“Dr. Cliffton,” George says, stepping forward, “I know you’re looking for a Variant for the music, and I was wondering if you might be open to a few ideas I have?”
“Certainly,” Dr. Cliffton says. “Your mother has mentioned that you have quite the scientific mind. Perhaps with it, we’ll reach the answer in half the time.” He turns to Will. “Can we finish that discussion another time? Or would you care to join us?”
Will looks at George, then back at me. He scratches at his eyebrow.
“No, that’s okay,” he says.
Dr. Cliffton reaches into his bag to show George a book stuffed an inch thick with notes. “I’ve collected ideas for a decade in anticipation of this. Almost a thousand so far.”
George holds up his single sheet of paper. “I’ve come up with . . . this.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Cliffton says, taking it from him. “We’ll add it.” He stuffs it into the book and gestures George into the library. “I feel strongly that it must be in here. Let’s get started.”
The door closes behind them.
Will and I are left standing in the foyer. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since Disappearance Day. Since he asked Eliza to go to the Christmas Ball.
“Hi,” he says, setting down his toolbox.
“Hello,” I say stiffly.
He reaches into his back pocket. “I stopped by the post office on the way home,” he says. “This came for you.”
He hands me a folded envelope inked with Father’s handwriting.
I rip it open on the spot and skim through his words about noon mess and calisthenics and jellyfish and a sun so bright it’s sent men to the infirmary with burns. I can barely imagine how far away he must be from me now—?here, the clouds hang low and gray with threatening snow. Still, I slump against the railing with relief.
Will lingers next to me. “Is everything all right?”
I give him a short nod and turn away without elaborating.
“Swell . . .” This time, his tone returns my coolness.
I’m heading upstairs to leave the letter on Miles’s bed when there’s a sudden knock on the door.
Beas stands just outside, shifting her weight.
“I changed my mind?” she says, shrugging, and I smile and throw the door open wide to let her in.
I give Beas a tour of the house, and we settle on the floor of my room. She hands back my Underwoods. “It was good.”
“Pick another,” I say, gesturing at my meager shelf. She examines my worn copies, and when she selects Yeats, I pull out my mother’s Shakespeare book.
Occasionally we hear the library door open as Genevieve brings tea. “I’ve already crossed off these twelve,” Dr. Cliffton says. “And I’m organizing the rest by materials we need to procure.”
George is starting to read down the list when my eyes fall back to King Henry the Eighth.
“Bid the music leave.”
I lean forward and read the words again as I uncap my pen. I add a circle around the words, as if I’m wreathing them with a crown.
Then I unfold the list I’ve made and add my latest find. It joins my last entry from The Tempest, the one about everything on this great globe dissolving, fading, leaving not a rack behind.
“What are you doing?” Beas asks, peering over my shoulder.
There are so many circled passages. All the things Mother found, and more that I discovered after her. My list now stretches to two pages. Taken altogether, laid out like this, a picture is starting to emerge.
“Dr. Cliffton said that most of the Variants seem to have literary clues,” I say vaguely. “Many found in Shakespeare.”
