When Anthony was a small child, his mother sometimes crept into the nursery at night to rock him in her arms, singing lullabies. One of those melodies came back to him as he walked behind Mr. Wilkes across the grounds of the Putney Asylum, a haunting melody, in a minor key.
“We’re very proud of our facility,” Mr. Wilkes was saying. “It’s not a holding pen, Your Grace, but a hospital in every sense of the word. Our staff is dedicated to curing the patients, that is, those in whom there yet exists some normal function that can be influenced.”
Mr. Wilkes was young, bald, and harried, with a quick, roving eye. As they passed near a huddle of well-heeled visitors, he gestured sharply to a nurse standing in a doorway. She came forward at once, whistle between her lips, and scattered the little party as the object of their interest—a patchy-haired boy on his hands and knees—snapped and growled at the air.
“An Irish vagrant,” said Mr. Wilkes, walking quickly down the path. “He doesn’t think he’s a dog, by the way, but rather Cú Chulainn, the Irish hero. You’ve heard the myth? Ireland’s greatest warrior. He slayed a guard dog as a boy and took its place in recompense, so they called him the Hound of Ulster.”
Anthony glanced over his shoulder at the boy, now in a crouch, rubbing his ear against his bony shoulder.
“Men tend not to debase themselves in their delusions,” said Mr. Wilkes. “Kings or gods every one. This way, please. We do everything we can, of course, for the pauper patients, but the Poor Law officials have all but overwhelmed us with chronic cases, a hundred from the workhouses and the country asylum in the past year alone. The private patients are far fewer in number. Some of them have rooms in the central building and the rest are lodged in the cottages. Ah, there are a few of the women on the knoll. Healthy amusements form the better part of their treatment. Good afternoon, Mrs. Blizard, Miss Laurence, Mrs. Hinson, Lady Vigers.”
Three women raised their rackets in acknowledgment while the fourth stood frozen.
Anthony glanced at them, ordinary, orderly specimens, hats shielding their faces from the afternoon sun. In their walking dresses, they looked like any other Londoners of the leisure class, out to enjoy a bright day on the heath, no different from the visitors gasping at the antics of that poor deluded boy.
The discrepancy between appearance and reality chilled him.
These women couldn’t return home when the shadows lengthened. They’d been separated from their families, torn from their lives. Their rooms, however comfortable, were cells.
As he watched, they began a game of badminton.
“The majority of them will reintegrate into society after treatment,” said Mr. Wilkes, clapping his hands to separate a guard and a nurse who’d drifted under a stand of holly to exchange some confidence.
“Our therapies have proven most effective. The medical superintendent will be delighted to discuss our philosophy in greater depth. Your timing couldn’t have been better. He has just now returned from a week in London.”
They turned off the path onto a wider avenue that led up the hill.
There it was again, the silvered notes of his mother’s song, floating toward him on the breeze. He pivoted, but of course he couldn’t find the source of the melody. No woman crooned to her infant on the grounds. The faint tune played inside his head.
Yesterday, still thinking about his discussion with Mabeldon, he’d driven to Islington, to Normand Park, only to discover the mansion had burned to the ground. He’d never see the asylum where his mother spent her final days, the room where she’d been found, hanged, the music crushed forever from her throat.
He turned back to Mr. Wilkes.
“Your Grace?” The alienist had stopped a few feet higher on the hill, sun glistening on his bald pate. “Yes, we’ve broken ground for the cannery. Is that what caught your eye? Behind the kitchens there. Not much to see as yet, but we’ve every expectation the construction will move rapidly. I would have shown you, but I’m sure Dr. Jephson wants that pleasure.”
“Cannery?” Anthony looked blankly in the direction Wilkes pointed.
“It will give us the means to achieve total food self-sufficiency and to provide steady employment to several of our male incurables as well. We’re most indebted to your generosity.”
Mr. Wilkes started again up the hill.
“I funded this cannery?” Anthony strode beside him, confusion curdling into anger. “I think you mean my father.”
Wilkes frowned slightly. “Perhaps you were following your father’s wishes, Your Grace, but we secured the funds after the New Year, from you. Your dedication to improving care for the mentally and morally diseased does you credit.”
Anthony smiled, an effortful smile, his teeth like knives in his mouth. He had to hold his lips just so or he’d taste blood.
Mr. Wilkes seemed competent to his tasks, brisk and dispassionate. Maybe the Putney Asylum was a model institution, a place where the patients’ surroundings had been adjusted to provide the most healthful influences, so that dangerous behaviors resolved themselves and defective brains modified their disorder, becoming rational. Maybe the Putney Asylum was deserving of support.
Even so, his father’s noblesse oblige, extended by Yardley, might have found a different target. England had hundreds of asylums. If Weston the elder felt compelled to improve care for the insane, there were ways to do so without pumping money into the projects of the man who’d presided over his wife’s suicide. But, of course, he had always placed the blame squarely on her. His financial commitments confirmed it.
“So, I’m building a cannery.” Anthony laughed, a musical, maniacal laugh. He imagined his mother laughing like that, at the nurses, at the alienists, at Jephson himself. Defiant. “What else?”
Mr. Wilkes’s frown had leveled off. He was a professional, adept at masking his unease with volatile subjects. But he’d accelerated. A shorter man would have had to trot to keep the pace.
“The operating theater,” he said, looking at Anthony out of the corner of his eye. “There are no procedures scheduled today, so if you like, a tour can be arranged.”
“What kind of procedures?” Anthony asked on a hard breath.
“We’re very good with female ailments,” said Mr. Wilkes. “The results have been impressive. Dr. Jephson is among the leading proponents of gynecological surgeries. His techniques are studied by surgeons across the world.”
There was no mistaking his sincerity. Bile rose in Anthony’s throat.
Twenty years ago, had Jephson wanted to test one of his procedures on a nymphomaniac? Was it fear of a forced surgery that had strained his mother to the breaking point?
Death had seemed to her the only recovery. He wished he could believe she’d sunk into soothing darkness and woken, healed, in a better place.
He closed his eyes briefly, shutting out the world, the last shreds of that faint melody drifting into silence. He let his body carry him forward up the hill to Jephson’s office.
Michael Jephson had a disarming face, even-featured and intelligent, the brows still dark beneath a thick wave of silver hair. He came around his desk smiling. The books that lined the office walls struck Anthony as smug in their abundance, hundreds of fat volumes, the bulk of them pressed into Jephson’s service, an alibi for his learnedness and unerring discernment. He had to be taken aback by Anthony’s arrival, but he gave no sign. He was handsome as an actor, and he played his part smoothly.
The respected doctor and administrator. His trim figure, clear complexion, and bright eyes seemed further proof of his respectability. No secret vices bloated, stained, or clouded his aspect.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Jephson exclaimed, nodding at Wilkes, who vanished with a touch more haste than dignity.
“Far too long in coming, wouldn’t you agree?” Anthony ignored the leather chair and strolled the perimeter of the room, inspecting it with a proprietary air. How large had his contributions been? Had he paid for these books, these furnishings? Jephson’s smile had not slipped.
“Too long indeed,” Jephson murmured. “I heard a great deal about you over the years, from your father. He did more for lunatics in this country than the lord chancellor and the entire Lunacy Commission.”
“My mother might disagree had she not died under your supervision at Normand Park.”
Jephson looked grave. His solemnity became him. He seemed even more incontrovertible, the picture of medical authority.
“An unparalleled tragedy,” he said. He circled back behind his desk, sitting and gesturing to Anthony to be seated himself.
He remained standing, fingers twisting the watch chain in his pocket. He twitched his hand free when he saw that Jephson observed him with an air of clinical curiosity.
“The Duchess of Weston suffered an acute malady.” Jephson’s voice was heavy with sadness. “The symptoms were various and severe, but none of the doctors who consulted ever imagined she would harm herself. At the time, I suspected a somatic cause.”
More Greek.
Anthony sat, accepted the glass Jephson offered, an excellent scotch, meant to be savored. He swallowed it without tasting.
“An infection?”
“Perhaps. Something physiological. Her brain tissue was healthy, no lesions. Now we understand that the reproductive organs are most often involved in these extreme cases. I wish I’d known then what I know now. I might have helped her.”
Anthony pressed the rim of the empty glass to his mouth, mashing his lips against his teeth, to choke the noise that threatened to erupt.
Her brain tissue. Jephson had performed an autopsy. Why had this never before occurred to him, that his mother had been carved up, her very organs brought to account? She was buried, at least, under her maiden name in Norwood, in the Metaxas sarcophagus at the Greek Orthodox necropolis at the South Metropolitan Cemetery. Returned to her first—and happier—family. What had always been touted as a disgrace now seemed to him a mercy.
Jephson sighed.
“Today, the prognosis for a woman with your mother’s condition is much better. That’s a professional balm that I know can only provide so much comfort to those with personal griefs.”
“I’ve no need of balms.”
Not from you.
Anthony allowed Jephson to refill his glass. Nothing would bring his mother back. He had to live now, to fight now for what he loved. That would honor his mother’s memory more than obsessive vengeance or self-destruction.
“Let’s discuss a timelier topic,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’ve recently been employed as medical officer by the vestry of Shoreditch. That’s very civic of you, taking on such thankless work in addition to your responsibilities here.”
“Thank you.” Jephson sipped his own scotch. “Overcrowded and insanitary buildings are ruinous to the public health. I do my part to goad the vestry into prosecuting the necessary improvements.”
“Hmm.” Anthony swallowed the second glass of scotch. It warmed his chest. If he stopped there, two glasses, that golden warmth would be an asset.
“You think to improve public health by endorsing the destruction of properties?”
“If they’re nests of infectious diseases, certainly. There are one hundred eighty-five people per acre in Shoreditch, most living in the lowest circumstances.”
“But there’s no statute for the reconstruction of the houses.” Anthony sniffed at his empty glass. A very fine year. He locked eyes with Jephson. “Surely, public health suffers when families sleep in liquid filth under bridges. The medical officers in St. Pancras and Marylebone have been pushing for repair rather than demolition, because there’s no provision for the displaced population.”
All that laborious reading . . . his father’s notes on the Cross Act of 1875 . . . Dr. Rendel’s and Dr. Stephenson’s quarterly reports to the Sanitary Committee . . . it came in handy now. Jephson’s silky manner couldn’t smooth away the facts.
With one fingertip, Jephson touched his temple, tipping his head slightly, like a man hearing the whine of a circling insect.
“In certain instances, repair is, of course, advisable.”
“But not on Charlotte Road? And why exactly is that, Dr. Jephson?”
Jephson seemed to notice that Anthony’s glass was empty. He raised the decanter questioningly, then leaned forward.
Stalling.
A tap came on the door at the same moment it swung open. A gaunt alienist walked in, all nose and Adam’s apple, looking up from a document as he entered. He saw Anthony and startled, backing away apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Jephson. I didn’t realize you were occupied.”
As he turned to go, Jephson held out his hand for the document, and in that moment, as the alienist came forward again, Anthony saw something irreconcilable with reality.
Two women, nurses, in starched white aprons and high white collars, passed the open doorway, a smaller woman stumbling between them. Anthony was on his feet before the woman began to flail, wild hair snarling all around her, before he could be sure.
“I can walk, dammit. Get your pettifogging hands off of me!” The familiar voice, throaty and desperate, gave his feet wings. It was the work of a moment to push aside the nurses—as gently as he could manage—and close his hand around Lucy’s shoulder, the tendon so tight it jumped against his palm. Her rolling eye caught his and she convulsed with recognition, clamping her arms around him with bruising force.
It felt like an act of providence, awesome and terrible, that she should be here, delivered into his arms, shaking as though she would come apart.
God above, he would keep her together. He would hold her until the end of time if need be.
He flattened the springy curls against her head, looked, uncomprehending, at Jephson, who’d come out into the hall. His face was white as paper, but he spoke with undiminished authority.
“Release the patient at once.”
“I’m not a patient.” Lucy ripped free and turned, pressing her back against Anthony’s chest, the way a soldier making a desperate last stand might press his back to a wall.
“You’re a patient until we’ve thoroughly established your sanity, at which point, if your faculties are intact, I will be forced to contact the police.” Jephson signaled to the nurses.
“And what was this woman’s crime?” asked Anthony softly, stopping the forward progress of the nurses with a glance.
“I understand it was a violent episode, involving a patient. I’ve yet to interview the concerned parties.” Jephson’s eyes slid away. “We take such breaches seriously. The serenity and safety of our patients is paramount. But these incidents are vanishingly rare and needn’t worry you.” He smiled, signaling again to the nurses.
“Have you seen the site for the cannery? Come, let’s continue our discussion outside.”
Lucy faced him, and he saw the green and yellow bruise ripening on her cheek, obscuring the constellation of freckles. Her lashes were gummy, the whites of her eyes rheumy and pink.
“Effie.” She breathed it. He had to lower his head.
“Effie,” she said. “She’s here.”
He didn’t move, but something tore inside him. There could only be a physiological explanation for this feeling: his organs were sliding out of their casings.
He looked at Jephson and saw the fear on his face. Not the fear of a man whose career has suddenly careened off track, who comprehends the abstraction of a reputation and a livelihood gone to ashes—animal fear. The fear of a lamb that scents a wolf in the fold.
He realized his teeth were bared, his hands in fists. Lucy placed a palm against his chest, as though she knew only the gentlest pressure could hold him back.
He relaxed his hands, touched her fingers, breathing through his nose until he could look at Jephson without lunging.
“Take me to my sister,” he said. He would give the orders now.
Don’t let it be too late.
Moments later, as the door to her room swung open, he could envision it, the sight he’d never beheld, replicated, his sister hanging from the bedpost. Imagination was a blessing and a curse.
He found her sitting at the window. She was singing to herself, quietly in a minor key, his mother’s haunting melody. Could he have heard her from such a distance, walking across the grounds? Or had the same memory visited both of them? What did you call such a visitation?
Looking at his sister, alive, frail but whole, as she turned from the window to look at him, he knew he was seeing a ghost, the ghost of his love for his mother, seeing it made flesh. It wasn’t too late to love, to live now.
And then she was hurtling toward him, and he was wrapping her in his arms. He kept an arm around her as they walked down the hall, Lucy clinging to his other hand. The hall had filled with nurses, orderlies, and alienists, but as he glared they parted to let him pass. As well they should.
Goddamn it, he was the Duke of Weston. His money funded this blasted place.
He was leaving, with whomever he chose to take with him.
He paused when he reached Jephson. “Don’t worry about contacting the police. There are several breaches I want to investigate. I’ll contact the police myself.”
“Not now,” murmured Effie.
“Where’s Kate?” Lucy demanded of the gaunt alienist.
Anthony let his sister tug him forward.
“You’ll be hearing from them,” he promised Jephson. “And from me.”
But Effie was right. First, he needed to pluck her out of this hell.
And so they walked on, the alienist scurrying to show them the way to Kate’s cell, and then they were stepping out of the asylum, all four of them walking down the hill in the afternoon sun.
When the torrent of words slowed and Anthony and Effie paused for breath on the leather settee in Uncle Peter’s study, both of their faces were wet with tears. She’d sworn she wasn’t crying for their father, and Anthony believed her. Lucy had told them in the coach that he wasn’t the one who’d had her taken to Putney, but this realization, and the realization that Robert Yardley had exerted a powerful influence on his behavior at the end of his life—perhaps even hastened that end—didn’t unknot his twisted legacy. The hurt they felt was too warped for the conventional releases—sobs or speeches. They’d have to sit with it, not just today, but for years of days, before they came to the end of it. At least now they’d sit with it together.
Anthony kissed Effie’s brow, chucked her beneath the chin, which made her screw up her face with annoyance, just as he’d hoped. God, he’d missed that expression. Her voice had begun to scratch, and his throat was raw, but there was still so much left to say. About George, about Charlie Nixon, about the long road from Maiwand to Kandahar, about the Putney Asylum. About Lucy. But they would have time, decades, a whole lifetime. All the time they needed to rebuild their family, and make new families.
They walked together into the parlor, which smelled of honey, cinnamon, and powdered sugar. Sofia leapt up to tug Effie down onto the sofa beside her. The resemblance between them was not so marked, not anymore. Effie’s face and figure had changed, seasoned into a different, darker loveliness.
“Your favorite.” Aunt Helen put a honey-dipped cookie on a plate and handed it to her.
“I could eat a thousand of these.” Effie smiled, a breathtaking smile, but even that smile seemed a dazzling surface ripple that left some fathomless well within untouched.
Aunt Helen noticed it. She looked at Anthony, an assuring look. Patience, that look seemed to urge. Too much had happened, too much had changed, to compass all at once.
“I’ve eaten at least a dozen,” declared Lucy, dusting powdered sugar from her dress, lifting her head. “Although I can’t say they’re my favorite because I haven’t tried the others.”
“Those are good,” said Sofia, pointing to another biscuit. “But you have to dip them in your tea for fifteen minutes or they’ll break your teeth. That’s how Yiayia broke her tooth, our grandmother.”
“It is not,” Effie said, laughing. “She told you that to make you slow down so there’d be cookies left for her.”
“How did Yiayia break her tooth?” Sofia asked her mother, and Aunt Helen began to tell the story of Yiayia as a young woman in Pylos biting an ancient Greek coin she took for a lead-plugged counterfeit.
Anthony had heard it before, but he liked hearing it again. He liked watching Lucy listen, her eyes wide, a smile hovering on her lips. She fit in easily with his lively relatives. There was something comforting, and comfortable, about her presence in the room. A rare bird among rarities. He wove between tables and vases, choosing the blue-and-white brocade chair and pulling it close to her. They’d dropped her friend Kate at home—the route to Leicester Square passed near to her house—but it had made no sense to take Lucy to Shoreditch before getting Effie settled. That’s what he’d said, at any rate. The truth was he wanted her here, with him, with his family. Her eyes wandered the room as Aunt Helen spoke, lighting and sometimes lingering on the objects that had fascinated him from childhood. The large pear-shaped vases with stirrup handles. The black lacquer cabinets with gold meanders. Finally, her eyes met his and held, her flush almost disguising the discoloration on her cheekbone.
Laughter and the tinkling of spoons brought his attention back to Aunt Helen. The story had ended, as it always did, triumphantly, with Yiayia losing a tooth to make a priceless discovery.
“Maria will come at once to see you,” Aunt Helen was saying to Effie, naming her older daughter. “You won’t believe how much little Peter has grown.”
“And Uncle Peter?” Effie asked. Uncle Peter traveled often for business, sometimes as far as Greece, sometimes to meet with clients at closer ports.
“He’ll be back within two weeks.” Aunt Helen beamed, imagining, no doubt, his happy return, the surprise that awaited him. It was more than Effie’s return—they’d finally effected a reunion, a closing of the distance that had separated the branches of the family. No more sneaking. Their father’s long reach had at last fallen short.
Aunt Helen poured tea from the smaller pot into her cup, the kind she liked, thick with honey and cinnamon syrup. Her enjoyment as she inhaled the steam was so apparent that Anthony poured himself a cup and winced through a single swallow before setting it aside.
Some things never changed.
“I can’t wait to see him.” Effie shook her head slightly, tears shining again in her eyes. Her voice cracked, and she locked her hands, bracing her body as though she might at any moment find herself shaken awake, ripped from a reality she didn’t yet dare to accept.
“I still can’t believe I’m here.”
“I knew you’d be back! I knew we’d see you soon,” said Sofia warmly, seizing Effie’s wrist, separating her hands so she could cradle the left against her heart.
Effie made a choking noise.
“I did not know. In fact—I thought—I was convinced that I would die in there,” she whispered.
The room grew quiet. For several moments, they listened to the tick of the clock.
“Sofia.” Aunt Helen leaned over the scrolled arm of her chair to touch her daughter’s elbow. “I will speak with my niece and nephew in private.”
Lucy stirred, but Anthony touched the back of her hand, bidding her to stay. Sofia rose slowly, frowning, every line of her body communicating reluctance.
“Go on, koukla.” Aunt Helen laughed at her outrage. “You can have Effie all to yourself afterward.”
“Koukla,” murmured Effie as Sofia dragged from the room.
“Koukla mou. My little doll, my honey.” Aunt Helen added sugar to her syrupy concoction, sipped, then added another spoonful. “Your mother called you koukla too. And you used to call Anthony koukla and make us all laugh. You don’t remember. Well, you were little more than a baby.”
Effie sank back in her chair.
“Cuckoo,” she whispered, blinking at Anthony, at the echo of maternal love they’d just discovered in that silly nomination. How much they’d forgotten!
Lucy smiled, her hand shifting beneath his fingers, lifting to trap his pinky between its pad and her forefinger. The promise of that slight pressure heated his chest. The golden warmth produced by the scotch in Jephson’s office was a counterfeit. This was true gold, what he felt now in the center of his being.
He had the strength to continue.
“Our mother,” he said and waited, giving Aunt Helen the opening to speak.
Tell us about her, about what happened.
Aunt Helen hesitated, glancing at Lucy. She knew that Lucy had been instrumental in Effie’s rescue, but she was still a stranger. Then her eyes found Anthony and his face decided her.
“Thalia,” she said, musingly, eyes suddenly unfocused, staring at a distant point.
“She provoked me terribly.”
She laughed. It was odd, to hear their mother’s name uttered aloud. It felt like a taboo had been broken, the lid of a locked box lifted. Effie’s eyes shone.
“I was twice as serious, so she was four times as free. But we loved each other for all our differences. She was filled with love. Do you remember that she ate a vegetable diet? No? One year, when we were children, she met the Easter lamb before he was introduced to the spit. That finished it for her. No one could talk sense into her head once her feelings were engaged. And she infected other people with her passions. I gave up lamb myself, for a season.”
Aunt Helen’s smile faded, and her olive skin looked suddenly waxen.
“I didn’t know what your father had done. When she stopped answering my letters, I felt that something was wrong, but I waited too long to act on my intuition. The company was changing then, from sail to steam, and the prize of our fleet, a steamship built to order, had sunk earlier that spring in the Black Sea. Peter and his father had gone to Odessa to negotiate with the insurers, a trip that lasted months. I had my hands full running the household, organizing company correspondence, keeping up a family presence at the docks, acting as Peter’s eyes and ears.”
She sat very straight, shoulders thrown back, exposing herself for their castigation.
“When she missed Maria’s birthday, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I went to Weston Hall, and your father received me.”
Anthony sensed Lucy’s eyes upon him and straightened his own shoulders.
“He told me that your mother had become unmanageable. That her wanton behavior, her flirting and singing, had precipitated a crisis. He described an increased fondness for drink, the application of heavy perfumes, general derangement and immodesty, called her a strumpet, an embarrassment. It struck me as a cruel misinterpretation of my sister’s loving spirit and vivacity and I said so. That’s when he told me she was having an affair . . . with my husband, with Peter.”
Anthony started, and Lucy’s hand turned, gripping his.
“He showed me a fragment of a love letter written in her hand.” Bleakness moved across Aunt Helen’s face, stripping the color from her lips.
“No names. But he said it had been found the month before, in Peter’s office at the docks, in the fireplace. Peter had been careless burning the evidence. I walked out. I walked out blindly. I didn’t ask where Thalia had gone. I learned of it in the paper, like everyone else, when it was too late. I regret every day that I didn’t fight for her.”
“But she . . . and Uncle Peter . . .” Effie yanked at her braid, trying to contain her emotion.
“Nothing passed between them,” said Aunt Helen firmly. “The more I reflected, the more certain I became. The timing showed too much calculation. Why make the accusation then, when Peter was thousands of miles away? Besides, if Peter and Thalia were lovers, they would have corresponded in Greek.”
A rather cold defense to be mounted by a woman whose husband had been accused of adultery with her sister. But Helen was logical above all else.
“And, of course, when Peter arrived back to England, we had it out. Nothing passed between them but the love of brother for sister, sister for brother. I suspect the letter was a forgery.” Aunt Helen’s gaze flickered. “Your father had decided on his course of action and wanted more evidence of her supposed hysteria, while at the same time forcing our families apart.”
The warmth was gone. Numbness replaced it. Anthony hunched, slid his hand from Lucy’s, and thrust it into his pocket, where he twisted his watch chain savagely.
It had the hallmark of one of his father’s schemes. The tactical efficiency would have appealed to him. And yet . . . his father would never have falsified a document that humiliated his pride. Nor would he have needed to do so, with the right doctor in his pay.
Effie heaved a noisy breath, eyes fixed on the plate in her lap. For her, their father’s death was fresh, and their mother’s suffering had a vivid corollary in her own experience.
No more of this discussion.
Aunt Helen seemed to agree. She glanced at Anthony, took in his slouch, the hand in his pocket, and changed the subject.
“I almost forgot,” she said, her tone lighter. “I have a present for you, a bit late for your birthday, but . . .”
She put aside her cup and went to a cabinet.
“Papou’s worry beads,” she said, smiling down at him. “You played with them once upon a time.”
“I remember,” he said hoarsely, although he hadn’t until this moment, looking down at the amber beads strung alongside gold, the rich silk tassel. He let the beads drop through his fingers, twirled them so they dropped again. The movement, the rhythm, aligned him. He felt a tiny burst of wonder as he made the gesture his grandfather had made, and his grandfather’s father, and his. Restlessness, harnessed in this way, could produce a kind of peace.
He rose and kissed his Aunt Helen’s cheek. Lucy rose too. Her aunt had to be worried sick.
“Thank you for the tea and cookies,” she murmured as Aunt Helen turned to her. “I should be getting home.”
“You’ll come back soon, though,” said Effie. She seemed to shake off her pall, rising to wrap Lucy in a fierce embrace.
“Of course.” Lucy’s response was a bit breathless, perhaps due to the rib-cracking pressure. Her eyes brushed Anthony’s as she came away from Effie, their glow unreadable.
“I’ll call the coach,” he said.