Chapter 3

Nathaniel took the note.

He did it because his mother was holding it out to him and Petra was gripping his arm and the whole room was watching, and because he didn't know what else to do. He took the folded cream paper and he held it in his hands and he looked down at the handwriting, and the first thing he noticed was that it wasn't his mother's.

His mother wrote in a neat, round hand, the kind of handwriting you learn in school and keep for sixty years. This note was written in a different script — slanted, hurried, the letters pressed hard into the paper with a pen that had been running dry. It looked like a note written by someone who didn't want to leave a trace, someone who was in a hurry.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Read it," Rosalind said.

Petra leaned in, her fingers still digging into his arm. "Don't," she said. "She's manipulating you."

"Read it," Rosalind said again.

The room was silent. Even the band, on their little stage by the windows, had stopped shuffling their sheet music. The drummer had his sticks frozen in his hands. The trumpet player was looking at the floor.

Nathaniel unfolded the note.

It was short. Four lines. Written in that slanted, hurried hand.

He read it once. He read it twice. And then he looked up at his mother, and his face changed.