Then she found her feet again. Then she shoved past him. Then she fled.
She covered an impressive length of hallway and staircase both in her burst of ichor. She ended up in a small study she had possibly never even seen before. She sat in it, in the dusty natural light, and she breathed. She breathed a lot.
And it didn’t even occur to her to be embarrassed by it until much, much later.
CHAPTER 4
“Frederick!” his mother cried, appearing in the doorway sometime after his wife had fled through it. “What on earth are you doing in here? Get out at once!”
Freddy was sitting on the edge of the bed. He didn’t remember sitting down or beginning to fiddle with the canopy curtains that were looped around the posters, the rich purple fabric twisting pleasantly around his fingers. He didn’t remember deciding to fixate on the collection of bottles on the dresser top either.
The curtains were lovely, he thought. They’d been a faded red color when he’d lived in this room. This was much better. The gauzy, deep tones brought out the gleam in the wood.
Claire was also lovely. Wasn’t that something? He had expected her to look either exactly as she had that last time he’d seen her—which was to say, pregnant—or else look somehow alien or old. She looked instead much as she had on the staircase in the Fletcher house that fated night, her curls pinned back, her color high, her eyes glowing like amber in firelight.
She was beautiful. She was still so beautiful. She had lips that pouted even when she frowned, and a little upturned nose that managed to charm even when it was wrinkled in distaste. She was graceful, even when doing a runner.
He blinked up at his mother, who looked deeply scandalized there in the entryway, her stance fully akimbo.
“They put my luggage here,” he said by way of explanation, if not greeting. “Hello, Mother. Don’t call me Frederick. Please.”
“Oh, Freddy,” she said with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Hello. Now get up and get out.”
“Fine. But I do need my things,” he said with a crooked, humorless little smile. “Will someone see to that? Clearly, I can’t be trusted to do it.”
His mother gave a very particular sigh that managed to both be void of voice and still, somehow, shrill. It made him grin as they turned back into the hallway and she reached up for his arm, clinging to it in her specific way.
“So, you encountered one another, I gather?” she asked, without needing an answer. She did the sigh again.
He grinned wider.
“How did it go?”
“Oh, very poorly,” Freddy said cheerfully, leading her down the staircase. “She shoved me and fled after shouting the wordNo!Honestly, it’s made me optimistic.”
“Of course it has, dear.” She was smiling too now. “I note that you greeted Tommy before you greeted me. I shall punish you for it later.”
“Understood,” he replied, a lightness finding his heart that he hadn’t felt in quite some time. “I might have agreed to take a puppy.”
Patricia Hightower cut her eyes to him. “Did Silas also agree?”
“He did.”
“Well, then,” she said with a sniff. “Now you both have to do it. You agree to everything. Your brother, however …”
“Yes, yes,” Freddy said as they reached the solar. “I know.”
They sat on the sofa with the best view of the green, an overstuffed coral and teal affair that had been here longer than Freddy had been alive. He wondered if they weren’t adding more stuffing every year, just to see if someone noticed.
His mother’s harpsichord was glaring with sunlight from the corner, its polished white surface serving as an aggressive mirror for the afternoon sun. It threw a wavering reflection on the carpet in its particular shape, so bright and hot that Freddy thought it a wonder that the fibers hadn’t burst into flame many times over by now.
He used to love that spot, he realized. When he was little, he’d sit in the warmth and delight in making things catch the light. He wondered if his son did the same. Did little Oliver Hightower like this patch of fire in the solar? Did he cast sunlight about with buttons and beads and teaspoons just to see if he could?
Why did picturing it make his throat ache?
“You’re optimistic,” his mother said, snapping him out of his reverie. She was still holding his arm, even though they were seated now, staring up at him like she could see through his skinand into his mind. “I gather that optimism means you intend to reconcile?”
“Reconcile?”
