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“Look, we’ll play in English,” I tell him. “The board is in English anyway. I guess I’ll just have the disadvantage.”
“Oh, come on,” James says at the same time that Lady Jane goes, “Phfffft.”
“Your English is better than mine,” he adds.
“We could always play Twister,” Lady Jane says, gesturing to the stack of board games hopefully.
“No,” James and I say in unison.
It’s the weekend after New Year’s, and things are quiet at the estate. With all the festive activities finally over, the three of us decided to stay in, play board games in the parlor, and drink all the bottles of champagne that didn’t get used. Ottar suggested putting them in the cellar, but sometimes that man doesn’t know fun unless it bites him in the ass. Then again, it could be a product of having to babysit Magnus every day. When you never know if your day will start (or end) with you jumping off a literal cliff, I suppose you’re allowed to be the fun police in the rest of your life.
“Laila, you need some more champagne,” James says to me as he reaches for the bottle and pours more into my glass.
Lady Jane watches the exchange, her eyes a little too eager. “Trying to get her drunk, James?”
He grins at her. “I don’t need to try. I’m just making it easier for her.”
Her mouth twists into a knowing smile, but she doesn’t say anything to that, for which I’m grateful. That woman is a live wire.
I avoid both their eyes and stare at the bubbles rising in the glass. I don’t want either of them to get the wrong idea, even though I don’t mind the idea of James getting me drunk—so long as we go our separate ways at the end of the night and retire to our separate rooms.
But as Lady Jane noisily starts rattling the Scrabble tiles in the pouch, my eyes meet James’s over the rim of my glass and I nearly choke. To say they’re smoldering is an understatement. Where did he learn to look at me like that? It should be illegal.
The corner of his beautiful mouth curves like he knows what I’m thinking. Somewhere in the house a phone rings, but everything seems to zero in on this moment.
Easy, tiger, I think, but I’m warning myself more than him.
“Okay, how do we decide who goes first?” Lady Jane asks. “Rock, paper, scissors?”
James tears his eyes away from mine. “There are official rules, you know,” he chides her.
“Laila,” Magnus’s voice comes from behind us. The tone is so off, so unlike him, that my heart freezes in my chest.
I twist in my place to see him standing in the doorway to the parlor room, his face grim.
“What?” I ask, my voice barely audible. My heart is beating so hard in my head it’s hard to hear anything.
“There’s a phone call for you,” he says. “It’s about your grandmother.”
My heart seems to fall straight out of me.
NO.
My glass is shaking so hard that James plucks it from my hand, and I find myself getting up, walking toward Magnus as if shuffling through mud.
Up close I can see the concern in Magnus’s eyes. “They tried your mobile, but you weren’t answering.”
“It’s being charged in my room,” I say absently as Magnus puts his hand at my lower back and guides me toward his study, where the phone is. I focus on the receiver, how old it looks, and I’m reminded of the one at my grandmother’s, and for a split second everything is fine because the old phone is reminding me of my grandma and that’s it. There’s no other reason to be thinking about her.
But I know. I knew from the moment Magnus said my name that the worst thing in the entire world just happened. That my world shattered while I was about to lose at Scrabble.
I pick up the receiver with shaking hands.
“This is Laila?” I manage to say, everything moving in slow motion.
“Laila?” Lisbeth says, and from the sound of her voice, all my fears are cemented. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but Helge passed away this evening.”
She’s dead.
