Gallant(22)

Olivia finishes her toast, tucks the sketchpad beneath her arm, and goes searching for the study. Moving through the halls, she’s struck again by the size of this place, designed for forty instead of four. A skeleton staff, that’s what it’s called when there are so few left to manage a manor so large, but the residents of Gallant are less a skeleton than a handful of mismatched bones. And the house, the house is a maze, hall after hall and room after room, some grand and some small and most closed up, hills of furniture buried beneath crisp white sheets.

Beyond a pair of double doors she discovers a sprawling room, the kind designed for feasts or balls. Its floor is pale wood, inlaid with those same twisting circles. Its ceiling vaults high overhead, two stories, maybe three, and glass doors run along the far wall, a balcony beyond.

It is the grandest space she’s ever seen, and she doesn’t know what comes over her, but she twirls, bare feet whispering across the wood.

And then, at last, she finds the study.

She was beginning to think it was a trick of her mind, a dream, that she would search the entire house only to learn that no such room existed.

But here is the narrow hall, the waiting door.

Her fingers trail over the wallpaper, the way they did the night before, and the polished handle of the door gives way. There is no window, and she doesn’t want to risk a lamp, so she leaves the door open, light spilling in from the hall. She pads forward, floorboards creaking softly underfoot until she reaches a thin dark rug that pools beneath the desk.

There on top is the strange metal sculpture, two houses set within concentric rings. Not just any house, but two small replicas of Gallant.

They perch on either side, facing each other at the center of the curving frame. Metal rings surround each house, and more surround the two together. Olivia cannot help herself. She lifts her fingertip to the outer ring, and gives it the slightest push, and the whole thing trips into motion.

She holds her breath, afraid that any second it will topple and clatter to the floor, but it’s as if it were designed to move. The two houses turn like dancers, sliding away and then coming back to face each other. Each follows its own arc, each the center of its own small orbit. She watches, mesmerized, studying the steady revolution until it slows.

The houses move through their orbits one last time, and Olivia reaches out again to stop the motion as they come to face each other. She leans closer. It’s strange, but from this angle, the rings between them look almost—almost—like a wall.

Olivia turns to a clean page in her sketchbook and draws the sculpture, trying to capture the sense of movement, the clean, almost mathematical lines of the device. She rounds the desk, to get another angle, and notices the drawer. It juts out like a bottom lip, a bit of paper caught in the corner. She tugs at the handle, and for a moment it sticks, then judders open.

Inside, a handful of loose paper, crisp and white, and a small black book. She peels it open and finds page after page of notes in a blocky hand. No, not notes. Places.

The Larimer School

50 Bellweather Place

Birmingham

Hollingwell Home

12 Idris Row

Manchester

Farrington Orphanage

5 Farrington Way

Bristol

Olivia turns past page after page, until she finds it, there, in the middle of the fourth.

Merilance School for Independent Girls

9 Windsor Road

Newcastle

Footsteps sound in the hall.

Years of raiding matrons’ rooms has trained her well, and in a moment the book is back and the drawer is shut and she is on the floor behind the grand old desk, tucked between the chair and the wood, heart fluttering even as her limbs go still.

She holds her breath and waits as the footsteps cross the threshold, as they cross from the bare wood onto the rug.

“How odd,” says Hannah, “I could have sworn this door was shut.”

Her voice is light and loud; she isn’t talking to herself.

“You’re not the first child to hide in this house,” she says. “But most of them were playing games. Come on out now. I’m too old to get down on the floor.”

Olivia sighs and rises to her feet. When Hannah reaches for her, she retreats a step, on instinct, her bandaged palm tucked like a secret behind her back.

Hannah’s hand falls, sadness dancing in her eyes.

“Goodness, girl, you’re not in trouble. If you want to look around, have at it. After all, this is your house.”

My house, thinks Olivia, the words tangling like hope inside her chest. Hannah’s gaze drifts to the sculpture on the desk, and her mood seems to sour at the sight of it.

“Come on,” she says, “it’s getting late.”

When the sun begins to set, they close the house up like a tomb.

Olivia follows Hannah from room to room, standing on chairs and stools to help pull the massive shutters in and slide the windows down. It seems such a waste, to shut themselves inside when the weather is so nice, but Hannah explains, “A place this wild, the outside is always trying to get in.”

They eat in the kitchen, gathered round a table scraped and dented with wear. No lines of loud girls. No matrons perched like crows around the room. Just Hannah and Edgar, chatting easily as he pulls a tray from the oven, a towel over one shoulder, as she scoops vegetables into a bowl, as Olivia lays out four plates, even though Matthew isn’t there, and it scares her, how good this feels. Like hot soup in winter, the warmth spreading with every sip.