In the Shadow of Blackbirds(12)

The clock fell silent.

“Stephen?” called his mother.

A palpable sense of urgency passed between us. Stephen took my hand, hurried me across the sitting room, and closed the door, sealing us inside. He kissed me again and knocked us both off balance until I found myself bumping against one of the peacock-green walls.

His mouth left mine and kissed its way down to my neck. “Your goggles are in the way,” he whispered.

I snickered and struggled to yank the lenses over my chin, but they wouldn’t budge. He helped me pull the straps to the top of my head and then dove back to my awaiting throat, where his lips sent delicious chills spilling down to the tips of my toes. I closed my eyes again and sighed in a way I never had before, losing myself in his dizzying scent, the pressure of his hands around my hips, the pulse-quickening intimacy of his mouth against my bare skin.

The door opened.

“Jesus, Stephen. Control yourself.”

Stephen and I both jumped.

The spell shattered.

Julius clutched the brass doorknob with his paw of a hand and smirked at our entwined bodies and flushed faces. His hair was darker and wavier than Stephen’s, his features more rugged. His six-and-a-half-foot form filled the doorway. “Is that what you used to do to her back when you were little kids? Back when I thought you’d grow up to be a fruit?”

“Leave us alone.” Stephen drew me closer. “Give us five more minutes.”

Julius snorted. “You think I’m going to close this door and let you ruin Eva Ottinger’s niece when she’s sitting right out there in the other room? Have you ever met Eva Ottinger?”

“For Christ’s sake, Julius, I haven’t seen Mary Shelley in four years. We might not ever see each other again. Give us five more minutes.”

Julius pondered the request while running his tongue along the inside of his cheek. He cocked his head and parted his lips, and for a moment I thought he was about to give us one small, precious gift of time.

Instead, he pushed the door farther open with the tips of his fingers. “Mary Shelley, the ladies are waiting for you.”

My heart sank.

Julius waved for me to leave. “Let her go, Stephen.”

“You’re an ass, Julius,” said Stephen. “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

“Let her go. Don’t tease the poor girl before you run clear across the world.”

Stephen swallowed loud enough to hear. He cupped my cheek and studied my face as though he were creating a photograph of me in his mind. I followed his lead and memorized every single one of his features—his dark eyes and brows, the soft shade of his lips, the faded freckles on his cheeks from summer days when he forgot to wear his cap—sick with fear that he was right: this would be the last time I’d ever see him.

He gave me one last kiss. A small, tender one fit to be seen by a brother. “Keep Mr. Muse, Shell.”

“Keep it?” I felt the picture frame dangling from my fingers against his back. “No—I couldn’t.”

“It’s just going to disappear off the wall. Julius has destroyed my work before.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?”

I glanced at Julius and saw his jaw tense. “But he’s your brother.”

“Half brother,” Stephen reminded me. “Only half. We had different fathers.”

“But still—”

“His father was a drunk who treated my mother terribly before she left him. And violent, thieving drunks often breed violent, thieving children.”

Julius tugged Stephen away from me, straight out of my arms, and hurled him against the sharp wooden ridge running across the top of the sofa. The impact knocked the sofa askew, and Stephen landed on the floor with an awful thud.

“Why did you say that to her?” asked Julius with genuine hurt in his voice.

“Obviously, I’m not lying,” Stephen said from the ground. “You just proved my point.”

“Mary Shelley, go back out to the ladies.”

I didn’t budge.

Julius’s eyes pierced me. “I said go back.”

“What are you going to do to him?”

“Now!” Julius stormed toward me with enough anger and humiliation in his eyes to send me scrambling out of the room. I ran away, foolish coward that I was. I ran away and left Stephen on the floor, twisted in pain.

The door shut. Something slammed against the wall in there—once, twice. I could hear all those picture frames rattling from the force.

Silence followed.

The door opened, and Julius exited, alone.





? October 19, 1918 ?



FOOTSTEPS WOKE ME AT SUNRISE.

I blinked my eyes and tried to reorient myself in the foreign landscape of my new bedroom, but the lingering shadows of night crouched in the corners and crept across the unfamiliar furniture. My traveling trunk and Boy Scout boots huddled together in a disheveled heap next to a pine wardrobe.

It was October, no longer spring. I now lived in Aunt Eva’s house as a refugee in the middle of a pandemic. Stephen was long gone.

My aunt couldn’t afford electricity, so her face and flu mask glowed in the flickering light of a candle next to my bed. “Why are you wearing your goggles?” she asked.

I pulled off the straps and felt indentations from where the rubber had pressed against my skin. “I must have fallen asleep with them on.”