The hair clip dug into Hugo’s palm as he reached for the baking dish.
He looked at it the way you look at a screw fallen from a piece of furniture: a small thing that needed putting back before someone stepped on it. Pink plastic, two teeth already white at the hinge, a silver star stuck on crooked. Nina must have taken it out again. Sabine had cut her bangs the day before, and all morning the little girl had complained that everything was “pulling” around her ears.
“Is this yours?” Hugo asked.
Nina, sitting on the floor playing cards with Jules, barely looked up.
“No.”
“It was in your hair ten minutes ago.”
“Then it was mine ten minutes ago.”
Jules burst out laughing. At ten, he mostly laughed when someone else got trapped in impossible logic. Hugo tossed him the clip. Jules ducked too late; it bounced off his shoulder and disappeared beneath the hall chest.
“Well done,” Claire said from the table. “Impeccable problem management.”
Hugo put down the dish and crouched. The chest, an overbuilt piece his father had made when everything was supposed to survive a move, stood four centimeters above the floorboards. He slid his fingers underneath and retrieved a marker cap, a two-cent coin, and a dust bunny. No clip.
“Leave it,” his mother said. “We’ll find it at Christmas with everything else.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.