“Listen to me. And take off those gloves. You look ridiculous.”
He folds his gloved hands across his chest in defiance.
“What is this about you stealing things at school?” I say. “And now you’re getting into fights? What are you thinking?”
“You would have wanted me to fight him, too.” Miles’s pencils scatter across the floor when he rises to his full height—?already half an inch taller than he was when we arrived just a few months ago. “Walt and the others are always coming at me, saying everything is Mother’s fault. I’m tired of people calling her a witch and a liar.”
I want to scream. At him. At everyone.
“Yes,” I say through my teeth. “He sounds like a jerk. That doesn’t mean you can fight him. Next time, go tell the teacher.” Miles rolls his eyes at this suggestion.
“And stealing, Miles?” My voice is rising. “Don’t you know they might make us leave?”
“I don’t care.” His voice climbs to match my own. “Who cares what they think?” His fury builds in waves. “You would just let them say those things about her, wouldn’t you? If you really loved her . . .” His lower lip curls, and I blink for a second, wondering if he might cry.
Instead, he narrows his eyes. With the aim of a perfectly thrown dart that would have made Father proud, he spits out the words:
“The finishing word is traitor.”
It’s the final push that sends me over the edge, as if he’s done it with that small gloved hand.
“If I really loved her,” I say coldly, “I would do whatever I could not to embarrass her memory. Do you hear me, Miles? You are embarrassing her. And you embarrass the Clifftons. And you embarrass me.”
He is silent, and for a moment I think I’ve won. But then he says the words quietly, just under his breath, almost to himself but not quite.
“She loved me more than you.”
It pricks me to the core. Because I’ve always known it to be true.
I hurry out of the sunroom and plow straight into Will. “Sorry,” I mutter, my hand finding the bump of my ear. His blue eyes are so soft and warm when he looks at me that I wonder how much he overheard.
I run to write Cass, the ink pouring out my frustrations all across the page. It feels so good to write her the truth about something. I can tell her about Miles, and I know that out of everyone, she will understand. She can take my side without losing her affection for him.
I’m signing my name under three long pages when I hear the muffled noise of Miles crying in his room. The sound of it wrenches my heart, even as I watch his second chance to start over in Sterling unspooling in front of me.
Another glass he’s tipping over, just beyond my reach.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Date: 5/16/1942
Bird: Bearded Vulture
The bearded vulture finds bones to drop from heights and break apart so the marrow is exposed. Unlike other vultures, the bearded has a revulsion to rotten flesh. It wants fresh prey, so it will sometimes attack things that are still living. Even by pushing them off cliffs.
I knew Phineas was sick. But it took so long for us to find each other and finally get on our feet. There should be a balance to suffering. And I’ve paid more than my share already.
It is as though Juliet can sense these thoughts and my anger building like a storm. Even after all these years.
“I’m so happy to hear from you,” she writes in response to my letter.
I have no idea if she means it. I skim over the rest—?the parts about how she’s married. Has two children now.
I shove my desk clean and sit down to reply. At the end I inquire about the Stone. I don’t tell her about Phineas’s theory of the Disappearances. I just ask if she’d be willing to send it back.
After I post the letter, I cannot sit around hearing the coughs that are sucking Phineas’s insides out. He resists any of my research on alternative treatments for him. So I hire a maid, Laurette, who clomps around like a small horse, dusting and vacuuming and driving Phineas crazy with her constant complaining. Then I set off for Sheffield and throw myself with renewed vigor into finding something in my experiments. Anything to live for other than Phineas.
There are days when I think I am creeping closer to it. I inject collections of chemicals, herbs, narcotics, vials of different mixtures and potencies into the mice. Sometimes they convulse, mostly they die. But sometimes, with my latest tweaks, they become very, very calm and peaceful. Attain a state that’s almost dreamlike. That’s what I want to isolate and remove. I want to act like a sponge, soaking it all up and out of their minds to wring out whenever it proves most useful.
