Prologue
HEIDI
We knew what we signed up for. We knew what we got ourselves into.
The funeral was quiet. We buried him in our backyard, somewhere no one will find except for family. Ada snuggled her face into my neck, not quite understanding her father’s melancholy. Grief was foreign to her three-year-old mind. She also had no knowledge of her extended family until fifteen minutes earlier when her grandmother hugged me with wet eyes.
I brushed her dark brown curls with my fingers. Her tan rosy cheeks pressed against my collarbone as she breathed into me, hazel eyes darting from her grandmother to Vicky. She was mostly curious about Vicky; eyeing her bejewelled finger with a clear opal that was once gifted by Lord Voltaire as a symbol of royalty. Her father knelt before the headstone in utter silence. Death was always a faraway thought to Ada but I believed it was something she should not ignore.
Perhaps, my dark mind would nag, her father would weep for me one day. As he stared into the ground, his mother, a frail old woman, broke into uneven, pitiful sobs.
