Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

mouth was a tad sore, but her sugar craving was at least assuaged, while leaving room for the beignets she had her sights set on.

“But you’d get to strew rose petals in Unabelle’s path, Luci dear,” Miss Weena said, disbelief predominant in her fluting voice. Fruity Pebbles was her all-too-appropriate breakfast of choice.

“Not everyone wants to strew rose petals.” Miss Hermi put her faint but pursuing opinion into the mix. She liked Captain Crunch. She’d always, Luci recalled, had a soft spot for a man with a mustache.

“I’ve always wanted to strew,” Miss Weena said dreamily. “Or to be strewn.” Her hopeful glance slid in Miss Theo’s direction.

Miss Theo ignored her, her attention centered on snagging the last soggy Lucky Charm floating listlessly in milk. Miss Weena looked so crestfallen Luci decided to help her out.

“Could she fit in the dress, Miss Theo?”

Miss Theo looked up, her gaze assessing Miss Weena’s all too diminutive figure. Miss Hermi threw her lot in for Miss Weena—and the cause of peace—with, “Who else will we find now, Theo?”

“All right,” Miss Theo said. “You can strew. Maybe Unabelle won’t notice.”

Three pairs of eyes widened and looked at her.

“Maybe?” Miss Weena asked.

“She could,” Miss Theo said, a hint of defensive taking the burnish off her usual regal style. “She noticed when we tried to switch her puce dress for a white one.”

“You’d think,” Luci said, “that someone who’d waited as long as Unabelle would be panting to wear white.” Luci realized what she’d just said and knew what her aunts were thinking. It was hard to imagine Unabelle panting, let alone—

Luci gave a slight shudder, one echoed around the table in varying levels of revulsion. Past time to change the subject to one nearer and dearer to her thoughts.

“Speaking of panting,” she began. “I was talking to Lila—”

“How is your mother?” Miss Hermi asked, her anxious expression belying the friendly inquiry.

Luci grinned. “The same. She—”

Miss Theo patted her hand. “We all have our cross to bear.”

Miss Hermi and Miss Weena nodded. Four gazes drifted toward the fireplace mantel and the row of pictures marching across the surface. Luci was the only one of them to have a Seymour mother, but she shuddered with her aunts at the grim, sensible mother faces casting long shadows over the ineffectual Seymour men they’d married.

Luci pushed back her chair and went to study the pictorial genealogy, a gallery that didn’t include her paternity. Was her father the key to her not-quite-perfect family fit? To her split personality? Every other Seymour had a Seymour father to look at, to blame for their mother. Lila wouldn’t talk, so somehow the aunts must be persuaded to spill the right beans. A Seymour woman could always be counted on to spill some beans, just not always the right beans.

“Is my father—” she turned back to her aunts. Their reaction was interesting. All three pairs of eyes widened, then narrowed and were directed toward their empty cereal bowls.

After a long, awkward pause, Miss Weena said, “He was a lovely man.”

Was? “Lila said he lives here in New Orleans.”

Miss Theo looked far too innocent. “Did she? Well, I suppose he might. He was a soldier back then, so we just assumed...”

“Cut a lovely figure in his uniform,” Miss Hermi said, hastening to fill the hanging pause left by Miss Theo. “I expect the pictures are still in the attic—”

Two irate stares cut her off in mid-sentence.

“Or...not,” she finished feebly.

That subterfuge was alien to them was obvious by how bad they were at it. Had Lila gotten to them first? Why would they back Lila up though? She was the female family black sheep, first for getting pregnant and then for taking Luci away from them. She should have, Luci realized, come back sooner. There was at least one deep spot in the shallow Seymour waters.

She pretended not to notice the worried glances that passed between them, but it was hard not to notice when they stood up and formed a row in front of her.

“What?” She looked from one face to the other, seeking enlightenment that might not ever come. It was obvious they were up to something.

“It just won’t do.” Miss Theo picked up the edge of the caftan that Luci had borrowed from Miss Weena. Miss Hermi and Miss Weena both nodded agreement as they circled Luci like vague, charming vultures, their buns bobbing eager approval. “Something in black?”

“Black?” Luci wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was coming, but with Seymour fatality, she knew there was no way to avoid it.

Miss Hermi smiled. “To get the police, Luci dear.”

“Police?” Luci blinked, but their sweet faces didn’t alter one whit. “Police.” They nodded encouragingly. Luci pondered for a beat, then agreed. “Definitely black.”

Mickey would certainly start mourning when he saw her. Might as well beat him to it. But first she needed to outmaneuver her aunts.

The door to the attic creaked when Luci pushed it open. Behind her she could hear Miss Weena calling her. She leaned out to call, “Be right down!” then slipped through the door and closed it. And opened it again before she passed out from lack of oxygen. The heat was past oppressive, bordering on abusive. It was a stale and cloying wet blanket that set itself against her need to hurry. But despite the discomfort, there was a kind of magic in the murky semi-dark. Attics were magic and mysterious places in all the best books, where unexpected things could be counted on to happen. Luci had never been immune to magic. That this particular attic might hold the key to her past only heightened the sensation that she’d crossed more than just a wooden threshold to arrive here.

On the other side of that threshold she heard the insistent trill of her aunts and, with a sigh, turned on the lights and drove the magic into the far corners, leaving an ordinary attic with an assortment of boxes and trunks and a lot of shoeboxes. More