“He was always talking about you, so I—” Her lips turned up in what was almost a smile. “I was curious to see what ‘the whippersnapper’ looked like.”
She surprised a small huff of laughter out of him. Then he recollected that he would never hear Martinelli call him that again.
Neither of them said a word for what was probably thirty seconds but felt ten times as long.
She broke the silence with a question: “Do you know what happened to my husband?”
He shook his head, hoping to God his fears on that score were wrong.
Her eyes welled, but she did not sob. “Neither do I. It was at work, and they’ve told me nothing—nothing except that there was a ‘regrettable accident’”—he could hear the quotation marks around the phrase—“and that I should take comfort in knowing he was serving his country.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “He was ascientist, not a soldier! What on earth could he have been doing that would kill him? Could you tell me that?”
His hands were trembling. He gripped his cane harder. “Our work was highly classified. But you understand that it involved weapons?”
Her eyes widened. “He never told me that. Oh,Tim.”
Peter breathed in and out, working up the courage to ask the question that prodded him to call her in the first place. “When did it happen?” As long as the answer wasn’t January 26?—
“Last month.” She closed her eyes. “The 26th of January.”
Even in this moment of horror, he knew it should not be a shock. Of course it was the weapon. Of course.
And that was his fault, as surely as if he himself had set it off. For all his bluster to Beatrix about Miss Draden, he’d invented the weapon. He’d stowed it in Ellicott Mills. He’d allowed Miss Draden to find out about it through his own carelessness.
Mrs. Martinelli wrapped her arms around herself. “They c-couldn’t even give me his b-body!”
No. There wouldn’t have been anything left.
They sat in silence for a moment, both of them lost in their own misery. Then she took a deep breath. “When did you hear about Tim?”
“Just this weekend.” His voice cracked. “I’ve missed the funeral, haven’t I?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. He liked you a great deal, and I did want to tell you, but I didn’t know where you were. He said you’d moved to a small town, but if he told me the name, it went right out of my head. I tried andtriedto remember…”
“Please don’t feel bad—I was hospitalized the last four weeks,” Peter said. “I wouldn’t have been able to come regardless.”
She stared at him. “Were you—that is, was it the same accident—” She put her hands over her eyes. “No, you’ve been gone from the Pentagram for months! I’m notthinking.”
He tried and failed to come up with something to say. It was in fact the same accident, and he would have given anything at that moment to switch places with Martinelli.
“It was a very nice funeral,” she murmured, looking at the floor. “Beautiful and proper.” She made a sound that was neither a laugh nor a sob. “He would have hated it.”
Peter opened his mouth, could think of nothing to say to that, either, and closed it.
“He despised doing things for show,” she said. “He couldn’t stand small talk and dinner parties with important people you don’t like and—and thisroomand—oh, I was such a fool!” The pain on her face was hard to look at. “Hetold me it didn’t matter that I couldn’t have a child. I should havebelievedhim. I shouldn’t have listened to them.”
“Who?”
“The wives,” she said heavily. “The other wizard wives.”
It was difficult to concentrate on anything but the weapon and his culpability, but he tried. “What did they say?”
“‘Oh, darling, that’s really too awful,’” she said in a high-pitched, saccharine tone. “‘You know how deeply wizards care about passing on their unique talents—why, Jenny Heller’s husband left her only last year because she was barren, did you hear? What was the point of a barren wife, that was what he said!Sosad. And Hildy Jones’ husband took a mistress and made her raise the results while he cavorted with the other woman. Can youimaginehow she felt? But really, wedohave a weighty responsibility to the country!’”
She shuddered. He did, too, sickened.
“I shouldn’t have left. I should have had more faith in Tim,” she said. “But you can’t understand how hard it is—to have nothing useful to do—to sit in an empty home you can’t fill, these words repeating in your head over and over andover. You men have your work, and those wives have their children, but I have nothing.” Her breath came out in gasps. “And now I sit here, really and truly alone, and think … what if … what if my leaving made him distracted and careless, and?—”
“No!”
