Page 52 of The Trick of It

He’d always known he wasn’t the most academically gifted of the Starling brood, but for the love of Christ, tonight he thought he might actually be stupid.

He really had forgotten all those ridiculous things he’d said to her, the lies. Even now, he could only remember them a little sideways, skewed and blurry on the fringes of the clearer moments that he had retained in perpetuity.

Everyone, he reasoned, was stupid at sixteen.

He was.

Seph was.

Bloody Sarah was.

But he thought he was a little stupider than everyone else, all the same.

He had intended to walk down to the wharf, to perhaps skip some shingles over the foamy, cold waves of the Channel, but he found himself instead weaving through the townhouses tucked near the overlook, toward Libba’s new home.

She lived on the third floor of a terraced townhouse with that new husband of hers, a man who had also known them all since they’d been children. Who had also, probably, been a bit stupid about the girl he was meant to be with.

But Rhys didn’t want to talk to Jasper Townsend. Or go home and quiz the polish off Elias Selwyn, either, who had likely also committed this specific stupidity.

He just wanted his sister.

Not Monica, who would be sweet and kind, no matter what he brought to her. And not Hattie, whose ethereal queerness would be honest and thoughtful but unbearably gentle and likely studded with a thousand non-sequitur asides.

“Rhys?” Libba asked, coming up the opposite street with a bag of laundry on her hip and the sparkle of what he suspected was stage makeup testing flashing in the low light on her cheekbones. “Did you get lost again?”

“Yes,” he said. “Help.”

She laughed. “Come take this bag. Have you eaten?”

He nodded, trotting up to close the distance between them and taking the bright-blue sack full of folded clothes, which smelled of fresh cotton and lavender soap. “How is the Widow Thresher this evening?” he asked, peeking inside and flashing a smile when Libba slapped his hands.

“You’ve stolen quite enough of my wardrobe this year, you little shit,” she told him. “And she’s well. She’s still cross with Jasper for making her restore corded suede from sea water and cat vomit, however.”

“Delicious,” Rhys commented, waiting for her to open the door to her house and lead him up the stairs. “At least he took it to the mother, rather than the daughter.”

“Indeed,” Libba agreed. “I don’t think he knows Monica is capable of being fearsome when someone desecrates her creations. You didn’t answer me. Did you eat?”

“I shook my head up and down,” he snapped, dropping the bag on the floor the instant they’d crossed into the flat. “That means yes, you know. Hattie can teach you.”

“Don’t make me do violence before sundown,” she suggested airily. “If you’re not here to beg for scraps, I don’t know what to do with you.”

“I didn’t say I’d turn down scraps,” he pointed out, crossing the room to flop onto her settee and gaze up at the glass-covered collage of playbills and ticket stubs her husband had collected over the years. He had seen this last time he’d been here, of course, but only at a glance. Most of the keepsakes were from Libba’s plays and performances, but there were newspaper clippings and flyers too, little souvenirs of all of them wedged into the crevices between the mountain of monument to her own work.

He leaned forward, peering, until he found his own name a couple of times, on slips of pavilion flyers and in a carnival lineup from back in London.

She had evidently poured wine while he’d been looking and appeared at his side, holding out a glass of red and taking the seat next to him with a little sigh and a long, stretching lean back into the cushions.

“Where’s Jasper?” Rhys asked, peering into the wine and giving it a sniff. “This smells expensive.”

“Wholesale,” she said, raising her brows. “It will be, to someone, but not for us. And he’s outfitting his new office in the evenings right now, directing carpenters and painters and so on with Malcolm. It’s very dull.”

“Sounds dull.” Rhys took a sip. “Lovely.”

“You think so?” she asked curiously. “You usually prefer white. I just don’t keep any in the colder months.”

“I prefer cake,” he agreed, “but I will eat a stale biscuit too.”

“Fair enough.” She sipped her own glass and sighed. “It has been a long day. I am sourcing props and fabric for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gossamer fairy wings and scrap wood trees for the forest and this time, I have to have a casting call, as some of my troupe are going to return to London now that we’re done with Romeo and Juliet.”