The Game of Love and Death(7)

“Sounds fine.” Ethan stood in the rectangle of afternoon light that polished the carriage house floor. His shadow reached for Henry’s feet.

Henry finished the movement. He would have liked to be alone a little while longer, but if anyone were going to interrupt him, Ethan would be his first choice. He certainly preferred him to little Annabel or either of Ethan’s parents, who’d made it clear that they found his love of music decidedly unwise in uncertain financial times, a waste of time, a distraction from what was important, namely his education and his future. That’s why he’d been consigned to the carriage house in the first place: They’d told him they didn’t want to give him the idea that they approved, although they’d certainly tolerate it at a distance provided he met his obligations with school.

The last note came, low and long. Henry let it hang in the air a moment. After the sound faded, he lifted his head and caught Ethan staring at him in a puzzling way.

“What’s that look for?” Henry said. “I happen to like this piece.”

Ethan shrugged. He leaned against a worktable that ran the width of the room and was covered with sawdust, lanterns that needed oil, and the odd bent nail. A window behind his head framed it perfectly, casting a halo of light around his blond curls. It was no wonder girls were always batting their eyelashes and whispering to each other whenever Ethan walked into a room. He looked like he belonged in a Hollywood picture.

“The tune — it was great,” he said. “You’re getting all right on that thing.”


Henry laughed. “Thanks for that ringing endorsement of my tune.”

“I don’t want your head to swell or anything is all. You know you’re good.” Ethan pushed himself up so he was sitting on the table. “So, we have an assignment.”

“We do?” Henry said. It was common knowledge that Ethan was heir to the Inquirer, and that Henry was … well, he was a charity case.

“Yes, my father said it’s fine if you go along.”

Henry tried not to bristle. It wasn’t Ethan’s fault how his father always set them on different levels.

Ethan grinned. “It’s a good assignment too. About airplanes.”



Ethan guided the Cadillac toward the airfield with the fingertips of his left hand while he draped his right over the front seat, near where Henry sat. They’d driven from the Thorne mansion on Capitol Hill and were crossing a green drawbridge that arched over the Montlake Cut, offering views of mountains on either side of the lake.

“So this is the situation,” he said, looking at Henry out of the corner of his eye. “The Inquirer was scooped and Father’s spitting nails about it. There’s some airplane at Sand Point that’s supposed to be one of the fastest on the planet. A New York paper covered some modifications a mechanic made to the engine, and now our job is to show those East Coast boys they aren’t the only ones with ink in their veins.”

“Sounds straightforward,” Henry said.

“It’s straightforward all right. The beat reporter had his backside handed to him in his hat, and Father is using us cubs to heighten the humiliation. I feel lousy about it, actually. It’s not as though the poor sap missed a story about an airplane that could fly to the moon.”

“As if that would ever happen.” Nothing sounded more horrible; Henry far preferred to have his feet on the ground.

“You bring your notebook?” Ethan said.

“Of course.”

This was how they worked together. Ethan asked the questions, Henry wrote the answers. Then Ethan composed the story in his head and dictated it to Henry, who typed it so that it would be free of spelling and mechanical errors. It was their system, their secret.

Mr. Thorne thought his son had long ago won his battle with the written word, but Ethan continued to struggle. It wasn’t due to a lack of intelligence or effort. He was one of the brightest people Henry knew, quick to see patterns and connections between things, quick to form a rational argument. But through some accident of wiring, the letters on the page confounded him. Henry had been secretly reading and writing Ethan’s work long before he’d come to live with the family — since the day he’d found him crying behind the school, the backs of his hands bloody where he’d taken a lashing from a teacher who’d accused him of laziness.

Neither Henry nor Ethan was certain what would happen when Ethan took over the family business. A publisher who couldn’t read or write — it was unthinkable, unless they found a way to stick together. For now, they pretended that day was in the impossibly distant future, and that an answer would materialize when it was most needed.

“There she is.” Ethan pointed out a yellow biplane with a glass cockpit and thick rubber tires. He stopped the car a distance away and hopped out, running a hand through his hair. Henry followed, but he wasn’t looking at the plane. He was looking at the girl crouching on its upper wing. Something quickened inside him as he studied her, and he wasn’t sure whether the feeling was good or bad.

“Do you know her?” Henry said.

“What? Who?”

“The girl you were pointing at,” Henry said. Though he couldn’t imagine where he’d seen her before, he felt as if he knew her the way he knew the sound of a low D.

“What girl? Where? I was pointing to the plane, numskull.”