Chapter 3 WHAT VIVIENNE SAW

Lyra took the first bus down the mountain. She had told Nana she was going to the clinic in the valley. It was the first lie she had told her grandmother in years. Nana had looked at her for a long moment over the rim of her teacup. Then she had said, "Wear your scarf," and nothing more. Lyra found two dry crackers in her coat pocket on the way out. She did not ask why they were there.

The bus rattled through the pine forest and out onto the coast road. Lyra sat by the window with her hands in her lap. She had not slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the face on the television.

She had not planned to go to the funeral. For three days she had told herself to forget it. He had asked her to, in his own handwriting. But she could not do it. She needed to see for herself that he was really gone. She did not know why that mattered so much. She only knew that it did.

Halfway there, the nausea came back. She ate one of the crackers and watched the road.

It took three hours to reach Aethelgard Bay. She had been to the city only twice in her life. Tall glass towers stood along the harbor. The air smelled of salt and diesel. Gulls cried over the water. Everything was loud and fast, and no one looked at her.

The cathedral stood at the top of a wide set of stone steps. Two news vans were parked outside. A police barrier held back a small crowd. The funeral would be held the next day, but the doors were open for a private viewing. A man in a dark suit stood at the entrance. He looked at her coat, then at her face. Her eyes were red and swollen from the bus ride and the crying she had done on the way.

"Here to pay respects?" he asked.

"Yes."

He nodded toward a table inside the door. A guest book lay open there with a pen beside it. Lyra picked up the pen. She held it over the page. She could not make herself write her name. She put it down and walked on.

The cathedral in Aethelgard Bay was cool and dim. It smelled of candle wax and white lilies. Staff in dark suits stood along the walls. Cameras sat above every door.

The smell of the lilies hit her hard. Her stomach rolled. She grabbed the end of a pew and breathed slowly through her mouth until it passed.

A closed casket stood at the front. It was covered in white flowers. A photograph of Dominic Sterling rested on an easel beside it.

Lyra walked up the aisle slowly. Her coat was old and the sleeves were too short. Her boots left damp marks on the stone. The people around her wore black silk and good wool. No one spoke to her.

Two women stood near the front, talking in low voices.

"They say there was nothing left to bury," one of them whispered.

"Then what's in the box?"

"Whatever makes the cameras happy."

Lyra kept walking. She had not thought of that. The man she had stitched up in her kitchen was not in there. No one was. It was only a box, for show.

She stopped at the casket. She looked at the photograph. It was the same face. The man in the picture looked cold and proud. The man in her kitchen had looked tired and hurt.

She took a small Alpine Star from her pocket, picked that morning from the edge of the high frost line. She laid it on the lid, among the lilies. It looked tiny and out of place.

"I don't know who you were," she whispered. "But I'm sorry."

She put one hand flat on her stomach and cried quietly. She wanted to say more. She wanted to tell him what she had learned on the bench behind the greenhouse. But there was no one to say it to. She stayed there for a long minute. Then she turned and walked toward the doors.

Near the exit, she glanced up at the camera above the frame. For one second, her whole face was clear in the lens.

Then she was outside in the cold air, and the doors closed behind her.

Upstairs, in the cathedral's security room, Vivienne Sterling watched the screen without blinking.

She wore black. Her hair was pulled back tight. A heavy diamond ring caught the light from the monitors every time she moved her hand. She had been standing there for ten minutes while a nervous technician ran the footage back and forth.

"Stop," she said.

The picture froze. It showed a young woman at the casket, seen from above. She had dark curls and a worn brown coat. In her hand was a pale blue Alpine Star.

"Who is she?" Vivienne asked.

"A mourner, I think, ma'am," the technician said. "She signed no name in the book."

"Mourners wear black." Vivienne leaned closer. "She's wearing a farm coat. And look at her hand."

The technician looked. The girl's palm rested low on her belly.

"Some women hold their stomach when they cry," Vivienne said. "Some do it for another reason." She turned to the technician. "Leave us."

The man hurried out. The door clicked shut.

Behind Vivienne stood her head of security, Ronan Vance. He was a tall, quiet man in a gray suit. He had worked for the Sterlings for eleven years. He had been looking at the screen a moment longer than he needed to.

"Do you know her?" Vivienne asked, without turning.

"No, ma'am," Ronan said.

Vivienne watched him in the black glass of the monitor. She noticed everything. She noticed his jaw tighten and relax again.

"Find out who she is," she said. "Before the funeral. Before anyone else does."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And Ronan." She turned at last. Her voice was soft, and that made it worse. "My husband had many secrets. I want to know every one of them before they are buried with him."

Ronan nodded once and left the room.

In the empty corridor, he stopped. He took out his phone. While Vivienne had been talking to the technician, he had taken a photo of the monitor. He looked at it now.

The face on the screen was young and tired. She had Margaret Vance's chin. He had last seen it ten years ago, at his uncle's funeral, on a thin girl in a borrowed dress.

He had not been to Pine Crest since that day. He remembered the smell of the greenhouse. He remembered an old woman who had once slipped bus money into his hand without saying a word. He also remembered what happened to people who kept things from Vivienne Sterling.

He put the phone in his pocket and walked on.