After Alice Fell(9)

I take the glass from him. He holds up a finger, then removes a sugar tin and tiny spoon from behind a row of books, flicking open the top. “Now you’re an accomplice to my sugar thievery.”

“I haven’t had sugar since I don’t know when.”

“Now you shall.” He stirs the sugar, then taps the spoon to the glass. Tink tink tink.

I let out a short laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing. It’s been a long day.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Let’s drink to Alice.”

He flops back in the chair. His whiskey spills on his hand, and he turns his wrist to lick it off. “Sorry. To Alice, then.”

The sugar doesn’t help; the whiskey burns my mouth and sears my throat.

“How’s your room?”

“I’ve been billeted in cow sheds and attics. The room will do. Your generosity . . .”

He stops me with a wave of his hand, then closes one eye and stares at his glass.

“It’s all been such a muddle,” he says. “Since Lydia drowned. She was very good to Alice. Patient. She was always so patient.”

“Yes.”

He glances at a bookshelf. A tintype lurks behind a manual on brass bolting. Lydia in a gingham dress, white-blond hair, a spray of flowers held in her lap, a peacock brooch on her breast. She is about to smile; the edge of her lip is blurred. She will have held it until she was told to relax and then laugh. She laughed at so much.

“All a goddamn muddle.”

“You have Cathy now. I’m glad for that.”

He cocks his head, watching me, first one eye shut, and then the other. “Yes. Cathy.”

“I am sorry about her brother.”

“First battle and Paul gets a bullet in the eye. How’s that for luck?” He drops the glass to the table with a clatter. “Bull Run was supposed to have been it. Remember? People took picnic baskets and sat on the hill. Had beer and sausage while the fifers played.”

I lean forward, press my hand to his arm. “You were good friends.”

“Until he called me a coward. And other things.” He pulls his arm away. Clears his throat and leans his head against the chairback. “Wagon Hill wasn’t steep enough to sled.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. Too close to the brook. Too short a slide. You’re thinking Tilton Hill. Remember? There was that one birch Bremmer wouldn’t cut down. Right in the middle of the path. If you went too fast—remember when Alice went too fast? God, she went flying off that sled. Straight in the air and thumped to the drift. Just one shoe showing.”

“That couldn’t have been her.”

“Why not?”

“She wasn’t allowed to ride alone. She rode with me.”

“Then I must have taken her myself. Let her go wild once.” He lets loose a laugh, his eyes following the arc of her flight, the candlelight gleaming on his glasses. “That was the last winter Mother . . . I didn’t get supper. Father locked up the sleds. Remember?”

“Where are her things?” I ask.

“What?”

“Alice’s things. Her clothes. Those wooden birds she loved. Her locket. All those journals and sketches. Her things, Lionel?” I set my glass on the table between us. “There’s nothing here of hers.”

“Don’t blame me for her.”

“I don’t blame—”

“You’re the one who left me with her. You and your Union.”

“I wanted more than mending socks and sewing uniforms.”

“And look what it got you.” He slugs his drink. “Now she’s dead. Maybe it’s better. I think it’s better. For everyone.”

I flatten my hand to my thigh and stand. “You’re drunk. I’m going to bed.”

His attention slips, then he shakes his head. “You agreed to the committal.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“The last time Cathy found her, she was holding Toby out the upstairs window by his wrists.”

“There must have been—”

“Stop making excuses for her.” He lurches up, cradling his drink to his chest with one hand and pulling on his lower lip with the other. “I won’t be made guilty for this.”

“She was covered in bruises, she—”

“I don’t care.”

“Lionel.” I shake my head. “You don’t mean that.”

He drops back to the chair, his head bowed, the glass pinched between his thumb and fingers. “I told her she was going to visit you. To pack her trunk. Bring a coat because it’s cold in Maryland.” His voice rasps and chokes on itself. “I said I hired her a cab. She waited on the porch all that morning and—”

“I can’t hear this.”

I lurch back to my room. It is stifling hot. Stagnant and sour. “My fault.” Three paces to the fireplace. There’s Benjamin, under glass, in his uniform and sporting a grand swoop of beard. “My fault.” A turn to the window. The moon has risen, a dust of gray on the tips of silver birch, on the roof of the boathouse, across the skin of water.

I touch my hand to the pane—the window’s been latched tight. This one over the pond. That one over the garden. I don’t remember closing them. I press the heels of my hands to my forehead, rub at the sweat.