Fallen - Lauren Kate [85]
To her left, Penn gagged into her elbow and whispered so only Luce could hear, “Please tell me someone else is nauseated.”
But Luce’s mom seemed somewhat dazzled, in a way that made Luce—and her father, clearly—uncomfortable.
“No, we can’t stay for the tour,” Cam announced, winking at Luce and drawing back just as Luce’s father approached. “But it was so lovely”—he glanced at each of the three of them, excluding only Penn—“to encounter you here. Let’s go, Dad.”
“Who was that?” Luce’s mother whispered when Cam and his father, or whoever he had been, disappeared back up the side of the cemetery.
“Oh, just one of Luce’s admirers,” Penn said, trying to lighten the mood and doing exactly the opposite.
“One of?” Luce’s father peered down at Penn.
In the late-afternoon light, Luce could see for the first time a few gray whiskers in her dad’s beard. She didn’t want to spend today’s last moments convincing her father not to worry about the boys at her reform school.
“It’s nothing, Dad. Penn’s kidding.”
“We want you to be careful, Lucinda,” he said.
Luce thought about what Daniel had suggested—quite strongly—the other day. That maybe she shouldn’t be at Sword & Cross at all. And suddenly she wanted so badly to bring it up to her parents, to beg and plead for them to take her far away from here.
But it was that same memory of Daniel that made Luce hold her tongue. The thrilling touch of his skin on hers when she’d pushed him down at the lake, the way his eyes were sometimes the saddest things she knew. It felt at once absolutely crazy and absolutely true that it might be worth all of this hell at Sword & Cross just to spend a little more time with Daniel. Just to see if anything might come of it.
“I hate goodbyes,” Luce’s mother breathed, interrupting her daughter’s thoughts to draw her in for a brisk hug. Luce looked down at her watch and her face fell. She didn’t know how the afternoon had gone by so quickly, how it could already be time for them to go.
“You’ll call us on Wednesday?” her dad asked, kissing both her cheeks the way the French side of his family always did.
As they all walked back up toward the parking lot, Luce’s parents gripped her hands. Each of them gave her another strong hug and series of kisses. When they shook Penn’s hand and wished her well, Luce saw a video camera clamped to the brick post housing a broken call box at the exit. There must have been a motion detector attached to the reds, because the camera was panning, following their movement. This one hadn’t been on Arriane’s tour and was certainly not a dead red. Luce’s parents noticed nothing—and maybe it was better that way.
Then they were walking away, looking back twice to wave at the two girls standing at the entrance to the main lobby. Dad cranked up his old black Chrysler New Yorker and rolled down the window.
“We love you,” he called out so loudly that Luce would have been embarrassed if she hadn’t been so sad to see them go.
Luce waved back. “Thank you,” she whispered. For the pralines and the okra. For spending all day here. For taking Penn under your wing, no questions asked. For still loving me despite the fact that I scare you.
When the taillights disappeared around the bend, Penn tapped Luce’s back. “I was thinking I’d go see my dad.” She kicked the ground with the toe of her boot and looked bashfully up at Luce. “Any chance you’d want to come? If not, I understand, seeing as it involves another trip inside—” She jerked her thumb back toward the depths of the cemetery.
“Of course I’ll come,” Luce said.
They walked around the perimeter of the cemetery, staying high on the rim until they’d reached the far east corner, where Penn paused in front of a grave.
It was modest, white, and covered with a tawny layer of pine needles. Penn got down on her knees and started to wipe it clean.
STANFORD LOCKWOOD, the simple tombstone read, WORLD’S BEST FATHER.
Luce could hear Penn’s poignant voice behind the inscription, and she felt tears spring to her eyes. She didn’t want Penn to see—after all, Luce still had her parents. If anyone