“I fear Leander may be too stupid to survive in the wild,” Simon said with a smirk.
“That may be true,” Effie said. “But even if the weather and/ or his own dullness of mind means it would only be a brief taste of liberation, perhaps he would still rather be free. Perhaps Sally would rather have been free.”
“What has brought on these thoughts?” Simon asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Effie said. “I am being maudlin, I suppose. I was lying awake last night contemplating going home and thinking about the fact that I am alone. And then I thought,Well, at least I have Leander.ButthenI thought,Am I using him as a sort of psychic crutch? Is it fair to keep him inside all the time and locked up nearly all the time?”
“You are not alone,” Archie said. “You have us.”
“Yes.” Effie bowed his head. He did have the boys, and he hadn’t meant to minimize that. In fact, they’d been managing, these past few days, to cheer him somewhat, to start chiseling away at the glass separating them. “I am alone in my family, I meant.”
“As am I,” Simon said.
“Indeed,” Effie agreed. Simon’s elder twin brothers passed unexpectedly years ago, and his mother had yet to get over it, and by extension, her disappointment that Simon had inherited the title. As for Archie, his father passed years ago, and his mother descended further each day into the fancies of her own mind. It was daft to proclaim that he, Effie, was alone in his family when all his immediate relations were alive, whereas the boys had lost parents and siblings.
“I rather think my situation is different, though,” Simon said. “I am alone because my family is indifferent to me. You are alone because your family is cruel to you.”
“Only Father, to be fair.”
Simon shrugged as if he disagreed but wasn’t going to press the matter. Simon wasn’t entirely wrong. Effie had thought, these recent months, about how his mother had been conveniently absent during the worst of his father’s rages.
“Well,” Archie said, “to answer your original question, Leander seems perfectly content to me.”
Yes, Leanderseemedperfectly content. Effie’s mouth was still in the shape of a smile. It was possible toseemperfectly content but notbecontent.
Chapter 13
Editorial Interdependence
You can’t miss what you don’t let yourself want.
Julianna should have heeded her own advice.
If she’d never gone to Brighton, never seen the Pavilion and its wonders, never floated in a blue sea under a blue sky, she wouldn’t have known what she was missing.
If she’d never met Effie, she wouldn’t have known what she was missing.
She ordered herself to stop ruminating. What was done was done. Shehadseen the Pavilion and shehadswum and shehadmet Effie.
And she had been changed by it all.
But some things didn’t change. She tried another precept, one that had held up better to the storms inside her:The magazine above all.
That was still true. It was still a bulwark.
October was done. Mr. Cabot had had a copy ready for her inspection when she arrived, as agreed. She’d made a few corrections, and now it was a week later and she was in the office with her newest creation in hand.
Traditionally, this was the part where she paged through and marveled that everything had come together so well. The chaos—usually but not always of the organized variety—that characterized the production process had been tamed and yielded this: a magazine. The perfect way to pass an evening.
Usually, she felt a pleasant brand of proud exhaustion at this stage.
Now, though? She felt exhaustion, yes. But there was nothing pleasant about it. She merely felt . . . blank. Empty. She wasn’t even particularly proud of October, though she recognized objectively that it was a fine issue. It contained many wonderful stories, and she had even “forgotten” to implement a correction Mr. Glanvil had wanted to make to the moral essay, and though she would pay for it later, she should be feeling that small triumph right now.
She felt nothing.
She tried again, paging through from back to front. “Advice for Married Ladies” ran on the last page, and Effie’s letters, were, as per usual, exquisite. Witty and compassionate and heartfelt.
She thought back to the letter he’d been working on their second-to-last night together. It seemed a lifetime ago. That letter, about whether the writer should spend Christmas at home with her mother, would run in December, along with the castor oil letter, and two or three others. They had gotten to the point where Julianna forwarded Effie a stack of letters and he chose which to respond to, sending them back along with his replies. She printed all that she had room for, and while in the beginning he’d overshot, answering too many letters, over time he had honed his ability to know how many letters to address, and how long to make his collective replies. To wit, October’s four letters fit perfectly onto the column’s page.
