In the Shadow of Blackbirds(53)

“No!” I shot to my feet. “Absolutely not. Cripes, Julius, I thought you were here because you truly cared about your brother.”

“I do care. If you turn down this opportunity, you’re the one abandoning him, not me. Why would you do that to him? Why would you let him suffer?”

I drew in my breath to give myself confidence. “I’m sure one of the reasons he’s unsettled inside your house is because he hates what you did to his father’s studio.”

Julius shrank back, so I summoned the courage to go further. “Stephen said your drug abuse and fraudulence probably led to his father’s heart failure. Maybe he wants you to stop lying and to stop doctoring those photographs.”

He absorbed my words for another silent moment. His eyes watered and reddened, and he seemed on the verge of either bawling or erupting with rage. He stood up and towered above me at his full, intimidating height. “I am not a fraud. I do not doctor photographs. I did not drive my stepfather to an early grave.”

“But you’re a drug addict.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I can tell just by being next to you.” I breathed in again, the chalky scent coating my throat like novocaine. “You’re numb. Maybe if you sobered up, you wouldn’t feel the need to prey upon innocent people.”

He grabbed both of my arms and lifted me to my toes. “You try living with your brother’s ghost and sending your mother away half out of her mind. You try growing up with a stepfather who loved your brother more than you and tell me you wouldn’t touch one speck of a substance that takes away the pain.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Don’t ever accuse me of being an addict and a fraud again.”

“Let go of me.”

“I came to you for help.” He shook me. “I came to you as the brother of a boy who loved you.”

“Let go of her!” Aunt Eva ran up behind Julius and pulled on his shoulders.

“Leave me alone, Eva.”

“What are you doing to her?”

“Leave me alone you stupid, clingy woman!” He let go of me and shoved my aunt to the floor.

The room fell silent, aside from my rapid breathing and the clicking of Oberon’s talons as he paced his perch.

Aunt Eva slowly propped herself up on her elbows. She was wearing a brown silk dress, and she smelled powdered and perfumed. Little tortoiseshell combs dangled from stray blond strands. Her glasses hung cockeyed on her nose. She wasn’t wearing her flu mask.

“Get out of my house.” She pushed herself up to a standing position and straightened her spectacles. “I don’t ever want you near my niece again.”

“No—I can’t. I need her to help me!”

“I said get out.” She charged at her wall of photographs, yanked down the picture with the white-draped figure and me, and pitched the frame at Julius’s head. He deflected it with his arm, and the frame crashed to the wooden floor in a shower of glass.

He backed away. “You’re crazy.”

She grabbed the framed article with his soldier spirit photos and threw that at him as well. He jumped away and let the glass shatter at his feet.

“I’m calling the police if you don’t get out of here this minute!” She pulled down another photo—the one with Uncle Wilfred’s spirit. “I’m sure Mary Shelley has marks on her arms from your fingers.”

The third frame whacked him in the temple. She then pelted him with his hat.

He grabbed the fedora, yelled obscenities I’d never even heard before, and bounded down the hall. He must have swung the front door closed with all his might, for the house shook and the rest of the photos on Aunt Eva’s living room wall were knocked crooked.

Aunt Eva exhaled in a way that sounded like a sob. She put her hands on her hips and hung her head, taking deep breaths that wheezed from the depths of her lungs.

I hesitated between comforting her and cleaning up the glass.

“Are you hurt, Mary Shelley?” Her voice turned choppy. “Do you need a doctor?”

“No. You got to him before he could hurt me too badly.”

“I can’t believe—I don’t understand.” She tromped out of the room and into the kitchen.

I followed after her.

With her back to me, she opened the surface of her tan cookstove, lit a match, and stirred up the smoldering coals like she was jabbing the poker into Julius’s heart.

“I can cook, if you’d like,” I said.

She kept digging at the coals.

I rubbed my arms, still feeling Julius’s finger marks throbbing beneath my sleeves. “I’m sorry about what he did to you.”

“I wasted nearly a year of my life wanting that man. I spent Wilfred’s last months hoping Julius would be my chance to have someone who wouldn’t waste away and die on me. I had no idea he thought so little of me that he could come over and bully us like we were nothing. Why was he hurting you?”

“We were arguing about Stephen.”

She shook her head and slammed the stovetop closed. “It’s my fault for always pushing you at him. It’s my fault for allowing you to see your childhood friend again. I could have saved us both so much heartbreak if I hadn’t been swept away by—” She wiped her wet cheeks with a dishcloth. “And here I am, twenty-six years old, with no husband or children of my own.”