…There was something off about her. Malachi couldn’t avoid it to save his life, but he could tell when there was something wrong with someone. Couldn’t put his finger on what, seeing as this woman had said nothing particularly suspicious to him, but there was something there.

Perhaps it was simply a byproduct of the short-lived panic he’d experienced before she said the word ‘brother,’ but he’d spent enough of his life beneath someone’s thumb, waiting to be snuffed out.

With the reappearance of his polite smile, he replied, “thank you for the offer.”

It was a dismissal, and not an especially subtle one. Perhaps the detective had mentioned him to her, for some godawful reason, and she was just trying to make him squirm.

Malachi let the emergence of the other chaperons distance them, though he kept an eye on his niece in the crowd. Guilt plucked at his heart like strings for having worried her so. He hadn’t meant to rush her, either; if she had nowhere else to be after they left, he simply wanted to go for a walk with her, or take her to the shore, or… really anything that had even the slightest chance of taking his mind off of him.

He who evaded any name. Who, probably just to spite him, decided to plant himself right beside the tall priest.

“My, you do have manners, detective,” he returned in a much lower tone, eyes on Nettie in turn; toying with the name in the way that he had once twisted Father. Malachi flashed a smile each time someone looked his way, eyes glazed over with faux niceties.

Why did he want him to run off and grab some water so badly? So he and his sister could slink out without his notice? He wouldn’t stop them. But he’d want to. He didn’t care what he did.

Flatly, he said, “your sister’s quite insistent, isn’t she.”