The Shadows

by Chance, Megan

  I opened the front door so quickly Dr. Eldridge nearly fell into me. His gaunt face was red with frustration. He regained his balance, tugging at his coat. “Miss Knox, might I have a word with your brother?”

  “My brother’s not at home.” I had become very good at lying. Not something to be proud of exactly, but sometimes I felt as if it should be. “I’d be happy to pass along a message.”

  I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Then perhaps I could speak to your mother about a sensitive matter.”

  “I’m afraid she’s still abed.”

  “I see.” He hesitated. I knew he was trying to decide whether to speak to me, but everyone knew of my brother’s weakness and my mother’s frailty. Who else was there to speak to? Dr. Eldridge cleared his throat. “I’ve been privileged to serve your family—”

  “Yes, indeed. Grandmother’s feeling much better.” Another lie, but what was one more when a whole trunkful of them was already at my feet?

  “I’m glad to hear it.” His expression went grim. “It is, however, customary, when one is feeling better, to pay one’s bill.”

  “She’s not that much better.”

  “Miss Knox—”

  “I will speak to my brother about it.” I put my hand on the door.

  He blocked it with his foot. “Your brother is avoiding me, Miss Knox. I’ve sent several letters. I’m afraid I have no choice but to proceed with legal measures.”

  I let my eyes fill with tears. This wasn’t hard. “Please, Doctor. Things are so very difficult just now, what with my father’s passing.”

  He glanced away uncomfortably. “I do understand, miss. But your father’s been gone some time, and the talk is . . . well, I know this is indelicate, but one hears. From other merchants.”

  Clearly, my tears weren’t having the desired effect.

  “As I said, I have no choice, Miss Knox. You will be hearing from my lawyer.”

  We would lose the house and all that was left. “Please, Doctor—”

  “I am sorry, miss.”

  He was halfway down the steps. Beyond him, a horse and carriage went by with the clackity clack of hooves on cobblestones and a curious stare from the driver. I retreated into the darkness of the doorway. In spite of the fact that everyone knew of our situation, I did not think our neighbors were aware of quite how bad things were, and Mama would be horrified if they discovered it. Desperately, I said, “Doctor, have you any interest in antiquities?”

  He turned around. “Antiquities?”

  “I have . . . one thing.” Already I regretted this, but what else could I do? “It’s very old. I don’t know what it’s worth, if anything. My grandmother said it was ancient.”

  “What is it?”

  “A hunting horn. From Ireland.”

  He sighed. “Let me have a look at it.”

  I closed the door and grabbed my skirt to hurry up the stairs, my heart heavy and my head aching. I had no real hope that the doctor would accept the horn. It was old, tarnished and cracked; its value lay more in the stories my grandmother had told me of it, the old Irish tales of gods and fighting men and miraculous feats. It was my most treasured possession. I’d spent hours lying on my bed and turning it over in my hands, closing my eyes, imagining the battles it had seen, heroes sweeping me into their arms and carrying me far away from empty rooms and Mama’s tears and Grandma’s growing dementia. I didn’t want to give it up. But it was all I had, and we could not lose the house. We had no place else to go.

  I pulled the papier-mâché box from under my bed. You have to, I told myself. If Dr. Eldridge took the horn, it would ease things for a while. And that was all I needed. Just a little more time to find a way out of this mess that was my life. I opened the lid.

  The horn was gone.

  It couldn’t be. I tried to think of the last time I’d seen it. Only a few weeks ago, I’d cut myself on a ragged edge of the silver and bled all over it. I tried to remember what I’d done then. Wiped it clean and then . . . I’d put it away, hadn’t I? Or perhaps I’d—

  “I’m so sorry, Gracie.”

  My brother’s voice.

  Oh no. No, no, no.

  I looked over my shoulder at Aidan, who leaned against the door frame. His apologetic smile was crooked and sweet. “Was a game a few weeks ago. I didn’ think I’d lose it. I planned to win it back before you noticed it was gone. I will win it back, I promise—”

  I launched myself at him, slamming into him so hard he lost his balance and we both went sprawling onto the floor, me on top. He put up his hands to fend me off.

  “You drunken . . . bastard,” I hissed, hitting him with all my strength. “That horn was mine, Aidan. It wasn’t yours to take. Damn you! Damn you, damn you!”

  “Grainne Alys Knox! Your language!”

  My mother’s voice was tight with horror. I looked up to see her standing in the hallway, her hand at her throat, her face pale.

  I gave my brother a final shove and pushed off him. “He stole my horn. He stole it and lost it at dice.”

  “Act’ally, it was faro,” he said.

  I kicked him hard.

  “Step away from your brother, Grace,” Mama said. “You’ll wake your grandmother with all this noise, and you are hardly behaving like a lady.”

  Because I was furious, I said, “Doctor Eldridge is downstairs, waiting for me to return with the horn I’ve bartered to keep him from lodging a suit against us.”

  My mother’s glance went quickly to Aidan, who was rising onto his elbows. “You’ve paid him nothing?” she asked.

  “What was I to pay ’im with?” Aidan replied bitterly.

  “How do you pay for your drink?” I asked him.

  My brother’s face shuttered. “You don’ wanna know.”

  “That will be enough,” Mama said. She was trembling.

  My headache flared. I put my hand to the wall to steady myself.

  Mama noticed. “Another headache?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll try to win back the horn,” Aidan said, sounding more sober now than he had all morning. “I never meant to lose it. I didn’ think I would.”

  “That won’t help us today, will it?” I tried to blink away the ache in my head. “Well, I’ll have to tell him. He’ll lodge a suit, and you’ll be the one who must manage that, Aidan.”

  “I think we can put this off no longer,” Mama said. “There are things we must talk about, Grace.”

  I knew the “talk” she meant. When I turned seventeen, I would be old enough for an early debut. Old enough to find a rich husband—though no one said rich, of course. To talk about money was crass and beneath us. No, what everyone said was well, as in You must marry well, Grace.

  Mama and I had talked of it before, and I knew she was right. But I was afraid. Not of marriage, really; in finishing school, every conversation was about who would marry first, what dresses we would wear to our debut, engagements and weddings and the boys who were possibilities. But then, I’d never imagined that my own marriage would be for anything less than true love. Breathless sighs and stolen kisses. The whole world opening up like an oyster, just waiting for me to grab the bright, shiny pearl of it—

  From the door below came a knock. Dr. Eldridge, waiting.

  So much for dreams. “Yes, Mama, we’ll talk.”

  And then I went downstairs to tell Dr. Eldridge the bad news.

  That night, Mama waited for me in the parlor. The room had once held settees and upholstered chairs. There had been carpets on floors that were now bare and scuffed. In that corner had been a glass-fronted whatnot filled with porcelain figurines; in the other a pianoforte, with sheaves of music.

  Paintings had hung from golden cords, filling nearly every space; now there were only darkened spots on the red toile wallpaper where they’d once been and one worn settee and an old rocker where my mother sat, which I couldn’t look at without wondering if we might have to burn it for firewood this winter. My grandfather had made it out
of pine, and carved in it a hunting horn and a tree branch with berries.

  My mother was embroidering handkerchiefs again, made from a linen tablecloth that had been too worn and stained to sell. As if any of us needed more handkerchiefs. One could only cry or sneeze so often. I watched as she plied the needle in the dim light of a single lamp. Her golden-red hair, as straight and fine as mine was thick and curling, was swept up elegantly, her bones delicate and sharp beneath her freckled skin. Once she’d worn satins and silks. She’d had gowns of every color. Now I saw her only in the brown she had on today, and a black silk she’d worn the entire year after Papa had died, following the rules of mourning to the letter. Black-swathed windows, mirrors turned to the wall, black-edged calling cards and stationery.

  Even in the dated gown, Mama looked every inch a lady. But her poise only hid despair and indecision. She had let Aidan gamble and drink away everything we had left, and I was angry with her even as I knew I might have done the same. My brother was charming and feckless. He won forgiveness easily with a smile. I loved Aidan, but he infuriated me. I didn’t understand how Mama never seemed to be the least bit angry.

  Because he was her favorite, of course, as he had always been.

  I bit back my resentment and clasped my hands tightly as I stood before her. “You wanted to speak with me, Mama?”

  She glanced to the windows that fronted the street, which had once been hung with three sets of curtains—sash and lace and then damask on top—and now had only thin chintz. She set aside the handkerchief. “Grace, it’s time we considered your debut. You’re a pretty girl. There’s no reason you couldn’t win a good husband.”

  “You mean an old, rich husband.”

  She winced. “The things you say sometimes.”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “The doctor’s lawsuit is only one of what will be many.”

  I started. She knew how bad things were?

  As if she’d heard my thoughts, she said, “Oh yes, I know, though you try to keep it from me. We will lose the house if something is not done. And then where are we to go? What about your grandmother, who is too ill to leave her bed?”

  “Aidan could—”

  “I’ve lost hope that Aidan will ever change.”

  The shock of my mother’s admission silenced me. She had never before said a word against him.

  “You are my responsible child, Grace. You no longer have the luxury of waiting for love, as your father wished for you. You must marry.”

  “So because I’m responsible, I must be the one to pay the price? That’s hardly fair.”

  “We will all end up in the poorhouse otherwise. Life is not one of your fairy tales, Grace, but I believe that, with some luck, you can find a white knight to save us.”

  White knight. I did have a sometimes embarrassing romantic streak—but truly, was it so wrong to want a fairy-tale ending?

  “I’ve spoken to Mrs. Needham,” Mama said. “We’ve come to an arrangement.”

  “Mrs. Needham?” I asked, and then, suspiciously, “What arrangement, Mama?”

  Mrs. Needham was a vicious tyrant of a woman who, along with my mother, was on the board of the Charity Hospital. She had long been jealous of Mama, I knew, though exactly why was a mystery to me. That Mama spoke of my debut and Mrs. Needham in the same breath was worrisome.

  “She has offered to loan us the money to pay for your debut. And to sponsor you as well.”

  Now I was more than suspicious. “Why ever would she do that?”

  “In return for me giving pianoforte lessons to her daughters.”

  And I understood. This was the chance for Mrs. Needham to lord it over my mother. The chance to humiliate her every time she was there, to gloat because my elegant, beautiful mother had fallen so far that she must teach Bach and Mozart to Mrs. Needham’s dull, untalented daughters.

  “Mama, no,” I said. “You can’t do that.”

  “I have already agreed.”

  “You can’t mean it. You can’t want to be beholden to her.”

  My mother met my gaze. “I have hopes that you will make a good enough match that I shall never have to set foot in Mrs. Needham’s parlor again.”

  “And if we can’t pay her back?”

  “Oh, I think we should see that we can, don’t you?”

  “Mama, if we must borrow, it should be to pay the bills and save the house, not for gowns and receptions.”

  “And then what, Grace? There will be more bills, and still no way to pay them or pay off another debt. Your debut is an investment, darling. I don’t believe it will be a wasted one.”

  Slowly, I nodded. What else was I to do—run away? Leave my family to ruin? It was not just my future at stake, but my mother’s, my grandmother’s. My brother’s. I loved my family. And I would do what was best because I could.

  Mama said softly, “You might end up very happy, you know, Grace. Your father and I were. There are worse things in life than being a wife. You’ll know that when you hold your first child in your arms.”

  But that seemed a hundred years from now, a life that belonged to someone else. I’d never even been kissed, and that seemed the worst thing, suddenly—that I would never know what it felt like to be in love.

  “There’s a supper tomorrow night at the Devlins’,” Mama went on patiently. “A small thing, meant to welcome back Patrick.”

  “Patrick’s back from Ireland?”

  I had known the Devlins all my life. Mr. Devlin’s business—Devlin Hatters and Tailors—had been in friendly competition with Knox’s Clothing Emporium, and our families were close. Aidan and I had played with Patrick and his younger sister, Lucy, when we were children. But after Patrick’s father had died in a carriage accident four years ago, he’d gone to Ireland to learn the business.

  “He returned a few weeks ago,” Mama said. “There will be several people there. Some of his friends but also more important men.”

  Richer men.

  “You’ll wear the dove-gray silk,” Mama added, as if I had a choice, as if it wasn’t my only supper gown.

  I turned away from her and made my way blindly from the parlor and up the stairs. I wanted to lock myself in my room and scream.

  But even as I thought it, I knew I would never do it. The way things were going, it would only bring the police and the neighbors, and wouldn’t that be one more perfect thing to add to an already exceptional day?

  I was halfway down the hall when I heard my grandmother’s weak call. I wanted to ignore her. Let her call Mama. But then Grandma called again, and, obedient as ever, I went to her room.

  It was as empty as the others. A bed and a nighttable and a chair and nothing more. It was hot, too, and stuffy, with that closed-in invalid feel. No fresh air ever reached this room—my grandmother would not allow the windows to be opened. It was dangerous with all the fairies and creatures running about, she said often. What had once been charming childhood stories were only exhausting nonsense now.

  The room was dark, the calico curtains closed against daylight or moonlight. I went to her bedside table and lit a guttered tallow candle. “A little light would be nice, Grandma,” I said with false cheer. “Why do you sit here in the dark?”

  “Sit down, mo chroi,” she said, her accent still heavily Irish though she’d been in this country forty years. My heart. The endearment warmed me, as always.

  I did as she asked, and she grasped my hand with her wrinkled, bony one. Her gray hair lay in a straggling braid over her shoulder; her nightcap was askew, the ribbons trailing over her sunken cheek. But her eyes were lively. She had dark eyes, like mine. Black Irish, she would say to me. There’s good to come of that, mo chroi, you’ll see.

  “Your head hurts,” she said.

  “I did have another headache. But it’s gone now.”

  “They’ve come. ’Tis the reason.”

  She had been saying things like this more and more often. I feared that one day I would enter this roo
m to find her completely fallen into madness.

  “I hear them.” Her gaze went distant. “Such confusion.”

  “I—”

  She gripped my hand hard. “The hunting horn. Did you blow it?”

  “No. Why would I? You told me not to. And it’s gone anyway, Grandma. Aidan lost it in a bet. Weeks ago now.” I wondered even as I said it why I told her the truth.

  “Aidan . . . lost it?” Her brow furrowed.

  “He said he’d try to win it back,” I reassured her, though the chances of that were as good as me stumbling into a leprechaun and a pot of gold in our backyard. I would never see that horn again.

  “You will find it, mo chroi. You’ll be the saving of us all.”

  “Yes.” I tried to smile. “Mama’s planning my debut as we speak. I’m to find a husband. I expect that will turn everything around.”

  My grandmother shook her head. “No, lass—”

  “Yes,” I said firmly. “I’m quite resigned to it. So you see, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  Grandma went silent. I rubbed my thumb over her swollen knuckles. So frail. I remembered when she had nearly frightened me with how alive she was, when she had seemed somehow bigger than everything else in the world.

  And now she was just an old woman confined to bed, and I was afraid. I couldn’t bear to think of her in a poor asylum. She would die there.

  She whispered, “Do you see them, lass?”

  “See who?”

  She squeezed my hand again, not answering, and then she closed her eyes. I sat with her, watching the moonlight creep past the crack in the curtains, slanting across the floor—a tiny glowing sliver.

  I felt its call just as I always had. There was something about moonlight, as if it were sent just for me, as if it were a voice in my head saying, Come. I’ve something for you. Come.

  I laid Grandma’s hand on her chest, which barely rose and fell as she slept, and I went quietly from her room. My mother had gone to bed already; there was no light downstairs. Who knew where Aidan had gone?