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you?”
    Grabbing her phone off the nightstand, she clicked on her message center and noted the zero next to her voice mail box.
    Maybe Leona was still smarting from her sister’s words . . .
    Maybe Margaret Louise, Georgina, and the rest of the crew had been too hard on her . . .
    Maybe—
    Tori sat up tall and scooted herself backward until she was flush against the headboard.
    No. What Leona did to Rose was wrong—horribly, awfully wrong, and she deserved to be called out on her behavior. Leona’s lack of concern for Beatrice was a separate issue entirely, and one that bared a second and, perhaps more thorough, chastising at the very least.
    But that was for another day. When she had more energy and staying power . . .
    Looking down at her phone once again, she scrolled through her contacts until the smile she desperately needed found its way across her mouth. Pressing the call button, she held the device to her ear and hoped against hope her soon-to-be husband was still awake.
    Her wish came true on the second ring.
    “Hey there, beautiful, how was your meeting?”
    She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her free arm around them, releasing a long-held sigh as she did. “We never really got to have one.”
    “Oh?”
    “Miss Gracie is dead.”
    A momentary pause in her ear gave way to a morealert-sounding Milo. “Miss Gracie? Why does that name sound familiar?”
    “Because you heard it the other evening. When we were at the park together.” Tori rested her chin atop her knees and tried to block out yet another mental encore of Beatrice’s cry. “Miss Gracie was Beatrice’s governess when she was a little girl in England, remember?”
    “The one who was coming here to be the Bradys’ new nanny?” Milo clarified.
    “Yes. Miss Gracie arrived yesterday morning as planned. Beatrice and Luke met her at the airport, drove her here, and got her settled at the Bradys’.”
    “What happened?”
    “From what Chief Dallas was able to tell us, it appears as if she lost her footing at the top of the basement stairs and tumbled all the way to the bottom, hitting her head multiple times in the process.” Tori closed her eyes as she recalled turning down the Bradys’ road with a sniffling Beatrice in the passenger seat. The pulsating emergency lights up and down the Bradys’ driveway had intensified Beatrice’s cries on sight. “Beatrice insisted we stop there as soon as she heard, but fortunately, Miss Gracie’s body had already been removed. I think it would have destroyed Beatrice to see her that way.”
    A long, low whistle permeated her ear just before Milo’s deep voice. “You’re probably right. Wow. I’m so sorry to hear this, so sorry Beatrice has to go through this. Is there anything I can do for her?”
    “Hmmm . . . that does seem like the normal response when someone you care about suffers a loss like this, isn’t it?” She released her legs, stretched them across the top of her bed, and wiggled her toes back and forth, themotion doing little to alleviate the knot of tension she felt building inside her body. “Everyone called and left a message on my phone at some point while Beatrice and I were at the Bradys’. Dixie, Georgina, Melissa, Debbie, and Margaret Louise—they all called. Even
Rose
, who wasn’t at Georgina’s when we first heard about Miss Gracie, called to see how Beatrice was doing and whether there was anything anyone could do, you know?”
    “Okay . . .”
    “Everyone except Leona, that is.” She cocked her head against the edge of the headboard and stared, unseeingly, at the ceiling once again, the irritation she’d felt prior to calling Milo beginning to resurface at an alarming rate. “She not only stayed silent when the call came in, she also failed to check and see how Beatrice was after we left.”
    “Leona has never been good with sympathy. You know that, Tori. She probably just didn’t know what to say amid the initial shock, and then,