around the edge of the lectern.
“Afraid of what?”
“Of what you kept giving him.”
For the first time that morning, Celeste’s perfect expression slipped.
Only for a moment.
But Lily saw it.
So did Hannah.
And so did Nathan Cole, the Blackwood family attorney, who had been seated near the front with a sealed leather case at his feet.
Grant’s voice hardened.
“Stop this immediately.”
Lily unfolded the handkerchief.
The narrow glass bottle lay in the center of the white fabric.
Only a few drops of amber-colored liquid remained at the bottom. Part of the label had been removed, leaving behind a strip of torn paper and dried adhesive.
Celeste stared at it.
The color disappeared from her face.
“Where did you find that?”
Her voice no longer trembled with grief.
It sounded sharp.
Lily held the bottle close to her chest.
“Grandpa gave it to me. He said I had to hide it.”
Grant stepped forward.
“Give it here.”
He reached toward the bottle.
Before he could touch it, Nathan Cole rose from his seat.
“Do not take that from her.”
Grant stopped and turned.