Felipe took a long swig of his drink to hide the sudden thickness in his throat. “I’m pretty sure you wished to break my legs a few times.”
She laughed. “That too. I don’t want to say Teresa thought you were too old to find love, but I don’t think she expected it to happen. Or she didn’t expect you to move out, rather than bring Oliver in. That’s what seems to be bothering her most, even though she still sees you all the time. More than she would have seen you if you were on long assignments. I tried to remind her that we’re still a family and we all still love each other no matter where we live, but it’s hard to accept change after nineteen years of your life being a certain way. You of all people know that.” Smooching Pastel, Louisa eyed Felipe over the dog’s head. “Agatha told her how depressed you were when she left for college until you grew accustomed to it, but that backfired. Teresa was quite affronted that you would afflict the same pain upon her. I’m sure if we give her a little time, she’ll get used to it.”
It had been an adjustment to be the odd man out once Teresa left. While Louisa and Agatha tried to include him more, his role in the house felt more tenuous. If he wasn’t one of Teresa’s parents, what was his purpose there? Louisa hadn’t needed him as a husband since they were young. They hardly needed his financial support, and she forged his signature more often than not. Agatha was his friend, but she didn’tneedhim. That realization had spurred him to start taking longer, more dangerous cases, ones that took him farther and farther away from home, anything that could give him a purpose again.
Fingering the green glass, Felipe sighed. “I hope you know I didn’t miss her match because of Oliver. The fault was entirely my own. Our murder investigation has intersected with one of the Federal Branch’s cases, and I was so busy I never looked at the letter.”
“Oh, I knew it wasn’t Oliver’s fault. Please, after the way his face lit up when he saw you two fencing, he wouldn’t have missed it, and if he knew, he would have made sure you got there in time. I told her it was probably an accident or it got lost. It was very short notice. But she was convinced you were dead in a ditch somewhere since you missed it.”
“I feel terrible that I upset her so much. It wasn’t my intention. I tried—”
Felipe rubbed his brow and closed his eyes as Teresa’s look of hurt flashed across his vision. That look was his worst nightmare coming true, and he still couldn’t apologize to her and make things right.
Louisa patted his knee and gave it a squeeze. “I know you’re trying. You’vebeentrying, with all of us. You regularly come for Sunday dinners, and we actually spend time together again. You, me, Agatha, Teresa, Oliver. It’s been nice to have you back. All those years ago you wanted to leave California to escape your family’s legacy, to avoid becoming like them. Even though we are two thousand miles away from them, it felt like I was losing you to their ghosts again. Fighting expectations is never easy, but you’ve changed.”
“How so?” Felipe asked, his throat dry.
“You’re... softer? More present than you used to be. You don’t storm out when I criticize your job or question what you’re doing. I don’t know if it’s Oliver, age, or something else, but I enjoy your company far more now that we aren’t fighting.”
Lounging on the loveseat across from Louisa as she grinned at him from behind Pastel’s fluff, Felipe realized that this was the first time in years he felt truly comfortable in his old home. He and Louisa were two people with an extensive shared past and a child, but there was no question they were friends. While Oliver stood at the heart of that change, there was something else that cast a larger shadow. A greater change he neither asked for nor expected. Felipe twirled the glass between his hands, focusing on the bumps and ridges rubbing against his fingers to stay grounded. Maybe, maybe it would be easier to tell Louisa first.
“There is one other thing that happened. Last January, there—”
Before he could finish, Pastel shot up in Louisa’s lap and dashed across the rug to the front door, barking. The moment the front door opened, Kuchen joined in the chorus of yapping as she chased Pastel back from the parlor to the conservatory and back.
“Guess who I found in the park,” Agatha called from the foyer.
A second later, she appeared in the doorway with Oliver standing sheepishly behind her. He mouthed,Sorry, to Felipe over her shoulder as Louisa offered him a drink and a seat. The words caught on Felipe’s tongue as Oliver sat next to him with Kuchen in his lap and answered the women’s questions about his week. With Oliver beside him, it should have been easier to tell their shared secret, but once Agatha launched into an excited monologue about how her flowers were blooming unseasonably early and suggested they stay for dinner, Felipe knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t wreck their happiness or the illusion that his life was finally as he wanted it. That hollow hunger gnawed at his gut and washed over him in a wave of fatigue. No, he couldn’t ruin things now.
***
SAVING HIS TRIP TOthe archives until Saturday night had been a fantastic idea. While most of the society was having a late supper or spending the night out, Oliver trawled through the records room in blessed silence without seeing another soul. He rooted through the card catalog with his notepad clenched between his teeth and a pencil tucked behind his ear. Glancing over his shoulder, he tried to find Gwen among the stacks, but she had disappeared down her own trail of inquiry. So far, he had found birth records for Amelia Bellamy, now age fifteen, born to Irene Bellamy (née Yates) and William Bellamy along with the couple’s marriage records, but he had yet to find the correct obituary for Mr. Bellamy. Oliver was fairly sure he was dead after what he glimpsed at the institute.
He hoped that whatever information was there might give him some clue as to where to look next to find out more about Yates and his family. He wasn’t certainwhathe should look for exactly, but Ansley hadn’t been forthcoming about what the Federal Branch already knew about the man. If he was taking advantage of his sister by funneling her money into the institute, perhaps Ansley could use that in his case as well, and more importantly, they could turn him into the paranormal branch of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for whatever treatments they were doing to poor Amelia. Then, the girl might at least be safe.
Marking down the next few volumes and pages the obituary could be, Oliver ducked into the shelves of bound newspapers. He wrinkled his nose at the stink of concentrated ink and cheap paper, but at least he had remembered to wear gloves to avoid feeling and smelling it on his hands for the rest of the day. Lowering the oversized book onto a carrel and turning on the green shaded lamp hanging over it, Oliver realized the volume was only from two years prior. He turned to the page Bellamy’s reference card had indicated, ready to scan for a small obituary, when he came face-to-face with a drawing of a wrecked train car and a portrait of William Bellamy. The bust showed a middle aged man with a curled, waxed mustache and a curious frown. Beside him, the headline read,Death Claims Bellamy: Eccentric Inventor Killed in Gruesome Accident.
Oliver skimmed the article. He remembered reading about William Bellamy’s death in the papers when it happened, though he hadn’t even considered the once infamous inventor might have been Mrs. Bellamy’s husband. He thought he might not be until several lines down it mentioned his wife and daughter by name. The article went on to discuss how the man had been born to wealthy parents only to grow up to become a recluse who only appeared in public to show off his next big invention before vanishing for months at a time. He had created a trolley that ran on magnets instead of needing coal or an electric wire running overhead, a train set that levitated over the tracks, newfangled carnival rides, and plenty of other things that seemed wildly fascinating yet impractical. There had been rumors for years that he might go bankrupt, but then, like clockwork, he would patent something railway tycoons or shipbuilders needed to keep himself afloat before returning to his pet projects. Taciturn yet excitable, reclusive yet driven, but above all else, eccentric. There were covert mentions of his flamboyant attire and strange habits and how the rumor was he kept company with artists and actors at bohemian clubs. How much of that was true versus salacious rumors to sell papers, Oliver couldn’t tell.
The tragedy of it all was how he had been killed by his own experiment. He had been working on magnets to place on railroad trestles that could be enervated in case of a runaway train or impending accident to slow the cars down. If it worked, it could have saved so many lives and might have even prevented derailments if used on the tracks. “Bellamy’s folly” the paper called it. Apparently, when the magnet apparatus didn’t work as expected and the cars came hurtling toward his helpers, Bellamy heroically tried to fix something on the track to stop it and was killed in the process. His sacrifice or invention, the paper noted, had saved several lives as the train slowed to give them just enough time to escape. Oliver winced at the thought of what Bellamy’s final moments must have been like. Had Mrs. Bellamy and her daughter been forced to go to Dr. Yates for help when what money was left ran dry or had she returned to her brother’s side willingly?
“I found it.”
Oliver jolted from the book with a gasp. His heart pounded in his ears as he turned to find Gwen peering at him over the carrel’s divider. Flashing him an apologetic smile, she grabbed the stool next to him. Her hip bounced off his as she peered at the title of the article he had been reading.
“Got a little too engrossed in your paper?”
“Apparently.” Rubbing his eyes, Oliver asked, “Found what, by the way?”
“Your fired doctor’s address,” Gwen said, handing him a slip of paper with two addresses. “I narrowed it down to two different Dr. Thorns, since you didn’t have a first name. They were the only two who aren’t associated with any local hospitals, aren’t retired, or aren’t young enough to be a junior physician. Obviously, these may be out of date if he’s already left the city or moved, but it’s a good place to start. I’m leaning toward Dr. Andrew Thorn as he lives in a boarding house close enough to the institute that he could walk.”
“Thank you, Gwen. I know I said it before, but I greatly appreciate you keeping me company and helping with my research, especially this far outside of work hours.”
“You are very welcome. Besides, it beats doing nothing while Ivy canoodles with her new beau downstairs. She’s older than I am; it’s not like she needs a chaperone. I don’t want to think about it.” Making a disgusted face, Gwen handed Oliver an annotated list of reference numbers. “I also looked up Dr. Yates, but everything I found in the papers is spun to make the Institute for the Betterment of the Soul look like a Christian charity. There was nothing critical written about it, no mentions of magic, and nothing on missing patients or workers.”
Oliver sat back with a frown. He had tried to find information on the nurse that had supposedly gone missing, but there was nothing in the papers about her. Felipe could get access to police reports of missing persons or unidentified bodies if he requested it, but he could ask him to do that another day. When they returned from their not quite Sunday dinner at Louisa and Agatha’s, Felipe suggested they stay in Oliver’s room for the night to avoid Ansley bothering them. Oliver didn’t think that would be a problem, but he had never told Ansley about his secret bedroom and Ansley had never cared enough to ask, as long as Oliver was gone by sunrise. While Felipe washed up, Oliver went to do a quick end-of-week inventory and returned to find his partner asleep on the coverlet. Sneaking up to the archives felt preferable to disturbing him. More than anything, he wanted to be a good partner, in love and work, and after Felipe dealt with Ansley and Head Inspector Williams, Oliver wanted to pull his weight where he could.
“Is there anything else you want to look for?” Gwen asked as the clock in the center of the archives struck ten.
