“They’re not valuable. And … we won’t be able to depend on the spa’s income anymore.”
“Why not?” asked Marlowe.
“Because I sold it.”
A stunned silence filled the room.
Marlowe said, “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“Why?”
“Because it was losing money, and I had more important things to worry about.”
“Like what?” Mum said.
I tensed. Eavesdropping on my grandad as if he were still alive set me ill at ease, but so did the direction of the conversation.He sacrificed all that trying to find a way I could come back.
“I don’t want to burden you with an old man’s worries,” Edwin said.
“No, fuck that, Dad!” Mum said. “Keeping secrets in the name of some noble martyrdom isn’t helping any of us, so what’s really going on here? From where I’m standing, you sold off the one asset that could pick us up by our bootstraps. Who did you sell it to, anyway?”
Edwin winced and avoided their eyes.
Marlowe’s exasperation turned to true anger. “Not Warwick.”
“It was worthless at the time. Losing us money.”
“So Warwick buys it up for a few copper coins under the guise of doing you a favor, it miraculously regains its magic, tourists flood back in, and none of that strikes you as suspicious?”
I’d never heard Marlowe raise his voice, but we could have heard him downstairs.
“Of course it does,” Edwin hissed. “But what’s done is done. Hindsight being what it is, and foresight being outside my control, this is where we’ve landed. And I hate to disappoint you, I really do, but I honestly did what I thought was best at the time.” He gestured around him to the state of his study, a horologist’s hoard, gray with dust. “Bail yourself out. You can’t expect a clap on the back for failure. I’ve done the same thing my whole life, and it failed. You tried something different with the cider farm, and it still failed. Unfortunately, the world didn’t guarantee our success.”
Marlowe’s mouth worked around a retort, but voiced none. Hurt stained his features. It didn’t matter how old you got, your parents’ words still cut deepest, and Marlowe didn’t take well to his father calling him a failure, even if he’d included himself in the statement.
He looked like he wanted to make some grand declaration, lips moving, but in the end he turned on his heel to go. Mum marched out with him, but paused to deliver one last rebuke. “Sometimes feels like you care more about the people we lost than the ones still here.”
“Have you got any right to say so after sending your surviving son away?”
“We’d all be reunited at the bottom of the strid if I hadn’t.”
She and Marlowe stormed out. Kessian and I hurried to clear enough room for them, but the landing was small, and I experienced the uncanny sensation of my mum and uncle passing straight through my shoulder.
But not Kessian’s.
As Grandad said, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Marlowe’s shoulder clipped Kessian’s. He reeled back, glaring at Grandad with true contempt. “Very mature, Dad.”
He’d thought Grandad had cast some spell to literally hit him with the door on his way out. Kessian rubbed his shoulder, mouthing an apology, but how was he to know that would happen? We seemed like ghosts in this memory, unseen and unheard, but not un-felt.
Confusion pinched Grandad’s eyebrows together as he watched his son and daughter leave. He rose from his chair, went to the doorway, and searched the landing. For a moment, it felt as though he stared straight at me.
“Hello?” he called.
Kessian whispered, “Can he hear me?”
Grandad didn’t react.
