Thirty years ago
It had been an awful day. Most days were awful for twelve-year-old Arthur Throckmorton. In the seaside fishing village of Seacliff, where most boys his age were already strapping and calloused from working the sea with their fathers, Arthur was a slender pink thing with soft hands, a mop of golden hair, and watery blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles that never sat quite right.
This late summer evening, his spectacles were more crooked than ever, having been forcibly removed, peered through, jeered at, and stomped on. The frames had bent; miraculously, the lenses had not broken. Arthur had been walking home from the convent after lessons, forgetful of his usual care because Mother Superior, aware of his deep interest in timepieces, had given him an old clock that no longer worked. He’d been trying to figure out what was wrong with it when a group of boys hardly older than he had accosted him. It was difficult to say what, precisely, their gripe with Arthur was, but almost everyone in the village found him odd. He didn’t understand why, except for his bastard status and a vague feeling ofdifference.
He’d snuck past his mother on the way into the house, bruised, bloody, with bent glasses. If she saw him like that (again), she’d fuss and worry. Rather than joining her in thesitting room, Arthur called a greeting from the kitchen and crept into the bedroom he shared with his five-year-old half sister. He’d been there ever since.
As bedtime approached, Arthur was lying on his stomach in bed, finishing his homework. Maths. Always maths. Sister Mary Paul insisted on it. The numbers, which had a nasty habit of rearranging on the page before his eyes, blurred as his spectacles slipped yet again.
Someone knocked on the door.
Arthur bolted upright, trying to straighten his glasses. “Don’t come in!”
Too late. His stepfather—the only father he’d ever known—had cracked the door, entering the room with Charlotte in his arms. At the sight of Arthur shamefaced on his bed, with a split lip and bruised eye, George Throckmorton sucked in his cheeks.
“It’s nothing,” Arthur mumbled.
George tucked Charlotte into bed without comment, kissed her forehead, and withdrew. Charlotte clambered out of her bed and into Arthur’s. She cocked her head at him, eyeballing his bruises.
“Does it hurt? It looks like it hurts.”
“Yeah.”
To his relief, she ceased her examination and snuggled into his side. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Arthur repeated, even though he wasn’t. But he had his sister. That was something.
Their father returned, his medical kit in hand. He was a doctor, not a fisherman. A proper doctor who’d gone to university in Port Lorne and everything, not that that held much weight in Seacliff: Since his return, the villagers had thought George too high-and-mighty, too book-learned and citified.
It didn’t stop them from coming to him for every injuryand illness, however. This was his first time home since morning; a bout of flu had swept through the village. Tomorrow he was off to Port Lorne to restock his medical supplies—a trip he took every year—so today he’d seen his patients.
Shedding his coat, George nudged Charlotte aside and sat on the edge of Arthur’s bed. A silver acorn on a chain gleamed on his neck.
“Why aren’t you in bed, my little love?” he asked Charlotte.
“I’m not sleepy.”
George shook his head with a chuckle, but his expression sobered as he turned to Arthur. “Let me see, son.”
Arthur set his glasses aside. There was George calling himsonas he always did, because to George they were kin, the same as if he had sired Arthur himself. That simple appellation always made Arthur feel better, no matter how bad a day had been.
George was grave but calm as he examined Arthur’s bruises. He was a comforting presence, a big man whose belly shook when he laughed. His skin was the same warm brown as the tip-tilted eyes he shared with his daughter. They had the same rounded chin and high forehead, too, although Charlotte had ochre skin and her mother’s freckles and button nose.
Not for the first time, Arthur wished he took after George. He resented looking (he supposed) like the man who’d run out on his mother before Arthur was born. Alas, he didn’t take after George in any respect. His one ill-fated foray into medicine two years ago had ended in ten minutes. He’d trailed George through Seacliff, intending to visit patients with him. The first cut of the lance had sent Arthur fleeing outside, where he’d sat with his head between his knees until rain had chased him into the general store for shelter. He couldn’t stomach the sight of blood. At the ripe old age of ten, he’d found following in his father’s footsteps as a doctor out of the question.
If George was as disappointed in Arthur as Arthur was, henever showed it. Now, he dotted cream onto Arthur’s lip and eye. Arthur winced.
“Who was it?” George asked, but Arthur shrugged. It hardly mattered who. Snitching would make things worse. Nothing could be done anyway.
His father sighed but didn’t ask again. He packed the cream away, straightened the frames of Arthur’s glasses (more or less), and kissed Arthur’s forehead. Maybe they were alike in one way, Arthur thought hopefully. The villagers never said George was odd, because he was a proper doctor and a respectable man—even if he’d married, as they termed it, a fallen woman—but the villagers were never so soft with their sons. All George was to Arthur was softness, and that was all Arthur was, too.
“You won’t tell Mam, will you?” Arthur said.
George tucked Charlotte back into her own bed. Despite her insistence she wasn’t sleepy, she’d fallen asleep curled in her brother’s quilt.
“She’ll want to know,” George said. “She worries about you.”
“That’s why I don’t want to tell her.”
