He chuckled. “Victoria has an extra stock for when I visit. We may not have the understanding of the disease you have in your time, but we can have a little light to illuminate a situation. How’s my mother?”
“This morning she hocked up a hairball into Heathcliff’s slippers, so she’s the same as usual.”
“And Helen?” Now it was his turn to choke on his words. “She is…well?”
“She’s happy. She has a business she loves and she’s seeing someone.” Sadness flashed in his eyes for a moment, but then it was gone, replaced by a beautiful, savage kindness – it was a look I’d seen in Heathcliff’s eyes so many times before, a look that said,I would suffer a hundred times over if you were happy, even if it is without me.
I was so grateful to him that my mother had a love like that.
“I’m glad.” Homer dangled a foot out the end of the bathtub, wiggling his toes. “She deserves to be happy.”
“Why? Why…all of this?”
“My dearest Mina, you know why.” He held out his hands to me, palms up. I brought them close to my face, noticing the smudges of pigment on his hands, the roughness from where his pen rubbed against his skin. The hands of the most famous writer of all time. “Because the story needed to be told. Because love needed to triumph.”
“That’s such awriteranswer.”
“Then you understand.” His smile could remake the world. “Of course you do. You are your father’s daughter.”
I thought of my crappy, half-finished manuscript saved on the computer. “I’m nothing like you. I can’t write to save myself. It always comes out sounding wrong. You can’t possibly think I—”
Again, he made that wavy gesture with his hands. “Let’s presuppose that I’ve been hopping around your life for several years now. I had to make sure my little girl was safe and cared for. And let’s just say I’ve seen you overcome your writers’ block and produce something that would make your old man proud. What do you say to that?”
Tears streamed down my face. “Tell me what you saw.”
He laughed. “There’s no fun in that, my child. What good is a life if you can’t live it on your own time?”
“But everything’s gone wrong. I think Morrie and Heathcliff might be dead. And Quoth…” I held out the crook of my arm so he could see the injured bird cowering inside. “He’s going to die with Dracula’s poison in his veins. He’ll die not remembering who he was or what he loved in this world. I failed you. I failed everyone. I thought maybe if I came through here we could go back in time together and fix it all.”
He kissed my forehead. “Oh, Mina. You could never fail me.”
“Mum misses you.” I squeezed my eyes shut as more tears threatened to fall. “Ever since you’ve been gone she’s tried to fill the Homer-sized gap in her life. Nothing’s satisfied her, not even me. Can’t you come back to her?”
He shook his head. “Our love story has already been written. Sometimes, life doesn’t give you the happily ever after. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a tragedy into something beautiful. Your mother is in every word I wrote, and those words have inspired lovers and writers and artists for centuries. I have a gift for you. But first, hold that towel for me while I get out of this tub. I don’t want to scar my daughter for life.”
I grabbed a fluffy towel from the stool in the corner and held it out. He slid into my arms, pulling the edges around to cover himself. He felt impossibly light and frail. When I looked into the tub, I saw it was completely empty of water. But it was full only a moment ago. The sleeves of my coat were damp from where they dragged in the water.
“It’s that cursed plumbing,” Victoria said from the doorway. “The bathtub never stays full for long, and I can’t figure out where all the water goes.”
Plumbing…
I remembered Dracula holding that sodden book, and something Grimalkin said when she first revealed my father’s story. “Wherever andwheneverthe waters of Meles flowed, my son would be able to use them to escape from his enemies.”
Plumbing…
I stared at the empty tub as an idea formed in my mind – the final pieces of the puzzle of Nevermore fitting together.
Homer cursed as he hopped around behind me, knocking over several candles as he struggled into his clothes. “Blasted trousers. I much prefer achiton.”
“Are you decent yet?” I got down on all fours to right the candles before he burned the whole place down.
“I am.”
I turned around. There was my father, wearing an impeccably-tailored Victorian suit, complete with a flocked morning jacket I’d personally kill to own. From his jacket pocket, he pulled a small scroll wrapped with leather. “It’s time you had this.”
“Could I have your jacket instead?”
He laughed. “I think, on the whole, you’ll enjoy this more.”
