“—pack a bag for Arthur?” his mother was asking.
His heart leaped; perhaps his father had changed his mind.
“Not this year,” George said. “Maybe when he’s older.”
Thatmaybehadn’t been there before, Arthur noted. His eyes stung.
“I worry about him, Eileen. He’s so... You know what he’s like.”
Arthur’s heart stuttered.
“Yes.” His mother’s voice was soft, concerned. “I had hoped the other boys might take to him by now, but...”
Silence. Arthur pressed his ear to the door, desperate to hear more. To know what words clung to the end of his father’sso,his mother’sbut. To know what, exactly, his parents thought he was like. Whether they had an answer for his uneasy relationship with Seacliff.
“I think he’d like Port Lorne,” George said, “but I worryhe’d be worse off being here after. I’d rather take him when he’s grown—seventeen or eighteen, maybe—when he’s old enough to make his own way if he wants.”
Seventeen or eighteen! Arthur’s hands balled in his nightshirt. He’d thought, when his father said “older,”that he’d meant soon. Thirteen or fourteen, since twelve evidently wasn’t olderenough. Seventeen or eighteen might as well have been a hundred, it seemed so far off.
His father was speaking. Arthur pressed his ear back to the door.
“—bring back that new medicine Maclure wrote me about. I hope they’ll be open to it, seeing as how sick everyone’s been for the past week. I’ve never seen the flu hit so hard. But if it’s not herbalism plain and simple, they don’t trust it.”
“They will.” A creak of bedsprings. “I’m sure if you keep trying—”
“I will, dove. All I’ve ever wanted was to make life better here. It’s improved a little—hasn’t it? You remember what things were like when we were young... But it’s an uphill battle. Seacliff doesn’t change.”
Arthur crept back into bed; evidently, he’d hear nothing more about himself. On the table between his bed and Charlotte’s, the frames of his glasses were dented. He’d have to find a different route home tomorrow, if he could.
He lay awake for a long time, wondering how to change his father’s mind.
He still hadn’t figured it out when morning dawned.
Charlotte had already stumbled out of the room, half asleep but lured by the smell of eggs frying. Floorboards creaked as George emerged from their parents’ room.
His footsteps paused at the children’s door. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut.
A soft knock.
“Arthur?” A brief pause. “I’m going now.”
Arthur’s eyes prickled, but he clenched his jaw. He cried far too much for a boy his age, about any number of silly things. Like when he accidentally stepped on an ant going about its little ant life and squished it. An innocent victim of his daydreaming and plodding human feet. His father going to Port Lorne without him was undoubtedly sillier than that, since it didn’t involve murder.
“I know you’re disappointed,” George said. “You’ll understand one day, when you have your own bairns.” A long pause, more unbearable than the last. “Well... I’m off. Be back in a fortnight or so.”
Arthur was determined not to go out and see him off as he usually did, but he couldn’t help saying, “Bye, Dad.” But the floorboards’ creaking swallowed it, he said it so quietly, and his father didn’t hear him. The back door slammed.
Arthur turned over in bed, burying his face in his pillow. He should’ve gone out and said goodbye properly, but boys his age were supposed to be stubborn, weren’t they, and everyone thought he ought to be more like other boys his age.
The window muffled his parents’ goodbye out in the garden. Charlotte asked their father to bring a doll back for her; George promised he would. Arthur’s ears snagged on his own name, but whatever had been said was finished before he could sit up and strain for a better listen.
Another knock. His mother, this time, but she didn’t wait for a response before entering. She was short and slender, with ruddy, freckled skin and blue eyes warmer and less watery than her son’s. She disliked her freckles and had tried any number of things to do away with both her own and Charlotte’s (none successful), but Arthur wished he had freckles like they did. Having been warned too much sun would cause them, he’d spent most of last summer outdoors with his face turned skyward. All he’d achieved was the most magnificent sunburn of his young life.
“Well, now!” Eileen said. “Sulking in your room while your father goes off without so much as a fare-thee-well. I’d never have expected it of you.”
Arthur reddened, regretting it, but she cried out; she’d caught sight of his bruises. Perching beside him, she grabbed his chin.
“Mam—” Arthur wriggled free. “Mam, it’s all right. I’m fine.”
