Page 8 - My FlipBook

That felt criminally unfair and downright outrageous!

And the worst part of it was that Papa had postponed her
birthday party until tomorrow, which was tantamount
to canceling it altogether.

Instead, later this evening, there was to be a grand
gathering in the formal dining room, which was not to
celebrate her fourteenth year—as one might expect—
but rather to mark the fact that Papa was due to receive

some sort of lifetime achievement award from the
Mechanists’ Guild for his work on mechanicals or
mechanimals… or some such.

To be honest Lily wasn’t quite sure which, because
she’d stopped listening at the point where he’d told her
the presentation would preclude the celebration of her
birthday. He had, of course, offered his most sincere

apologies, but the date was fixed. Prearranged. Set in
stone. And, as such, could not be changed.
So Lily had found herself moping around all day.

The difficulty was finding a satisfactory place to do
the moping, since the entire house was filled with the
clanking preparations for Papa’s “special” event.
At ten past five, Lily had finally settled on the

stairwell. She had even changed early into her bright
red evening dress—her favorite because it was the only
one with pockets and because it helped her stand out

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