A HANDFUL OF PLAYING CARDS erupted from a deck on the carpet beside the sea-foam divan as Clare stepped into the glass house.
“Where have you been?” Jack demanded.
Clare threaded the maze of mismatched furniture to the divan, where she settled down, let her shoes fall from her feet, and pulled her legs up under her.
Jack’s voice came from above her now, as if he had stood while she sat.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“What?” Clare said.
On the floor, one of her shoes spun around like the hand of a watch being wound, and stopped with its toe pointing back at her, so that the bloodstain from the day she cut her foot, still a fresh dark red, stood out plainly on the pink satin lining. The edges of the stain were blurred by salt water. “That,” Jack said.
This was not how Clare had imagined the conversation would go. She tried to dismiss the question with a curt answer. “I cut my foot,” she said.
“When?” he asked.
“Before,” Clare said. “On some rocks at the beach.”
“Let me see,” Jack said.
The command rankled Clare, but his concern softened her. She untucked her foot and turned the sole up. The cut was worse than she remembered, a narrow trench between the ball and heel, so deep that the scab inside only filled it partway.
She heard a sharp intake of breath. When Jack spoke, his voice was indignant.
“They didn’t give you a bandage?” he asked.
“There was no one there but us,” Clare said.
“Us?” he repeated.
“My friends,” Clare told him. “None of us had bandages.”
“They should have gone and got someone.”
“We were going to a hidden cave,” Clare said. “We didn’t want anyone to find us.” As that excuse hung in the air it seemed to weaken, even to her. “Bram helped me,” she added, to ward off a growing sense of foolishness.
“Who’s Bram?” Jack asked.
“One of my friends,” she said. But she had hesitated.
Her shoe toppled from an invisible kick. It listed on its side against its twin. “Your boyfriend?” Jack asked.
Clare fought the same sensation of drifting into unknown waters she always felt when these questions arose. She shook her head, half in answer, half against the feeling.
“Does he want to be?” Jack demanded.
“I don’t know,” Clare said.
Apparently her confession of ignorance was not the answer he wanted. The deck of cards splayed out over the carpet in a tantrum of suits and faces. Then the room went silent.
In the silence, Clare recalled her own cause for indignation.
“I met Jack Cunningham the other day,” she said.
Jack’s voice, usually so cocksure, was suddenly cautious. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“An old man named Jack Cunningham,” she went on. “He used to work here.”
Overhead, a gust of wind blew the sheltering leaves aside. Light poured down through the vines. Clare raised her hand against it. When the wind died and the shade returned, Jack still hadn’t spoken.
“Jack?” Clare said.
“I’m here,” he answered, from the floor.
His tone was so subdued that Clare felt a twinge of remorse. But it didn’t overcome her outrage at his lie.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
A card rose from the floor, one edge still buried in the carpet, as if, at a tense moment in the game, Jack wanted to double-check what he held in his hand. It was a face card, the royal heads turned at unnatural angles on their gaudy necks.
“What’s your name?” Clare asked.
The card fell over on its back. Its faces gazed up unblinking through the glass.
“I don’t know,” he said.
This possibility had never even crossed Clare’s mind. But the instant he admitted it, her memories dropped into place the way a deck of cards fell together in a dealer’s hands: his sidesteps when she pressed for details, his retreats into pranks and plans, his reticence about the past. Still, she couldn’t quite believe it.
She had woken up in dozens of strange rooms, not certain what country she had slept in, or what season it was beyond the new window. She’d forgotten things she desperately wanted to remember, like the sound of her father’s voice as he promised her a good night. But no matter how far she’d traveled or how deep her fatigue, she’d never forgotten her own name.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I remember other things,” Jack offered. “I used to live in the big house. I know all the rooms. When the light comes on above the workshop, I know it’s Tilda.”
Clare glanced up the hill. She had never thought to wonder where Tilda went each night. The red roof over Mack’s workshop did form a peak high enough to hide a good-sized room, with a pair of windows that overlooked the garden. But all this could be just another story, like his name.
“But there’s no door,” she said.
“There is,” Jack said. “By the stairs down from the kitchen. There’s another set of stairs next to them, side by side. They go up to her room.”
Clare had never spent any time in that dark corner of the shop. There might be a hidden staircase there, or there might not.
“What about your mother?” she pressed.
One of the playing cards twitched at her feet. “I know where I want to go,” Jack insisted. “I know what a boat looks like when it leaves harbor.”
“Do you know her name?” Clare asked.
“No,” Jack admitted.
“Or your father’s?” Clare asked.
The strain was clear now in his voice. “I think I used to know,” he said. “I think it’s getting worse.”
“How could you forget?” Clare asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said again.
The lace hem of her skirt shifted, as if a faint wind had stirred it.
“I don’t forget you,” he said.
Clare felt a touch, light but undeniable, on her fingers. She drew her hand back, startled.
“Could you feel that?” Jack asked, his voice high with surprise.
Clare nodded.
“Wait,” Jack said. This time the touch was more deliberate: a fingertip drawn across her knuckles, then traced over the back of her hand in a spiral that wound tighter with each revolution. She shivered.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. His voice had gone soft in wonder. “I never tried to touch anyone before. I didn’t know I could.”
A faint weight covered her entire hand now, as if a leaf had fallen onto it from a tree above. It had none of the heat of Bram’s hand, but warmth spread through her from it, as if a tide had turned in her blood, drawing it all toward that place with stronger and stronger waves.
Then the touch was gone.
Clare glanced around the glass house, but her eyes were no help.
“Don’t be scared,” Jack said. His voice came from above now, as if he’d stood up but stayed close.
She felt faint pressure against the side of her leg as he settled beside her on the divan. Then something like a shawl settled over her bare shoulders.
Clare’s balance deserted her. She felt as if, with the slightest move, she might begin to drift and tilt like a feather in the breeze.
Another touch guided her head toward Jack’s unseen shoulder. At first she held back, not certain it could support her. But it did, not with the steady warmth of her mother’s breastbone, but like a pillow that first sank and then lifted her head. The faint weight of his hand covered her own again.
She took a shaky breath and closed her eyes.