the stone around the doorway blackened and smoking, as if the building had exhaled a deep sooty breath. The fire on the hedges and grass had been extinguished—flattened by Turner’s roots. The mighty oak. As she watched, they seemed to retract. Her snakes had vanished too. She couldn’t untangle the mess of fear and triumph she felt. The magic had worked, but what were its limits? They wouldn’t be safe until those demons were back in their jar with the lid screwed on tight, and just how were they going to manage that? And how were they going to explain this to the Praetor and the board? She’d been bold enough claiming Il Bastone was her house, but she wasn’t even a member of Lethe anymore. “Find the others,” said Turner. “I’ll talk to the hose haulers. I called it in and I’m still police even if you’re both…” “Banished?” offered Alex. It was possible the Praetor wouldn’t even realize they’d been at Il Bastone since the fire had started outside. But if he took more than a cursory glance inside, he was going to see the leftovers of their dinner and anything else they’d left behind. She wasn’t sure how serious Anselm had been about criminal trespassing and she didn’t want to find out. Mercy, Tripp, and Dawes were waiting in the alley, stamping their feet in the cold. “You’re all right?” she asked as she approached. “Alex,” said Tripp, bracing his hands on her shoulders. “That was sick. They actually ran from you! Spenser looked like he was going to shit himself.” Alex pried his hands free. “Okay, okay. But they aren’t done with us. We all need to stay alert. And you need to remember that’s not Spenser.” “Absolutely,” said Tripp with a somber nod. “Still fucking cool.” Mercy rolled her eyes. “How bad does the house look?” “It isn’t terrible,” Dawes said hoarsely. “Hopefully the firefighters will tell Turner the extent of the damage.” “You sound like shit,” said Tripp. Mercy blew out an exasperated breath. “I think what he means is that it sounds like you inhaled a lot of smoke.” “There’s an ambulance,” said Alex. “You should get checked out.” “I don’t want anyone knowing we were here,” objected Dawes. Alex didn’t like the relief she felt at that, but she was glad Turner was willing to cover for them and that Dawes was willing to go along. The firefighters and paramedics had been joined by two black-andwhites, and Alex saw Professor Walsh-Whiteley, bundled up in a long overcoat and a dapper little cap, approaching Turner, who was talking to two uniformed cops. “The Praetor’s here,” Alex said. Dawes sighed. “Should we talk to him? Try to explain?” Alex made eye contact with Turner, but he gave the faintest shake of his head. The old Alex wondered if he was covering his own ass, laying a trail of trouble that would lead away from him and directly to her and Dawes. They’d make easy scapegoats. And it was Alex who had brought them back to Il


went to look at poor Lucy. The undertaker had certainly done his work well, for the room was turned into a small chapelle ardente. There was a wilderness of beautiful white flowers, and death was made as little repulsive as might be. The end of the winding sheet was laid over the face. When the Professor bent over and turned it gently back, we both started at the beauty before us. The tall wax candles showing a sufficient light to note it well. All Lucy's loveliness had come back to her in death, and the hours that had passed, instead of leaving traces of `decay's effacing fingers', had but restored the beauty of life, till positively I could not believe my eyes that I was looking at a corpse. The Professor looked sternly grave. He had not loved her as I had, and there was no need for tears in his eyes. He said to me, "Remain till I return," and left the room. He came back with a handful of wild garlic from the box waiting in the hall, but which had not been opened, and placed the flowers amongst the others on and around the bed. Then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold crucifix, and placed it over the mouth. He restored the sheet to its place, and we came away. I was undressing in my own room, when, with a premonitory tap at the door, he entered, and at once began to speak. "Tomorrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem knives." "Must we make an autopsy?" I asked. "Yes and no. I want to operate, but not what you think. Let me tell you now, but not a word to another. I want to cut off her head and take out her heart. Ah! You a surgeon, and so shocked! You, whom I have seen with no tremble of hand or heart, do operations of life and death that make the rest shudder. Oh, but I must not forget, my dear friend John, that you loved her, and I have not forgotten it for is I that shall operate, and you must not help. I would like to do it tonight, but for Arthur I must not. He will be free after his father's funeral tomorrow, and he will want to see her, to see it. Then, when she is coffined ready for the next day, you and I shall come when all sleep. We shall unscrew the coffin lid, and shall do our operation, and then replace all, so that none know, save we alone." "But why do it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need? And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it, no good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledge, why do it? Without such it is monstrous." For answer he put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with infinite tenderness, "Friend John, I pity your poor bleeding


the overthrow so complete! Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky. I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me: Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. [Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner."] Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the various diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew not why; but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that was coming towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew nearer I observed that it was the Swiss diligence; it stopped just where I was standing, and on the door being opened, I perceived Henry Clerval, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. "My dear Frankenstein," exclaimed he, "how glad I am to see you! How fortunate that you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!" Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval continued talking for some time about our mutual friends and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. "You may easily believe," said he, "how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of bookkeeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: `I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.' But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a


this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black .. <p 118 > negro-savage, with a lion-like tread --an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too,


that takes little responsibility for the health and well-being of its citizens while urging us to blame each other—and ourselves—for our precarity under an exploitative system in which all but a small number of us stand to suffer or lose much. A country that first abandons and then condemns people without money who have the temerity to get sick, accusing them of causing their own deaths. It is still hard for me not to think of my father’s death as a kind of negligent homicide, facilitated and sped by the state’s failure to fulfill its most basic responsibilities to him and others like him. With our broken safety net, our strained systems of care and support, the deep and corrosive inequalities we have yet to address, it’s no wonder that so many of us find ourselves alone, struggling to get the help we need when we or our loved ones are suffering. What killed my father, on paper, was diabetes and kidney failure: common indeed, the eighth- and tenth-leading causes of death in the United States in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But failing organs, life-threatening infections, death in his sixties—these were not inevitable outcomes, nor matters of pure chance and inheritance, an avalanche of genetic misfortune. He needed access to quality health care in order to manage and treat his illnesses. He needed it throughout his life, not only in his final years, when it was granted as a crisis response only after his kidneys had failed. His mother lived longer and had greater access to life-prolonging treatment in the 1960s and 1970s than her son had in the twenty-first century. * * * For her part, for reasons I will never comprehend, my mother assigns herself some blame. She knew that he was slowing down. Should she have realized that his death was close? Had she missed important signs? If she had known more, could she have done more for him? I beg her not to think that way. It’s not her fault. She worked so hard to take care of him. I want to ask if she or Dad blamed me for being so far away. For not being able to help more. I realize that I am afraid to hear the answer, and the question seems too great a burden to add to the ones she already carries. What I feel is not pure self-recrimination—I know his illness wasn’t my fault, either. But the regret and anger I bear is a constant ache, fierce and gnawing and deep, so entwined with my grief that I cannot begin to parse where one feeling ends and another begins. 9 After my father died, his sister asked my mother when she would be shipping his body “home.” Mom was so confused that she had to repeat the question. My parents had spent all but the first few years of their married life in Oregon, and still his family considered Ohio not only Dad’s true home but his final resting place. When Mom told me this upon my arrival


mean.” She was nodding, a smile playing upon her lips. “I have a cute story about her. . . .” Kristi managed a nod and a smile though she couldn’t give two cents about any of the felines this woman found so fascinating. Fortunately, before Dana could launch into more oh-so-fascinating anecdotes about her cats, the producer’s assistant returned. Flushed faced, she apologized. “I know this is highly irregular,” she said, then cast a disparaging glance through the door to the maze of hallways beyond. “But Mrs. Cooke, though she agreed to do the segment, is refusing to wait here in the green room, so we’ve shuffled things around and Dr. and Mrs. Cooke will be interviewed in the first segment.” She glanced from a clipboard to Kristi. “You’re next—as planned—and then, if Mr. Bigelow doesn’t arrive, there will be a segment that’s been prerecorded about the renovations to the riverboats and the final segment will be you.” She nodded at Dana Metcalf. “For the cat expo this weekend. We’ll wrap up with that.” She glanced up. “Renee-Claire and my producer have already approved the changes and we’re set to roll. Okay with you all?” “Yes, of course,” Cat Woman said. “But if you need anyone to fill in more time, I’ve got three lovely cats—one of them a prizewinner in the SFC—Southland Feline Competition—available. They’re all in the car with my husband. He could bring them in. I thought the viewers would like—” “This one’s fine,” the assistant said, pointing with her pen at Mr. Precious. “One cat.” “I know, but—” “Just one. Her.” Dana said quickly, “Mr. Precious is a he.” “Fine. Him then. I’ll be back to take you to the set at the breaks.” Jen glanced at the clock on the wall. “God, where is Tom Bigelow?” She was texting furiously on her phone again as she exited, the door shutting behind her. “Well.” Dana let out a little huff and pursed her lips. “Okay, I guess,” then to Kristi, “Mr. Precious can’t handle all this stress. He’s a real professional, though I have to be careful with him, you know.” Kristi didn’t. Nor did she care. The cat hadn’t moved an inch on his pillow and seemed content to stare at Kristi with wide green eyes. “He’s a champion breeder—oh, my God—so good. The queens? The female cats? They adore him. He’s very popular.” She was nodding and ran a finger along the fringe of the satin pillow. “And this? We call it his throne.” She actually tittered. “It’s chilled.” Nodding, she added, “Uh-huh. To protect his, you know, privates, to keep him in good shape. For the ladies.” Okay. TMI. Why were they even having this conversation? Kristi wondered if the woman was putting her on or just a bona fide kook. Either way, she wasn’t interested in Mr. Precious’s love life and quickly turned her attention to her phone to end the conversation. Like right now! Get me out of here, she thought just as the assistant brought in Tom Bigelow, the missing jazz musician


made the girl’s best friend, now thirteen, testify that the dead girl had sneaked into R-rated movies. This apparently meant she was mature enough (“sexually active,” they said) at twelve that anyone could have killed her, not just the bus driver who had the nude photos. There was a man they let out on a technicality (a paperwork error) who went free in just enough time to show up, to her family’s horror, at the graveside service of the girlfriend he’d strangled. There was a boy who was not charged with involuntary manslaughter for pushing his father off a restaurant deck—because the system worked for him as it should work for everyone. When they brought him in for questioning, they gave him a blanket and hot chocolate. They understood that he was a child. There was a man who got away with it because five Black, trans women found dead in the same park in one year must have been coincidence, a sign that it was a seedy park. They never even looked for him. In the ’90s there was a case where the state declined to press charges against the family friend whose semen had been found in the mouth and vagina and anus of the murdered eleven-year-old. The state’s attorney didn’t feel there was enough evidence. The girl might have been sitting on a bed where he’d previously masturbated, and eaten some popcorn there, and gotten his semen in her mouth. “This is how we get colds,” the man said. “We touch something, we touch our face. And then a little girl goes to the bathroom, and what does she do? She wipes herself, front to back, like this.” And on live TV, in some marbled court hallway, he squatted low, swiped his hand between the legs of his suit pants. 38 The defense rested after they questioned Robbie, and the state introduced no witnesses of their own. They spent the following day making arguments, the state again saying I had influenced people, this time manipulating Beth. I would have been allowed back into the courtroom for the closing arguments, but Amy didn’t think that would be a good idea; she told me to fly home, and the whole thing ended when I was in the air somewhere over the Rockies. When I landed, I had a voicemail from Amy telling me she thought it had gone very well. Now the judge would take it all “under advisement,” and in one to six months, Amy thought, we’d hear if he’d decided to vacate the original verdict. The day I got home, I checked my email and found a note from a young woman in Salem, Oregon. You knew her when she was a student in Providence. Paula Gutierrez; I’m sure the name rings a bell. She was hoping I could get a note to Beth Docherty, thanking her for what she’d said about you on the stand. It sounded so eerily familiar, she wrote to Beth. Like you were talking about my own life. A week later, Dane Rubra forwarded


beset by a desire to refer to her brother Francis, struck in again: 'If Dora's mama,' she said, 'when she married our brother Francis, had at once said that there was not room for the family at the dinner-table, it would have been better for the happiness of all parties.' 'Sister Clarissa,' said Miss Lavinia. 'Perhaps we needn't mind that now.' 'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, 'it belongs to the subject. With your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent to speak, I should not think of interfering. On this branch of the subject I have a voice and an opinion. It would have been better for the happiness of all parties, if Dora's mama, when she married our brother Francis, had mentioned plainly what her intentions were. We should then have known what we had to expect. We should have said "Pray do not invite us, at any time"; and all possibility of misunderstanding would have been avoided.' When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again referring to my letter through her eye-glass. They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds' eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries. Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed: 'You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr. Copperfield, to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.' 'If our brother Francis,' said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again, if I may call anything so calm a breaking out, 'wished to surround himself with an atmosphere of Doctors' Commons, and of Doctors' Commons only, what right or desire had we to object? None, I am sure. We have ever been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on anyone. But why not say so? Let our brother Francis and his wife have their society. Let my sister Lavinia and myself have our society. We can find it for ourselves, I hope.' As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles and I made some sort of reply. Traddles was inaudible. I think I observed, myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. I don't in the least know what I meant. 'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind, 'you can go on, my dear.' Miss Lavinia proceeded: 'Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it without finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our niece. We have no doubt that you think you like her very much.' 'Think, ma'am,' I rapturously began, 'oh! -' But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon. 'Affection,' said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every clause, 'mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its


the gardens yesterday, his lips on her shoulder. If anyone saw her with Bastian and grass stains on her skirt, the conclusion they drew would have nothing to do with that kind of riding. When she took the prince’s proffered arm, she could feel his muscles move beneath his silken sleeve. More defined than she’d expect from a pampered royal; an incongruous roughness, like the scar through his eyebrow and the calluses on his hands. Lore and the Sun Prince strolled casually down the clear paths cut into the forest, winding trails carefully designed to look natural while being anything but. A slight breeze fluttered at Bastian’s hair, worn down, waving dark against his shoulders—just on this side of too-long to be in current fashion, though she assumed that however Bastian wore his hair was how the entire court would in a month’s time. He smelled like red wine and expensive cologne, one that Lore’s untrained nose couldn’t pick out the notes of. “I’ve petitioned my father over and over again to waive the fees associated with a vault burial,” Bastian said as they took another turn, the edge of the manicured forest appearing up ahead, “but he’s adamant that we need the money for the upcoming war with the Kirythean Empire.” Lore’s shoulders tensed, but she kept her face impassive. “Oh?” she murmured. “Does he think a war is imminent, then?” “He’s thought a war was imminent for as long as I can remember.” “The Empire has drawn steadily closer.” Close enough that she’d heard hushed talk of possible war down on the docks for years, fears of conscription and bottlenecked trade. “And yet,” Bastian said, “they’ve never invaded.” “Perhaps they’re waiting for something.” Lore kept her eyes ahead and her voice light. “Information, maybe. An opportune moment.” “Information would be difficult to acquire.” His eyes slid her way. “August only trusts a select few with military secrets. I don’t even know most of them.” She forced a laugh. “Surely that’s not true. You’re his heir.” “And how he hates that.” They ambled along quietly for a moment, Lore’s palm clammy on Bastian’s sleeve. The fabric was soft and billowing and would probably show sweaty prints when she lifted her hand away. “Imminent war or not, I think it’s deplorable to charge your citizens for a decent burial. There should at least be exceptions for extenuating circumstances.” Bastian glanced at her from the corner of her eye. “All this mess with the villages, for instance.” Her teeth clamped on the inside of her cheek, stirring her mind for a way to pry that wouldn’t seem suspicious. August had said that most of the bodies from the villages were disposed of—that had to mean burned, regardless of what their personal choices for burial had been in life. Shademount and Orlimar were both small villages where most of the citizens were subsistence farmers. According to the Tracts, you entered the Shining Realm in whatever state your body was left in, so being burned meant you didn’t enter at all. The Church wouldn’t concern


desire to enfold her once more in his arms. "Is Mrs. Miller in?" he asked joyously. "She's gone," the maid answered. He looked at her blankly. "She came about an hour ago and took away her things." For a moment he did not know what to say. "Did you give her my letter? Did she say where she was going?" Then he understood that Mildred had deceived him again. She was not coming back to him. He made an effort to save his face. "Oh, well, I daresay I shall hear from her. She may have sent a letter to another address." He turned away and went back hopeless to his rooms. He might have known that she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with the whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar slut. He had only one life, and it was madness to fling it away. He _felt_ that he would never overcome his passion, but he _knew_ that after all it was only a matter of time. He would not stay in London. There everything reminded him of his unhappiness. He telegraphed to his uncle that he was coming to Blackstable, and, hurrying to pack, took the first train he could. He wanted to get away from the sordid rooms in which he had endured so much suffering. He wanted to breathe clean air. He was disgusted with himself. He felt that he was a little mad. Since he was grown up Philip had been given the best spare room at the vicarage. It was a corner-room and in front of one window was an old tree which blocked the view, but from the other you saw, beyond the garden and the vicarage field, broad meadows. Philip remembered the wall-paper from his earliest years. On the walls were quaint water colours of the early Victorian period by a friend of the Vicar's youth. They had a faded charm. The dressing-table was surrounded by stiff muslin. There was an old tall-boy to put your clothes in. Philip gave a sigh of pleasure; he had never realised that all those things meant anything to him at all. At the vicarage life went on as it had always done. No piece of furniture had been moved from one place to another; the Vicar ate the same things, said the same


Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

her adorable belly follow me into the kitchen, where I’ve just pulled open my nightmare of a junk drawer to find a safety pin for the broken zipper pull. I spot the shiny foil corner of a sealed condom and pull it out from beneath an avalanche of paper clips and broken pencils. This moment feels like a perfect metaphor. “You keep condoms in your junk drawer?” “Ask that again,” I say, “and realize how funny it sounds.” She snorts behind me, and I feel a wave of protectiveness. Alice’s life has never been out of whack for even one second. When she was fifteen, she made a milestone list, complete with goals, ages, sometimes even locations: … Begin Stanford at eighteen, graduate at twenty-two, medical school at Johns Hopkins, residency in San Diego, marriage at thirty, first baby born at thirty-five… So far she hasn’t missed a single one except for maid of honor at Fizzy’s wedding at twenty-eight. (She dutifully crossed that one out with a thick black marker a few years ago and we celebrated my book hitting the New York Times list instead.) But pregnancy hasn’t been her favorite experience, and I wonder if she’s feeling even a tiny bit of what I do right now, like she’s facing a future with unknown complexity, wicked blind curves, scary blank spaces. “Have you ever felt like you’ve lost track of yourself?” She points to her big, pregnant belly. “This kid isn’t even here yet and I don’t remember who I was six months ago. Did I really used to run every morning? For fun?” “I’ve been so aimless lately,” I admit, and I’m sure it’s weird for her to hear. “I feel like this show might be a way to get back to myself. Even if it’s a colossal failure, at least it’s something different.” “I get that,” she says wistfully. “I’ve been having skydiving dreams lately.” “You?” She nods. “Sometimes I’m skydiving into an ocean of Oreos. Last night it was beer.” This makes me laugh, and I turn to wrap my arms around her middle. “Tell me I’m not making a huge mistake doing this.” “You’re not. In fact, I wrote it on my list, don’t you know? ‘Fizzy does a crazy romance reality show when she’s thirty-seven and has the time of her life.’ ” eleven FIZZY An unexpected upside to bringing a Hot DILF to my first signing in months is that readers are much less concerned with when my next book will be published and much more interested in who the giant man lingering in the background is. There were a few murmurs and glances during the Q and A portion of the event, but by the time the signing starts, every person in line is trying to figure out who the six-foot-five piece of ass over there talking to my dad is. I know this because they’re all breaking their necks trying to keep track of him as the line weaves around bookshelves. Several have come right out and asked me. My answers


interior wall, knowing that in one second I’ll be caught, fired, sent back to a house where my father thinks I killed my mother. But just before Mrs. Baker can pull the armoire doors open, the record player suddenly skips. The music is replaced by a loud, low groan. It sounds through the entire house, starting at the first floor and moving upward, gaining volume as it goes. I know what it is. Mrs. Baker does, too, for her face darkens with concern. The groan is followed by a crack, a clatter, and several sudden, sharp jerks. It sounds like something’s smashing into the house. Inside the armoire, I’m jostled like a body in a coffin that’s just been dropped. One of the doors flies open, exposing me being knocked back and forth behind Mrs. Baker’s long black dresses. But she’s no longer there to see me. Instead, she’s throwing open the bedroom door and peering into the hall, one withered hand gripping the wall for support as all of Hope’s End bucks and heaves. As quickly as it started, everything stops. The noise. The movement. All is silent and still. Mrs. Baker disappears into the hallway, off to investigate what just happened and where. Others in the house are doing the same. I hear footfalls overhead and the sound of someone thundering down the service stairs. I stay huddled in a corner of the armoire, my heart beating a hundred times per minute. Above me, Mrs. Baker’s dresses still sway on the rack. I wait until they’ve settled before crawling out of the armoire and hurrying to Lenora’s room. She’s awake, of course, her expression alarmed and her good hand clenched around the call button. Through our adjoining door, I hear the buzz of the alarm and see the red light filling my room. “I’m here,” I say. “Are you okay?” Lenora drops the call button and taps twice on the bedspread. Her gaze then flicks to the far corner of the room, where someone stands, unnoticed by me until just now. Archie. He has the curtains pulled back and is looking out the window toward the terrace. “Looks like it’s down there,” he says. “What is?” Archie finally turns to face me. “The damage. We should go see what happened.” I already know what happened. Hope’s End just got a bit closer to tumbling into the ocean. “What are you doing in Lenora’s room?” I say. Archie and I look at each other with wary suspicion. It reminds me of a movie I watched with my mother when she was sick. Two cat burglars who interrupted each other while trying to rob the same mansion are forced to choose if they should work together or alone. They ultimately decide to trust each other. Archie makes a similar decision. “I was saying goodnight.” “Since when do you say goodnight to Lenora?” “Ever since Miss Hope first took ill,” Archie says. “Every night, I make sure to stop by and see how she’s doing.” “Let’s walk,” I say. What I really mean


this time. What was he thinking? Well, if he wants a fight, I’ll give him a fight. No way am I going to let him get away with running off to see that monstrous woman whenever we have a problem. He’s go- ing to have to choose—her or me and our Little Blip. I sniffle softly, but because I’m so exhausted, I soon fall asleep. I wake with a start, momentarily disorientated . . . Oh yes—I’m in the playroom. Because there are no windows, I have no idea what time it is. The door handle rattles. “Ana!” Christian shouts from outside the door. I freeze, but he doesn’t come in. I hear muffled voices, but they move away. I exhale and check the time on my 412/551 BlackBerry. It’s seven fifty, and I have four missed calls and two voice messages. The missed calls are mostly from Christian, but there’s also one from Kate. Oh, no. He must have called her. I don’t have time to listen to them. I don’t want to be late for work. I wrap the duvet around me and pick up my purse before making my way to the door. Unlocking it slowly, I peek outside. No sign of anyone. Oh shit . . . Perhaps this is a bit melodramatic. I roll my eyes at myself, take a deep breath, and head downstairs. Taylor, Sawyer, Ryan, Mrs. Jones, and Christian are all standing in the en- trance to the great room, and Christian is issuing rapid-fire instructions. As one they all turn and gape at me. Christian is still wearing the clothes he slept in last night. He looks disheveled, pale, and heart-stoppingly beautiful. His large gray eyes are wide, and I don’t know if he’s fearful or angry. It’s difficult to tell. “Sawyer, I’ll be ready to leave in about twenty minutes,” I mutter, wrapping the duvet tighter around me for protection. He nods, and all eyes turn to Christian, who is still staring intensely at me. “Would you like some breakfast, Mrs. Grey?” Mrs. Jones asks. I shake my head. “I’m not hungry, thank you.” She purses her lips but says nothing. “Where were you?” Christian asks, his voice low and husky. Suddenly Saw- yer, Taylor, Ryan and Mrs. Jones scatter, scurrying into Taylor’s office, into the foyer, and into the kitchen like terrified rats from a sinking ship. I ignore Christian and march toward our bedroom. “Ana,” he calls after me, “answer me.” I hear his footsteps behind me as I walk into the bedroom and continue into our bathroom. Quickly, I lock the door. “Ana!” Christian pounds on the door. I turn on the shower. The door rattles. “Ana, open the damned door.” “Go away!” “I’m not going anywhere.” “Suit yourself.” “Ana, please.” I climb into the shower, effectively blocking him out. Oh, it’s warm. The healing water cascades over me, cleansing the exhaustion of the night off my skin. Oh my. This feels so good. For a moment, for one short moment, I can pretend all is well. I wash


to be going somewhere. She promised him again and again to come--much oftener than he doubted--and was extremely gratified by such a proof of intimacy, such a distinguishing compliment as she chose to consider it. "You may depend upon me," said she. "I certainly will come. Name your day, and I will come. You will allow me to bring Jane Fairfax?" "I cannot name a day," said he, "till I have spoken to some others whom I would wish to meet you." "Oh! leave all that to me. Only give me a carte-blanche.--I am Lady Patroness, you know. It is my party. I will bring friends with me." "I hope you will bring Elton," said he: "but I will not trouble you to give any other invitations." "Oh! now you are looking very sly. But consider--you need not be afraid of delegating power to me. I am no young lady on her preferment. Married women, you know, may be safely authorised. It is my party. Leave it all to me. I will invite your guests." "No,"--he calmly replied,--"there is but one married woman in the world whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one is--" "--Mrs. Weston, I suppose," interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified. "No--Mrs. Knightley;--and till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself." "Ah! you are an odd creature!" she cried, satisfied to have no one preferred to herself.--"You are a humourist, and may say what you like. Quite a humourist. Well, I shall bring Jane with me-- Jane and her aunt.--The rest I leave to you. I have no objections at all to meeting the Hartfield family. Don't scruple. I know you are attached to them." "You certainly will meet them if I can prevail; and I shall call on Miss Bates in my way home." "That's quite unnecessary; I see Jane every day:--but as you like. It is to be a morning scheme, you know, Knightley; quite a simple thing. I shall wear a large bonnet, and bring one of my little baskets hanging on my arm. Here,--probably this basket with pink ribbon. Nothing can be more simple, you see. And Jane will have such another. There is to be no form or parade--a sort of gipsy party. We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under trees;--and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out of doors--a table spread in the shade, you know. Every thing as natural and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?" "Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals within doors. When you are tired of eating strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house." "Well--as you please; only don't have a great set out. And, by the bye, can I or my


cleared his throat. “Why are you—” “I made lunch reservations for you and Miss Little,” Mr. Kitt said tersely. “Today. One o’clock sharp at Monahan’s. You’ll be marrying her in three weeks, and your mother thought it would be nice if the two of you spent some time together.” Roman forced himself to swallow a retort. This was the last thing he wanted to do today. But he nodded, even as he felt the life drain from him. “Yes. Thank you, Father.” Mr. Kitt gave Roman an appraising glance, as if he were surprised that Roman had given in so easily. “Good, son. I’ll see you tonight for supper.” Roman watched his father leave. He sank back to his chair and stared at the blank page in his typewriter. The dictionaries he had turned paper side out. He forced his fingers to rest on the keys but he couldn’t write a word. All he could hear was Iris’s voice, as if she were reading her letter aloud to him. You remove a piece of armor for them; you let the light stream in, even if it makes you wince. Perhaps that is how you learn to be soft yet strong, even in fear and uncertainty. One person, one piece of steel. Roman sighed. He didn’t want to be vulnerable with Elinor Little. But perhaps he should take Iris’s advice. Slowly, he began to find words to give to the page. The sun was at its zenith when a huge lorry rumbled into town. Iris was walking with Marisol down High Street, carrying baskets of goods they had just bartered for at the grocer, when the truck arrived without warning. Iris didn’t know what to think of it—its massive tires were coated in mud, its metal body dinged by bullets. It rolled in from the western road, which Iris knew led to the war front. “Oh my gods,” Marisol said with a gasp. She dropped her basket and ran, following the lorry as it drove down another road. Iris had no choice but to set down her basket and follow her. “Marisol! Marisol, what’s happening?” If Marisol heard her, she didn’t slow. Her black hair was like a pennant as she raced, as everyone around them followed suit, until a huge crowd gathered around the lorry. It parked at the infirmary, and that was when Iris, sore for breath with a stitch in her side, realized what this was. The lorry had brought a load of wounded soldiers. “Quickly, get the stretchers!” “Easy, now. Easy.” “Where’s a nurse? We need a nurse, please!” It was madness as the lorry’s back doors were opened and the wounded were carefully unloaded. Iris wanted to help. She wanted to step forward and do something—Do something! her mind screamed—but she could only stand there, frozen to the road, watching. The soldiers were dirty, smeared in grime and blood. One of them was weeping, his right leg blown off at the knee. Another was missing an arm, moaning. Their countenances were blanched in shock, creased in agony. Some


Don't be afraid, Oliver, you shall come back to us again. Ha! ha! ha! We won't be so cruel as to send you away, my dear. Oh no, no!' The old man, who was stooping over the fire toasting a piece of bread, looked round as he bantered Oliver thus; and chuckled as if to show that he knew he would still be very glad to get away if he could. 'I suppose,' said the Jew, fixing his eyes on Oliver, 'you want to know what you're going to Bill's for---eh, my dear?' Oliver coloured, involuntarily, to find that the old thief had been reading his thoughts; but boldly said, Yes, he did want to know. 'Why, do you think?' inquired Fagin, parrying the question. 'Indeed I don't know, sir,' replied Oliver. 'Bah!' said the Jew, turning away with a disappointed countenance from a close perusal of the boy's face. 'Wait till Bill tells you, then.' The Jew seemed much vexed by Oliver's not expressing any greater curiosity on the subject; but the truth is, that, although Oliver felt very anxious, he was too much confused by the earnest cunning of Fagin's looks, and his own speculations, to make any further inquiries just then. He had no other opportunity: for the Jew remained very surly and silent till night: when he prepared to go abroad. 'You may burn a candle,' said the Jew, putting one upon the table. 'And here's a book for you to read, till they come to fetch you. Good-night!' 'Good-night!' replied Oliver, softly. The Jew walked to the door: looking over his shoulder at the boy as he went. Suddenly stopping, he called him by his name. Oliver looked up; the Jew, pointing to the candle, motioned him to light it. He did so; and, as he placed the candlestick upon the table, saw that the Jew was gazing fixedly at him, with lowering and contracted brows, from the dark end of the room. 'Take heed, Oliver! take heed!' said the old man, shaking his right hand before him in a warning manner. 'He's a rough man, and thinks nothing of blood when his own is up. W hatever falls out, say nothing; and do what he bids you. Mind!' Placing a strong emphasis on the last word, he suffered his features gradually to resolve themselves into a ghastly grin, and, nodding his head, left the room. Oliver leaned his head upon his hand when the old man disappeared, and pondered, with a trembling heart, on the words he had just heard. The more he thought of the Jew's admonition, the more he was at a loss to divine its real purpose and meaning. He could think of no bad object to be attained by sending him to Sikes, which would not be equally well answered by his remaining with Fagin; and after meditating for a long time, concluded that he had been selected to perform some ordinary menial offices for the housebreaker, until another boy, better suited for his purpose could be engaged. He was too well


into the obi and saluted his father, but he did not answer. Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when his father, suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck. "Where have you been?" he stammered. Nwoye struggled to free himself from the choking grip. "Answer me," roared Okonkwo, "before I kill you!" He seized a heavy stick that lay on the dwarf wall and hit him two or three savage blows. "Answer me!" he roared again. Nwoye stood looking at him and did not say a word. The women were screaming outside, afraid to go in. "Leave that boy at once!" said a voice in the outer compound. It was Okonkwo's uncle, Uchendu. "Are you mad?" Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned. He went back to the church and told Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to go to Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write. Mr. Kiaga's joy was very great. "Blessed is he who forsakes his father and his mother for my sake," he intoned. "Those that hear my words are my father and my mother." Nwoye did not fully understand. But he was happy to leave his father. He would return later to his mother and his brothers and sisters and convert them to the new faith. As Okonkwo sat in his hut that night, gazing into a log fire, he thought over the matter. A sudden fury rose within him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go to the church and wipe out the entire vile and miscreant gang. But on further thought he told himself that Nwoye was not worth fighting for. Why, he cried in his heart, should he, Okonkwo, of all people, be cursed with such a son? He saw clearly in it the finger of his personal god or chi. For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son's behaviour? Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity. To abandon the gods of one's father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he died all his male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps and abandon their ancestors? Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man's god. If such a thing were ever to happen, he, Okonkwo, would wipe them off the face of the earth. Okonkwo was popularly called the "Roaring Flame." As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire. How then could he have


restrain her sensibility, so much as in these moments, and never had she practised them with a triumph so complete. But when the last was over, she sunk at once under the pressure of her sorrow, and then perceived that it was hope, as well as fortitude, which had hitherto supported her. St. Aubert was for a time too devoid of comfort himself to bestow any on his daughter. CHAPTER II I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. SHAKESPEARE Madame St. Aubert was interred in the neighbouring village church; her husband and daughter attended her to the grave, followed by a long train of the peasantry, who were sincere mourners of this excellent woman. On his return from the funeral, St. Aubert shut himself in his chamber. When he came forth, it was with a serene countenance, though pale in sorrow. He gave orders that his family should attend him. Emily only was absent; who, overcome with the scene she had just witnessed, had retired to her closet to weep alone. St. Aubert followed her thither: he took her hand in silence, while she continued to weep; and it was some moments before he could so far command his voice as to speak. It trembled while he said, 'My Emily, I am going to prayers with my family; you will join us. We must ask support from above. Where else ought we to seek it--where else can we find it?' Emily checked her tears, and followed her father to the parlour, where, the servants being assembled, St. Aubert read, in a low and solemn voice, the evening service, and added a prayer for the soul of the departed. During this, his voice often faltered, his tears fell upon the book, and at length he paused. But the sublime emotions of pure devotion gradually elevated his views above this world, and finally brought comfort to his heart. When the service was ended, and the servants were withdrawn, he tenderly kissed Emily, and said, 'I have endeavoured to teach you, from your earliest youth, the duty of self-command; I have pointed out to you the great importance of it through life, not only as it preserves us in the various and dangerous temptations that call us from rectitude and virtue, but as it limits the indulgences which are termed virtuous, yet which, extended beyond a certain boundary, are vicious, for their consequence is evil. All excess is vicious; even that sorrow, which is amiable in its origin, becomes a selfish and unjust passion, if indulged at the expence of our duties--by our duties I mean what we owe to ourselves, as well as to others. The indulgence of excessive grief enervates the mind, and almost incapacitates it for again partaking of those various innocent enjoyments which a benevolent God designed to be the sun-shine of our lives. My dear Emily, recollect and practise the precepts I have so often given you, and which your own experience has so often shewn you to be wise. 'Your sorrow is useless.


flailing fists had connected with more than one of them—the Mort who held his arms had a rapidly blackening eye, and a bruise bloomed on another’s cheek as his hand tangled in Bastian’s hair and wrenched his head back, just like Lore’s. Bastian squinted through the blood from his head wound, chest heaving, teeth bared. August sighed as he looked at his son, always the disappointed father. In return, Bastian laughed, quick and sharp. “How fitting,” he snarled. “You always did have to do things as ostentatiously as possible.” The King shook his head. A streak of sorrow crossed his face, quick and bright as a passing comment, made more terrible for how genuine it was. “It never could’ve been you,” he murmured. “No matter what Anton’s vision said.” “Because I’m not pious enough?” There was no chance of escape; still, Bastian fought against the Mort holding him, muscles straining. “Would it be me if I’d killed my own people and farmed their bodies for an army?” “I didn’t kill them, Bastian.” The sorrow on August’s face turned cold. “That’s one sin you can’t lay at my feet.” His eyes turned to Lore, slow and deliberate. Her throat closed. Her mind did, too, shuttering itself against some impossible realization. Mortem couldn’t do something like that. Mortem couldn’t kill an entire village and leave the bodies perfectly intact. No mere channeler could do such a thing. No mere channeler. “Now.” August raised his knife as the room slid closer and closer to darkness, closer and closer to the eclipse’s totality. “Let’s begin.” Lore expected the knife to flash down to Bastian’s exposed throat; the way he thrashed made it clear he did, too. But the Presque Mort holding the Sun Prince didn’t pull his head back farther to make his neck an easier target. Instead he and the other monk wrestled one arm out from behind Bastian’s back, thrust it forward to present his palm to his father. The scarred lines of half a sun gleamed red in the fading light. The Presque Mort holding Lore did the same—twisted her hand out from behind her, the hand the Night Sisters had burned the moon into eleven years ago today. Lore tried to curl it into a fist, but the monk forced her fingers backward, almost to the breaking point. It was quick. August carved Bastian’s hand first, fast and brutal, blood rushing from his son’s palm to patter on the floor, joining what still leaked from his head wound. Then Lore; she gritted her teeth against a scream as the dagger point dug into her flesh, sheared through life and heart lines to add to an old scar. Half a sun, arcing up from the points of her crescent moon. She knew without looking that Bastian’s palm would match, a moon sliced beneath his sun, their two scars fit into one symbol. Life and death, light and dark. Through the atrium window above, the sky slipped into totality, two celestial bodies momentarily mirroring their new scars before the moon covered the sun. Dropping


said Mr. Bumble. 'How dare you mention such a thing, sir? And how dare you encourage him, you insolent minx? Kiss her!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble, in strong indignation. 'Faugh!' 'I didn't mean to do it!' said Noah, blubbering. 'She's always a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not.' 'Oh, Noah,' cried Charlotte, reproachfully. 'Yer are; yer know yer are!' retorted Noah. 'She's always a-doin' of it, Mr. Bumble, sir; she chucks me under the chin, please, sir; and makes all manner of love!' 'Silence!' cried Mr. Bumble, sternly. 'Take yourself downstairs, ma'am. Noah, you shut up the shop; say another word till your master comes home, at your peril; and, when he does come home, tell him that Mr. Bumble said he was to send a old woman's shell after breakfast to-morrow morning. Do you hear sir? Kissing!' cried Mr. Bumble, holding up his hands. 'The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful! If Parliament don't take their abominable courses under consideration, this country's ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever!' With these words, the beadle strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from the undertaker's premises. And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home, and have made all necessary preparations for the old woman's funeral, let us set on foot a few inquires after young Oliver Twist, and ascertain whether he be still lying in the ditch where Toby Crackit left him. CHAPTER XXVIII LOOKS AFTER OLIVER, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS ADVENTURES 'Wolves tear your throats!' muttered Sikes, grinding his teeth. 'I wish I was among some of you; you'd howl the hoarser for it.' As Sikes growled forth this imprecation, with the most desperate ferocity that his desperate nature was capable of, he rested the body of the wounded boy across his bended knee; and turned his head, for an instant, to look back at his pursuers. There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness; but the loud shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded in every direction. 'Stop, you white-livered hound!' cried the robber, shouting after Toby Crackit, who, making the best use of his long legs, was already ahead. 'Stop!' The repetition of the word, brought Toby to a dead stand-still. For he was not quite satisfied that he was beyond the range of pistol-shot; and Sikes was in no mood to be played with. 'Bear a hand with the boy,' cried Sikes, beckoning furiously to his confederate. 'Come back!' Toby made a show of returning; but ventured, in a low voice, broken for want of breath, to intimate considerable reluctance as he came slowly along. 'Quicker!' cried Sikes, laying the boy in a dry ditch at his feet, and drawing a pistol from his pocket. 'Don't play booty with me.' At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round, could discern that the men who had given chase were already


took us." I remembered something. "Yessum, and she promised me I could come out to her house some afternoon. Atticus. I'll go next Sunday if it's all right, can I? Cal said she'd come get me if you were off in the car." "You may not." Aunt Alexandra said it. I wheeled around, startled, then turned back to Atticus in time to catch his swift glance at her, but it was too late. I said, "I didn't ask you!" For a big man, Atticus could get up and down from a chair faster than anyone I ever knew. He was on his feet. "Apologize to your aunt," he said. "I didn't ask her, I asked you-" Atticus turned his head and pinned me to the wall with his good eye. His voice was deadly: "First, apologize to your aunt." "I'm sorry, Aunty," I muttered. "Now then," he said. "Let's get this clear: you do as Calpurnia tells you, you do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt's in this house, you will do as she tells you. Understand?" I understood, pondered a while, and concluded that the only way I could retire with a shred of dignity was to go to the bathroom, where I stayed long enough to make them think I had to go. Returning, I lingered in the hall to hear a fierce discussion going on in the livingroom. Through the door I could see Jem on the sofa with a football magazine in front of his face, his head turning as if its pages contained a live tennis match. "...you've got to do something about her," Aunty was saying. "You've let things go on too long, Atticus, too long." "I don't see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal'd look after her there as well as she does here." Who was the "her" they were talking about? My heart sank: me. I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately. "Atticus, it's all right to be soft-hearted, you're an easy man, but you have a daughter to think of. A daughter who's growing up." "That's what I am thinking of." "And don't try to get around it. You've got to face it sooner or later and it might as well be tonight. We don't need her now." Atticus's voice was even: "Alexandra, Calpurnia's not leaving this house until she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn't have got along without her all these years. She's a faithful member of this family and you'll simply have to accept things the way they are. Besides, sister, I don't want you working your head off for us- you've no reason to do that. We still need Cal as much as we ever did." "But Atticus-" "Besides, I don't think the children've suffered one bit from her having brought them up. If anything, she's been harder on them in some ways than a mother would have


of free action I should, under similar circumstances, have accorded them.     I left Moor House at three o'clock P. M., and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amid the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.     It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields, and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern north-midland moors of Morton!), met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.     "How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the hostler.     "Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."     "My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the coach, gave a box I had into the hostler's charge, to be kept till I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going; the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters," The Rochester Arms." My heart leaped up; I was already on my master's very lands. It fell again; the thought struck it:     "Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know; and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, toward which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife; and you have nothing to do with him; you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labor you had better go no further," urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek; they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home."     The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted, with a


knocking me over. The men behind us also stop, raising their gaze to the surrounding woods. “What the hell is that?” the gray-haired man asks. Agonized screams ring through the camp. They echo in the dark, and it takes me a moment to realize Kyle must have cued up the sound effects. The hidden speakers cycle through screams and menacing footsteps. The sounds seem to be coming from every direction. Bezi takes my hand and pulls me toward the showers, and we’re mounting the front steps before the men give chase again. We slam the door shut and wedge a trash can under the handle. With a loud bang, the men collide with the door. The can scrapes across the ground, and the gray-haired man slips his arm through the crack in the door and attempts to move it. I reach in my pocket and pull out the half-empty can of bear spray. I angle it toward the opening in the door and empty the canister directly into the faces of the two men. They immediately start to cough and gag, and I scramble back as a residual cloud of the noxious gas wafts into the shower building. My throat burns and my eyes water uncontrollably. Bezi coughs so hard, she almost vomits. I run to the sink and turn on the water, flushing my eyes and mouth. There’s a loud bang, and I spin around to see the angry faces of both men as they shove the door open a little more. My mind runs in circles. The windows in the shower room are for venting only. They’re high and narrow and impossible to climb through. There’s no back door. “What—what do we do?” Bezi stammers, a trail of spittle hanging from her chin, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. I flush my eyes again, but my vision is blurry, my throat raw. “Push harder!” screams the gray-haired man. “I’ll kill her!” My face feels like it’s been exposed to an open flame, but in the wash of pain and fear, my nights of playing the final girl at Camp Mirror Lake give me a way out. “The trapdoor,” I say. Bezi wipes her face with her shirt. “Huh?” “Come on.” I grab her and duck into the last stall. There’s no toilet there, just a rusted metal wall locker with a sign that says Storage hanging on the front. “We’re gonna hide?” Bezi asks. “They already know we’re in here!” I pull open the door and stare down into the darkened hole below. I push Bezi toward it, and she quickly shimmies down the ladder that leads to the second hidden tunnel. This one goes from the showers to the arts-and-crafts lodge on the south side of the camp. The tunnel is twice as long and unlit, but it’s the only option we have. The sound of wood splintering splits the air, and the two men fall into the shower building, tripping over themselves and shouting. The gray-haired man rushes me before I can get down the ladder and into


You the man, Aleem. I respect you, but shit. This here’s another weird idea, bro, like your explodin’ salt.” They proceed a few steps into the upstairs hall, something crunching underfoot, before Aleem stops and slowly brooms the light from baseboard to baseboard. All is dry here. The stain is worn off the tongue-in-grove hardwood, and the planks are cupped. Hundreds of dead beetles lay in regiments like a vast defeated army under a thin shroud of gray dust. No one could pass this way without leaving a trail of disturbed dust and scattered bugs. Leading the way down the stairs to the swamp, Aleem says, “I know you heard of the Bible.” “Heard about the ’cyclopedia, too. So what?” “An apple off the tree of knowledge, it’s a Bible story.” “Since when you read the Bible?” “Never done. But when I was little, Grandma Verna she told me some Bible stories.” “Your same Grandma Verna she runs upper-class whores on the Westside?” “Who has two Grandma Vernas?” Aleem says as he steps into the dismal waters on the ground floor. “That mean old woman, got them implant teeth could crack a walnut, wears more diamonds than Tiffany ever sold, why she poundin’ a Bible?” “She don’t pound it. She just finds it entertainin’. Like Goliath the giant.” “The seven-foot wrestler, tattoo of a snake comin’ out his belly button.” “I’m talkin’ the first Goliath. Check it out, man. He was ten feet tall.” As they slosh through the party debris where once commerce was conducted and busy workers supported families by supplying something real and nourishing, Kuba says, “This Goliath, he live in a castle between the tree of knowledge and the tree of salt?” Speedo Hickam is waiting for them just outside the front door. In his long black raincoat and hood, he reminds Aleem of a nun, too soft to endure hard weather like a man. “We found somethin’.” “What somethin’?” “You gotta see. Over at Whole Fruit.” As the three head toward the largest building in the complex, Kuba says, “Another thing, with all respect, nobody ever been ten feet tall.” Aleem says, “Speedo, you know about Goliath?” “He a wrestler, bites the heads off baby chicks?” “That’s him,” Kuba confirms. “Ain’t real chicks,” Speedo says. “They’s marshmallow chicks like them at Easter.” “Real as real can be,” Kuba insists. “You want to think so, that’s cool with me,” Speedo says. “Grandma Verna she say the way it happened, this shrimp David figures he can jack up Goliath, bring him down. Goliath he picks up little Davey, loads him in a fuckin’ big slingshot, and splatters him all over the side of the temple.” “What temple?” Speedo asks. “Don’t matter what temple. Important thing is David been taught a moral lesson.” At Whole Fruit, Jason, Hakeem, and Carlisle are waiting just outside the big opening that once was filled by a roll-up door. When Jason directs his light at what they found beyond the threshold, Kuba declares, “No tooth fairy left it. Bitch is here somewhere.” Aleem can


in. They came in crocodile formation, leaving their opera cloaks and mantles and shawls behind in their motors. They entered with flushed faces, feasting their eyes on the house and on each other. They wore ruffs, headdresses, sleeves the size of hot-air balloons, hoopskirts, powdered wigs, boots with curled toes—really, London knew how to do a costumed ball. In several cases they were already three sheets to the wind. Good, thought Mrs. King. She had changed into her own costume in a tent in the garden, alongside the other entertainments. A Roman tunic-dress of white cotton, the waist armored and plated in gold, a scarlet cloak thrown over the shoulders. White patent leather boots, gold buckles, toes plated with metal. She echoed when she moved. Mr. Whitman himself had dressed her. “Can you breathe?” he murmured as he fastened her mask. It was made of copper, light and beveled, the metal warm against her skin. “Perfectly,” she told him. She didn’t need to look at herself in the glass. She buttoned her gloves, hearing the crack of new leather. “Our fine empress,” Mr. Whitman said, and he sent her on her way. The orchestra had taken up position in the ballroom, playing a waltz at full tilt. Buglers and trumpeters stood at the top of the stairs, blasting an intermittent tattoo every time a clutch of guests reached the saloon floor. The band in the street pounded their drums, sounding cowbells and gongs for good measure, and the whole thing made Mrs. King’s head ache. Even better, she thought. The air was perfumed so thickly with orchids that the scent got stuck in the back of her throat. The gigantic wall of red peonies rose all the way up the stairs. “Mrs. King?” One of the waiters they’d hired had glided up to her, eyes averted. “Yes?” “Message for you, from one of the ladies.” “Go on.” “She says, ‘You’ve got something up your little bird.’” “I beg your pardon?” “That’s the message, Mrs. King.” She ignored it: she’d spotted William by the ballroom doors, as straight-backed as a Beefeater, brushed and shimmering in white tie and tails. His eyes were blank. How do we do it? Mrs. King wondered. It almost bewildered her. The bowing and scraping and the chores that made mincemeat of your dignity: carrying trays, answering call bells. You unraveled yourself, polishing butter knives, waiting for something to happen to your life. It had felt like a stomach punch when she turned thirty-five. I’m never, never, ever going backward, she told herself. She would be like a shark: forward motion or death, nothing else. “Nice stockings,” she said, sidling up to William. His eyes widened. She wondered if he would struggle to recognize her voice, muffled behind her mask, but he knew her at once. He controlled his expression, but his tone betrayed his astonishment. “Dinah?” he said. “Don’t make a fuss,” she murmured, standing close. She could feel the heat of him, and she knew he could feel hers. “What are you doing here?” “I might need


dead in their home, and it made international news. But his coworkers hardly look or speak to him at all, if they can avoid it. It is way worse than when news went around the department about him and Rachel. He doubts things will ever be the same. Even with Jonah, who’s already re-engrossed in his computer screen. Seeing the bags beneath his partner’s eyes, Ethan feels guilty he didn’t get to work earlier, though it’s just after seven. In the three weeks he’d been put on administrative leave, Jonah had been handling both of their caseloads. “What’s this?” Ethan points to the case file sitting atop his laptop after draping his coat over the back of his chair. Jonah lifts his coffee mug toward his mouth. “McKinnon assigned you to an assault case that happened overnight.” “Another one?” While getting the occasional assault case on top of their homicide caseload had become routine in the last couple of years, getting one every day was not. “I guess Christmas came early.” Jonah shrugs, not bothering to look in Ethan’s direction. Ethan reaches for the folder containing the new assault case. “Hey, Marks.” Ethan turns to the sound of his sergeant’s voice. “We just got another assault, a stabbing in the Fremont area, along Aurora.” McKinnon strides into their cubicle with a folder in his outstretched hand, matching the one on Ethan’s desk. “Sorry, I had to assign it to you. Adams and Stevenson worked a new homicide all night, and Richards and Suarez just got called to a double shooting.” “That’s all right.” Ethan takes the folder from McKinnon’s hand. “Thanks.” McKinnon pauses before returning to his office. “How are you doing?” “I’m good. Thanks, Sarge.” “Glad to hear it.” McKinnon turns from the cubicle. His sergeant, at least, is more understanding than most. Ethan opens the case file that had been waiting on his desk that morning first. A photo of a woman with a black eye and a laceration on her left temple is clipped to the first page of the report. Her long, wavy blonde hair reminds him of Chelsea Carr’s. While Chelsea’s manner of death remains undetermined by the medical examiner, Jonah had at least been able to give her parents some peace of mind in knowing Carr confessed to Sloane that he killed their daughter. His confession alone to Sloane, however, wasn’t enough evidence to charge him posthumously with her murder. As he flips through the case file, his thoughts drift to the image of Sloane, smiling at him in their bed that morning. He wants to trust her again. He’ll never forget the terror that ripped through his body when he thought Brody was going to shoot her. But even with the evidence from the investigation backing up her claims, there’s still something in it all that doesn’t sit right with him. Having watched her so easily lie about their affair and be so quick to fake her resuscitation efforts after he shot Carr gives him a gnawing feeling that he can’t shake. He returns his


said. Nodding toward the writer next to me, he said, “Patrick?” As Patrick started with an idea about Trump melting down his gold toilet to make teeth fillings, I watched Noah Brewster’s cheesily handsome surfer face watching Patrick, and I continued to watch Noah’s face, off and on, for almost three hours because that was how long pitch meetings lasted. Before Nigel released us, he asked Noah, as he asked all hosts, if he had any sketch ideas of his own. By this point, I had come to the conclusion that Noah was not, in fact, a ding-dong. He smiled and laughed often but didn’t seem to be trying too hard, as some hosts did, to prove that he was funny. And his requests for clarification had come to seem confident in a way that, in spite of my lingering annoyance about his response to my Danny Horst Rule pitch, I respected. Once again looking around the room, Noah said, “Hearing all this has made me even more excited about the week ahead. A little terrified, but mostly excited. I’m psyched to roll with your ideas and I don’t have a big agenda. I’ll admit there’s an idea I’ve been noodling over, kind of trying to write it myself, and I’ll have to decide before the table read if it should or shouldn’t see the light of day, but, in terms of your sketches, I’m down for any of it.” You mean any of it other than pretending to date a woman less attractive than you, I thought. I was wondering if his aversion was somehow tied to having dated so many models in real life when I heard a long, low belch and immediately became aware of an unpleasant odor, a noxious version of a breakfast burrito. I snapped my head in the direction of Danny, and he pursed his lips and widened his eyes in a ridiculous way—as if to say, Oops!—and I scowled. Burping was part of life, yes, but could he not have held it in for the last thirty seconds of a three-hour meeting? Patrick, who was the writer sitting between Danny and me, leaned toward me. He murmured, “That was you, right?” Monday, 4:47 p.m. I was responding to emails when Danny entered our office carrying a can of Red Bull. “Yo, Chuckles,” he said as he sat backwards on his desk chair and rolled toward me. The room was narrow enough that the only way to fit a couch was for both of our desks to be against the same wall. Gesturing at my computer screen, he said, “How’s the great American screenplay coming along?” “I wish,” I said. “I’m telling my agent I don’t want to write a”—I held up my fingers in air quotes—“ ‘humorous animated short for an organic douche company.’ ” “How much does it pay? Because maybe I want to write a humorous animated short for an organic douche company.” “Ten thousand, but also douching is bad, and I assume the organic part is bullshit. Your vagina is a self-cleaning


In this case, studying what other things that audience does in their free time.” She stifles a smirk and I lean back in my chair, inhaling deeply, getting my bearings. “Ask what you really want to ask me, Fizzy.” “I don’t want to sign up to do this if your only research here is reading Nielsen reports. The documentaries you’ve made help convince me that your heart is in the right place, but why you? Why this? Why you for this?” “It seems the company is taking a new direction.” I shrug, choosing transparency: “We’re small. There are only a few of us. That’s probably why me.” “Have you read anything I’ve written, or did you ask me because your ex-wife had some of my books on her shelf?” “I’m finishing Base Paired right now. It’s funny, sexy, creative, and…” I trail off, searching for the word that eludes me. I began reading per Nat’s instructions, looking for what it is about romance she loves so much, trying to find that kernel that has built such a huge following for Fizzy. If I can understand it, I think, I’ll be able to unlock what we need to make this show a success. “And?” Fizzy prompts sardonically, like she’s expecting an insult to wrap up my list. “Joyful.” It comes out in a burst. “There’s a lot of joy in your writing.” I can see I’ve hit something important. She leans forward, happier now. “Yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. Romance is joyful. What brings you joy?” “My daughter. My work, historically speaking.” I dig around for something that makes me sound more dimensional, but sitting here with this bestselling author talking about joy and connection makes my life feel like a lather, rinse, repeat of arid routine. “Watching footie. Mountain biking. Exercise.” As I speak, I see her point: none of this really qualifies me to speak specifically to this audience. It’s true that, other than my time with Stevie, nothing in my life brings me outright joy anymore. Most of it, I realize, is a way to pass time when I’m alone, and none of it is about seeking connection. I think about the chapter in her book I read last night. It was a love scene where, afterward, the heroine admitted that she was afraid of how fast things were moving. It wasn’t that this type of conflict felt groundbreaking, but the way it was written with such vulnerability and self-awareness after the most scorching sex scene I’d ever read left me feeling pensive all night. Fizzy is the playful, wisecracking alter ego, but I’m beginning to see that Felicity Chen is smart—brilliant, clearly—and I must give her more than just a confident smile and measured responses. She reads people expertly, and right now she needs to be convinced she won’t be stuck with a two-dimensional Hollywood stereotype. “I sound like a boring git.” I laugh. “There’s something about reading your book that has made me hyperaware of the sterile banality of my current life. I am,” I admit, sifting through


for his hot friends.” Wyn kisses the top of my head. Michael and Lou exchange a look I can’t read. Maybe they’ve seen this before, I think. Maybe he’s always like this with his girlfriends. But I don’t really believe it. I am in that phase of love where you’re sure no two people have ever felt this way before. And over those four days, I fall in love again. With Wyn’s family, with all the new pieces of him. I want to stay up late, digging through his old closet, where his mom stored his homemade stormtrooper costume. I want to sit for five hours in the woodshop, sawdust drifting in the air, while he recounts the fights he got into with Lou’s middle school bullies. I want to know where every single little white scar and divot carved into his permanently sunned skin came from. The one from when he braked too hard on his bike and went skidding down the road. The white specks on his elbow from the agitated horse that threw him on his grandfather’s now-defunct ranch. The thin line where he split his lip on the corner of the fireplace as a toddler. I want to stockpile these pieces of him: the quilt his grandmother made him before he was born, his embarrassing preteen journals, his horrifying childhood drawings, the dent in his mom’s truck from when he hit a patch of ice and slid into a split rail at sixteen. He takes me to see it, the stretch where the beams are less dingy, having been replaced after his accident. He and Hank had done it themselves without being asked. Wyn ran wild here, and this place carved him into the man I love. With my hand on the wooden post he’d worked into the ground all those years ago, I ask, “Why’d you leave?” “It’s hard to explain,” he says, grimacing. “Can you try?” I ask. “You seem so happy here.” He lets out a breath and searches the horizon for an answer. “They had money from selling my dad’s family’s land. And they always wanted my sisters to go to college, because Mom and Dad didn’t get to.” “Your sisters?” I say. “But not you?” His mouth quirks into a crooked half smile. “Told you, they’re little geniuses, like you. Big dreams. I guess my parents assumed I’d want to stay. Keep working with my dad.” “Because you love this place,” I say. He runs his hand over his jaw. “I do. But I don’t know. I was watching all these people with dreams and goals leaving, going other places. And I didn’t know what I wanted. I got scouted by Mattingly’s soccer coach, and it seemed like a sign, I guess.” “But you didn’t stick with the soccer team.” “I never loved it,” he says. “And I couldn’t keep up with it and school at the same time. It was all harder than I expected. The schoolwork, the social stuff.” “Everyone loved you, Wyn,” I say. He looks at me through his


about to arrive. Remember Bobby, the one I don’t have three-hour workouts with? I’ll shower after that, then I thought we could hike or go have a picnic lunch at the beach if that sounds fun to you? Or we could hang out and swim.” He smiled and I felt a fizzy sort of scrambling, like the tide gathering itself to go back out: how attracted to him I was, how much I liked him, and how confusing it was to find myself at his house. “We can play it by ear today, but I’m really happy that you’re here.” Would a person who wasn’t anxious and uncomfortable sit up and kiss him? But I hadn’t brushed my teeth since the gas station bathroom! Instead, I said, “Me, too.” Noah’s hand remained on my calf, and he squeezed it. “Just text me if you need anything in the next hour. I’ll be in the yard by the studio.” Then he leaned in and kissed me on the mouth, and the kiss was so quick that it probably didn’t matter if I had scummy lips or not. * * * — Good news I successfully pooped, I texted Viv. Also we had sex last night X 3 and it was great Bad news is I have no idea what I’m doing here It’s like 13 hours until bedtime Seriously how do you get through a day with another person? In the folded jeans on the chair, I’d found my phone in one front pocket and my underwear in the other, which was cringe-inducing but not as bad as if the underwear was still at large. Viv didn’t respond immediately, so I opened the door that Noah had closed when he’d left, peered out, saw no one, and pulled in my suitcase, backpack, purse, and the cardboard box with its two remaining protein bars, both of which I ate. I located and used my toothbrush then showered. After I emerged from the bathroom, a text from Viv was waiting: Day sex Then: OK can we back up a second and savor SEX THREE TIMES WITH NOAH BREWSTER AND THAT IT WAS GREAT THAT’S THE ONLY GOOD THING THAT’S HAPPENED IN 2020 You can’t talk now can you? I called her right away. “He’s outside with his trainer.” In a singsong, Viv said, “Sally Milz got laid last night, doo dah, doo dah.” “I’m kind of freaking out,” I said. “Why?” The answer was both so all-encompassing and so self-evident that it was oddly hard to articulate. After a few seconds, I said, “What if we run out of things to say? What if I fart in front of him?” “If this is a real relationship, then those things will for sure happen. And then if you get pregnant, you’ll fart in front of him so much that both of you will only notice the rare moments when you’re not farting in front of him.” “How many breakfasts and lunches have you eaten today?” “I ordered kung pao shrimp for lunch, then I got horrible


There was no evidence of a wedding. But of course they could have used false names. Indeed it was almost certain they would have done. The O’Flynns must have disapproved of Mother. They were a family who formed strategic alliances with greengrocers and pawnbrokers and ironmongers. They didn’t marry loose-screwed, weak-brained girls—and that’s how they would have seen Mother. Even Mrs. Bone never hinted, never suggested for a second that Danny had made a true marriage. She would have torn him down from his glorious perch in a heartbeat, if she had. Lucky for Danny O’Flynn. So easy to vanish, remold himself just the way he pleased. Mrs. King pictured him assessing his options, shuffling them idly like a deck of cards. She wished she didn’t recognize the trait. Two days later, she heard his bell ringing. A summons for Madam. The master wanted to speak to his daughter. Whatever passed between them Mrs. King never knew. Miss de Vries came downstairs, went to her own rooms, without saying a word to anyone. She didn’t send for any supper; she gave no orders at all. Mrs. King sat in her own small sitting room, waiting. She could feel something coiled in the house, a storm about to break. Their father died that night. A sudden deterioration, entirely expected in a consumptive case like this one, said the physician later. The news broke like a river forcing its way through a dam. Mrs. King felt it rolling downstairs, floor by floor, the electroliers seething and spitting, the servants turning pale as they received the intelligence. The dinner service was suspended, the under-footmen stood about with their mouths open. Cook took to her bed. You could even hear the horses growing agitated in the yard. Mr. Lockwood and the other lawyers descended upon the house, papers out, pens aloft, issuing memoranda. The nurse cleared away all the pillboxes and bowls and towels, her trolley rattling all the way down the passage of the bedroom floor. Everyone heard Mr. Shepherd moaning, keening, from the butler’s pantry. Miss de Vries remained in her room. Mrs. King counted out the black armbands, one by one. This is it, she thought, blood thrumming. Truthfully, she didn’t know what it was. It felt too enormous, too unimaginable to piece together. Possession of this house, of all it contained, whistled through her mind. The wording in the will was precise. It caused no comment. “I leave everything, my whole estate, to my true and legitimate daughter.” Clever, thought Mrs. King, when she heard, anger rushing through her veins. Clever, clever, a lovely trick, a lovely game. Of course the lawyers didn’t remark upon such straightforward phraseology. Madam didn’t question it; nobody said a word at all. They felt they understood the natural order of things. It was up to Mrs. King to correct them. She gave herself an order. Strip the house. Take every box, every drawer: shake them, search them, root it out. Find that letter. Once Alice was in post, once Winnie was in on the job, she


of his rattling staff into the earth. And it began to shake and rattle, like something agitating with a metallic life. He took the first of the empty stools and the eight other egwugwu began to sit in order of seniority after him. Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps other women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo. And they might also have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu. But if they thought these things they kept them within themselves. The egwugwu with the springy walk was one of the dead fathers of the clan. He looked terrible with the smoked raffia "body, a huge wooden face painted white except for the round hollow eyes and the charred teeth that were as big as a man's fingers. On his head were two powerful horns. When all the egwugwu had sat down and the sound of the many tiny bells and rattles on their bodies had subsided, Evil Forest addressed the two groups of people facing them. "Uzowulu's body, I salute you," he said. Spirits always addressed humans as "bodies." Uzowulu bent down and touched the earth with his right hand as a sign of submission. "Our father, my hand has touched the ground," he said. "Uzowulu's body, do you know me?" asked the spirit. "How can I know you, father? You are beyond our knowledge." Evil Forest then turned to the other group and addressed the eldest of the three brothers. "The body of Odukwe, I greet you," he said, and Odukwe bent down and touched the earth. The hearing then began. Uzowulu stepped forward and presented his case. "That woman standing there is my wife, Mgbafo. I married her with my money and my yams. I do not owe my in-laws anything. I owe them no yams. I owe them no coco-yams. One morning three of them came to my house, beat me up and took my wife and children away. This happened in the rainy season. I have waited in vain for my wife to return. At last I went to my in-laws and said to them, 'You have taken back your sister. I did not send her away. You yourselves took her. The law of the clan is that you should return her bride-price.' But my wife's brothers said they had nothing to tell me. So I have brought the matter to the fathers of the clan. My case is finished. I salute you." "Your words are good," said the leader of the ecjwucjwu. "Let us hear Odukwe. His words may also be good." Odukwe was short and thickset. He stepped forward, saluted the spirits and began his story. "My in-law has told you that we went to his house, beat him up and took our sister and her children away. All that is true. He told you that he came to take back her bride-price and we refused to give it him. That also is true. My in-law, Uzowulu, is


the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say --here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that .. <p 36 > they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me, Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems -- aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling --a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that


his handiwork. With one phrase he had turned happy picknickers into a sulky, tense, murmuring crowd, being slowly hypnotized by gavel taps lessening in intensity until the only sound in the courtroom was a dim pink-pink-pink: the judge might have been rapping the bench with a pencil. In possession of his court once more, Judge Taylor leaned back in his chair. He looked suddenly weary; his age was showing, and I thought about what Atticus had said- he and Mrs. Taylor didn't kiss much- he must have been nearly seventy. "There has been a request," Judge Taylor said, "that this courtroom be cleared of spectators, or at least of women and children, a request that will be denied for the time being. People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will leave this courtroom, but you won't leave it until the whole boiling of you come before me on contempt charges. Mr. Ewell, you will keep your testimony within the confines of Christian English usage, if that is possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer." Mr. Ewell reminded me of a deaf-mute. I was sure he had never heard the words Judge Taylor directed at him- his mouth struggled silently with them- but their import registered on his face. Smugness faded from it, replaced by a dogged earnestness that fooled Judge Taylor not at all: as long as Mr. Ewell was on the stand, the judge kept his eyes on him, as if daring him to make a false move. Mr. Gilmer and Atticus exchanged glances. Atticus was sitting down again, his fist rested on his cheek and we could not see his face. Mr. Gilmer looked rather desperate. A question from Judge Taylor made him relax: "Mr. Ewell, did you see the defendant having sexual intercourse with your daughter?" "Yes, I did." The spectators were quiet, but the defendant said something. Atticus whispered to him, and Tom Robinson was silent. "You say you were at the window?" asked Mr. Gilmer. "Yes sir." "How far is it from the ground?" "'bout three foot." "Did you have a clear view of the room?" "Yes sir." "How did the room look?" "Well, it was all slung about, like there was a fight." "What did you do when you saw the defendant?" "Well, I run around the house to get in, but he run out the front door just ahead of me. I sawed who he was, all right. I was too distracted about Mayella to run after'im. I run in the house and she was lyin' on the floor squallin'-" "Then what did you do?" "Why, I run for Tate quick as I could. I knowed who it was, all right, lived down yonder in that nigger-nest, passed the house every day. Jedge, I've asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest down yonder, they're dangerous to live


and how they saw anyone beneath them as worthless. “They don’t bother with the working class like us,” he had said more than once, though Lucy had never considered herself on the same level as him. He was a merchant like his brother and quite wealthy, but he had no land to grant him the status of gentleman and therefore disliked anyone who held that title or beyond. Lord Calloway didn’t seem to fit that prejudicial mold, though Lucy wondered if he would treat her the same way as Mr. Granger claimed if he knew she was merely a governess. Even without all her lies, was he a good enough man that he would help someone so far beneath him when she needed him most? That question terrified her, and she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to put it to the test. Not yet. For now, she wanted to play along with his teasing. Her father had always teased her, and she knew it was love that had fueled his jests. It had made their home a happy one, even if it was small, and she had been missing that in her life. “Well, Lord Nothing-at-All,” Lucy said, and she grinned when Lord Calloway scowled at the ridiculous moniker. “I would imagine Olivia is quite fast, though she has the benefit of a quick horse, so she says. Without knowing firsthand how either of you rides, it is simply impossible to make a comparison.” “Then, I suppose I will have to take you riding to allow you adequate information to pass judgment.” Lucy knew that would be a terrible idea; spending time alone with any of the family would inevitably lead to her spilling her secret too soon if put under pressure. With the whole family around, she could hide behind their conversations and hope to only skim the surface of their chats. She couldn’t fathom why he would want to ride with her in the first place, and she knew it would be best to avoid as much interaction as she could. She needed him to like her, and she doubted he would appreciate her true, lying self. But though she told herself to skirt around the invitation—for it surely was an invitation, if his smile were to be believed—the words that came from her mouth were, “I suppose you are right.” “Of course I am,” he replied. “I am always right.” Goodness, that smile of his brightened the whole room. And despite his outward display of confidence, Lucy was positive it was a charade. Simon Calloway didn’t seem arrogant in the least, and she very much liked that about him. “Well,” Lord Calloway said, pushing himself slowly to his feet, “shall we?” Lucy frowned. “Shall we what?” They couldn’t very well go riding now when that was what Olivia was planning to do. Lifting a dark eyebrow, Lord Calloway looked at her like she should know. “See to William,” he said. “But we were there this morning.” “Olivia doesn’t know that. Unless you want her to know about your