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By Root 1168 0

girl’s boudoir, you see, when his hide was in trouble. So much for the doting father charade. He’d left letters and other papers on his desk, including a letter to Margaret I found, in which he apologised for everything, not very clear what that meant, said he was going to fix everything and would be gone for a while, would contact her soon, don’t worry, trust Inge for everything in the meanwhile. I had my suspicions where he’d gone, and I was right: as it turned out he was on his way to New York on the sleeper that very night. An Alexandria boat left the next day, see, December 1st. I knew the timetable well: I’d reserved a place on that boat several times in my long, hesitating sojourn in Boston. I wandered the Finneran house, and Inge left an hour or so later, perhaps assuming I was on to watch Sleeping Beauty (or guard the prisoner, depending on point of view).

A few hours later, your aunt was sitting up awake, as if she’d just had a quick nap, not a drugged sleep of the dead. “Oh, it’s you,” she said sullenly and turned away to face the window. She asked me for her coat but didn’t look at me when I gave it to her. She searched it, alternately furious and dazed, scratching at the pockets but then falling asleep for a few seconds at a time. “Can I help you find something?” I asked. “Shut up,” she said and finally found what she’d been looking for, something small enough to hold in her fist. “Bless you, JP,” she said.

Macy, I just reread this long, long letter. It’s taken me the entire damn day to write about my time in Boston, which suits me fine, rather write down this difficult tale than play along with the forced Christmas cheer the rough bastards try to push on us this time of year. Especially since, tonight, it’s not even the usual crew of thugs who run this place but the rare monsters who are pleased to work Christmas, with nothing better to do than clean up after the old and the ill and the batty and slap us around a bit for fun.

I think I mentioned somewhere in here your aunt’s three moods. Well, what to call the third? Maybe it was a real part of her, or maybe just a product of the opium, or maybe it was something about me, something only I brought out of her. Either way, it was ugly. “Get away from me, you,” she shouted, when I tried to hand her a glass of water. “What did you do, Harry? What did you do? Get away from me, you horrible— Just leave me alone. I’m going to JP’s.” But she didn’t move. She wouldn’t look at me.

“There are things you don’t understand, that I have to tell you.”

“Aw, can it. Nothing’s that important. You’ve done your dirty work.”

“That’s not fair.” I desperately tried to get her to listen, to see that I was the unwilling messenger, not the cause of her trouble. I told her Trilipush had betrayed her family, had only pretended to love her, had spent her father’s money to get other people’s money, and now he was running off with the ancient gold he’d dug up, without a thought for her. “He used you, he’s not coming back here. I know you don’t truly care about him and your father forced him on you, so it doesn’t matter.”

She didn’t take this how I’d expected. I’d started to think—I don’t know what I’d started to think. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know anything! I hate you, you make me sick.” And then she was screaming for her father and her nurse, but I knew we were alone in the house, and no one was going to interrupt. She felt she needed to humiliate me. She was calling me some rather horrible names, pushing at the bedcovers like they were choking her, insulting anything about me that caught her anger. I tried to get her quiet is all, for her health, tried to prevent her from hurting herself and throwing things at me, tried to tell her how I felt, that I loved her and she’d be safe with me, that she’d escaped a close call with Trilipush, and I was an honest man who could offer her proper happiness.

Well, some of us aren’t built for love, I know after a long life, Macy, and she didn’t—it pains me to admit even years on—she didn’t stop and look at me with wonder and gratitude,