Free Arrival of the Traveler (Waldgrave Book 1) by A.L. Tyler Page B

then back at Lena, and then at the bracelet.
    Lena’s eyes brightened with understanding. “How could David afford such an expensive gift?”
    “Good girl. He’s got a very rich family, so you really don’t have to give it back.” Ava said with a nod and a shrug. “Unless you want to.”
    “So…he can afford to get things like this for random people?” Lena put the bracelet back in the box. She remembered the talk she’d had with David not too long before, when he had said his family wasn’t wealthy; somehow, it was different being lied to by David. Somehow, he seemed more the type who would lie, and that fact in itself made it less deceptive. She figured Howard didn’t need to know about David’s family’s money, either. Yard boys typically don’t have rich families.
    Ava didn’t really stop smiling, but she appeared to. Her lips seemed to relax a little, and she took on a serious tone. “You might not be so random to him.”
    Lena looked at Ava, confused by her sudden change in attitude. She looked…sad, almost.
    “Whether or not you keep it is up to you.” Ava rose and left the room. Lena stared at the bracelet. Did that mean she wanted her to keep it, or not?
    Why does her opinion suddenly matter?
    Lena started into her dinner. With the sandwich in her hand again, cut across and not down the middle, she knew why.
     
     
    *****
     
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    Over the next month, Lena and Ava spent many hours every day together, asking and answering questions. Lena was urged by her mother to spend any spare time she had reading, which she did. However, she found herself more bogged down by questions the more she found, or rather, didn’t find, in the library. The house kept changing in disorienting ways—new windows and doors popped up overnight, furniture moved, pictures of people who she vaguely resembled appeared on the walls. The rooms on the third floor were starting to fill up, and one of the locked doors mysteriously unlocked itself one day. Behind it, Lena had found a staircase that spiraled downward before abruptly dead ending against a wall.
    Lena hadn’t spoken to David alone since the day he had given her the bracelet, though she occasionally saw him through the windows. She only saw him briefly at dinner, and recently not at all, due to the fact that he had become ill. Ava, Lena decided, was adjusting to parenthood in waves. At the moment, she seemed to be making up for the protectiveness she had not exerted since her split with Aaron. Lena had not stepped foot outside the Waldgrave house since her mother’s arrival, at her mother’s bidding. Lena would wander the house, discovering new things, thinking she was alone, only to turn around and find Ava, standing or sitting quietly, watching. Lena often wondered about the look in her mother’s eyes; it was almost a crazed look, as though Ava were obsessed with her. She watched her day and night, sneaked into her room when she slept, ate every meal with her, sat with her when she read—it was as though she was afraid Lena would evaporate as suddenly as things in the house seemed to appear.
    Lena was smothered. She had never in memory spent so much time in the same place, with the same strangers. They weren’t strangers anymore, and while most people might have found that thought comforting, it was a foreign territory to Lena. A situation that needed to be remedied as quickly as possible. When the opportunity to temporarily escape presented itself, she fought for it as though her life depended on it.       
    They were at breakfast. As Howard started into his eggs, he raised the issue of shopping.
    “I’m sending out Mrs. Ralston later to get supplies. Is there anything either of you need?”
    “Can I go?” Lena asked. Ava almost choked on a piece of toast.
    “N…no.” Ava wiped her mouth with the napkin, and then grabbed her glass of juice.
    “Why not? I haven’t been out in, like, a month! Please?”
    “I don’t think it’s a