The melody came again, this time elongated.
“Studying?” Patrick read aloud.
Theodore and Nina shared a look, his eyes popping open and his jaw slackening, lost in some memory.
“Yes,” Nina answered heavily. “We’re studying.”
Patrick wondered if Mrs. Trunk was in fact addled, or if the passing of so many years had simply blended them all together while she collected her wares and curated her piles of junk, oblivious to the turning of the earth.
Mrs. Trunk had pasted the wound and covered it in gauze. She wrapped a clean bandage around Theo’s waist, smacked his hands away when he tried to touch it.
She held out a dusty vial then, on it the wordsBLUFF TINCTUREreflecting light from the window.
Theo hesitated to take it.
“Drink it, Theo,” Nina said.
Like a dog greedy for the approval of his master, he did.
Without another word, Mrs. Trunk turned and began her slow progression to a slight stairwell in the back of the shop, between an overladen china cabinet and a silent grandfather clock. She indicated for them to follow.
Patrick saw John take one last glance at the piano, his finger reaching toward the keys. He was beaten to the punch by a single note.
No.
Mrs. Trunk’s upstairs apartment was much like her shop: cluttered with odd assortments of things, too cramped by far. There was a minuscule kitchen, a tea table with two chairs, shelves of pottery and candlesticks, a boarded floor covered in a faded red rug, and a settee. Nina helped Theo limp to it and lay down there, where he closed his eyes immediately, the dose of bluff taking effect. He was snoring within moments, and Nina looked down at him with concern etched in her brow, her hands pressing anxiously on her hips.
“He’ll recover, won’t he?” she asked aloud. To whom, it wasn’t clear.
Mrs. Trunk showed the rest of them to two spare bedrooms piled with newspapers and books with peeling covers. There were two iron beds with lumpy mattresses per room, a skinny window that wouldn’t open, empty candlestick holders on the sill, wax gumming them to the paint.
Mrs. Trunk shuffled the girls into one room, then Patrick and his father to another, like they were schoolchildren being herded into dorms. When Patrick looked over his shoulder to watch the back of Nina disappear through the door, Mrs. Trunk put a finger to the side of his head and turned his face away, shaking her head, her messaging clear. She gave them bowls of water and towels to clean with, brought them tea and toast. Patrick ate and drank unconsciously. He tried to lie down but found it unbearable. Instead, he settled for trying to open the jammed window, pressing vehemently against the hinges.
His father chuckled behind him. “Like a caged animal,” he said fondly. “You always were. You and your brothers.”
Patrick glanced over his shoulder. John was shirtless, washing his faceover the bowl, his beard dripping rivulets. He looked about the room as though it was of great interest to him, and Patrick couldn’t understand how he wasn’t jumping out of his own skin.
“It’s been weeks now,” Patrick said, throwing his shoulder against the window frame. It didn’t budge. “Weeks since the attack on Kenton. Since they took all the bluff.”
“Your brothers are there, Patty,” John said. “They’ll hold down the fort just fine till you return.”
“Tillwereturn,” Patrick corrected, pausing in his assault against the window, looking once more to his father.
John was drying his face with a towel. “Yeah,” he said. “Till we return.”
Patrick shook his head. “Gunner’s not right in his head,” he said. “He’s worse than you’d remember. I couldn’t keep him away from the hawkers. And Donny’s just a kid.”
“He’s no more a kid thanyouare,” John told him. “And their mother ain’t gonna let ’em go astray. She’ll kick him in the arse if need be.”
“The trades’ll be slowin’,” Patrick continued, pressing the tips of his fingers into the window crevasses until his fingers turned white and his nails protested. “If they haven’t stopped already. There’s debts, and not a lick of bluff to trade with.”
“There’s coal,” John said prosaically. “Your brothers’ll hold ’em off till the end of winter at least.”
“It won’t be enough,” Patrick argued, an ache forming behind his eyes.
“Then they’ll throw their weight around, Patty. They know the business.”
“This should concern you,” Patrick said, pinching the bridge of his nose and cinching his eyes shut to stave off the pain. “You should be worried for them. For Ma.”
