Page 18 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“Her husband was the one picked up by the Halifax vessel. He was put ashore in Nova Scotia with no money and no papers. It took him thirteen months to get home.” Julian’s voice doesn’t change at all. “She kept a lantern in that window for four hundred and eleven nights. And then she did not need to.”

The silence goes on a beat too long.

“How in hell would you know that?” Arthur Finch says, from the end of the bar, and Julian answers him without any hesitation whatsoever.

“Because it is in the insurance filings in Portland. The Cordelia was underwritten there and the loss was contested, which means someone wrote everything down. There is also a Halifax crew list from 1818 with Rood on it, spelled wrong. The story on this side of the water is better. It is simply not what happened.”

Arthur looks at him for a long moment.

“Huh,” Arthur says, and goes back to his chowder.

For four seconds no one in the Widow’s Lantern does anything at all. Then forty-one people start talking at once, and Wendell Marr is on his feet, and Hollis says four hundred and eleven nights in a choked voice.

I stand there with a ladle in my hand and something hot and enormous turns over under my ribs. My eyes sting and I’m furious about it. I’ve spent my whole life in a town that keeps a lantern burning for people who are not coming back, and this cold, courteous, impossible man just told the whole room, gently, that the waiting ended. That someone came home.

And just like that, Julian’s in. Not tolerated. In. Of course they love him. He gave them a better ending. Old Dennett, who hasn’t said a word all night, leans across two people to ask whether the records say anything about the Prosper, which was his great-great-something’s boat. It turns out they do, and Julian tells him. Old Dennett’s eyes go bright in the lantern light and he grips Julian’s forearm and says thank you, son.

He learned it from records, I tell myself. He said records. Insurance filings. A crew list. He reads old books for fun. That’s all it is.

But there’s a way he says it. He doesn’t say it like a man reciting something he read. He describes the wreck and the rocks and the gale the way you’d describe a road you drove once, a long time ago, in bad weather.

I put the thought down. It’s too big and I’m not ready to pick it up, and anyway Harriet Coyne has just arrived with her chowder in a copper pot she polished specifically to intimidate everyone, and the room shifts its attention to the true drama of the evening.

It’s later, and the anarchy has descended as promised. Bess is officiating the tasting with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice. Rennie has been cleared of the corn incident by a two-thirds majority and is weeping into a napkin. Somebody’s brought a fiddle, because somebody always brings a fiddle. Theo’s pouring drinks, and the lanterns have burned down to that low gold that makes everyone look kinder than they are.

I’ve ended up next to Julian again. Or I’ve ended up next to Julian on purpose. The line between those two things has gotten thin over the course of the evening.

“You did that on purpose,” I say.

“Did what?”

“Made the whole town love you. You could’ve just let us be wrong.”

“The town wasn’t wrong about the storm. Only the aftermath. It’s a cheap gift to give people their story back, only better.”

I look at him. “That’s—” Kind, I want to say and don’t. “That’s a good line.”

“It isn’t a line.”

“No,” I admit. “I don’t think it is.”

The fiddle scratches into something old and quick. Julian watches the room. I watch Julian watch the room, which is becoming a full-time occupation.

“You remember everything,” I say. “Theo’s boat. Old Dennett’s great-great-grandfather’s boat. You met these people once.”

“People tell you a great deal, if you let them. Most of us are only waiting for a turn to speak. If you don’t take the turn, they’ll keep going. And then—” a small shrug “—you simply remember it.”

“Most people don’t.”

“Most people are thinking about themselves. It’s not a flaw. It’s only common.” He says it without any edge, and then gives me a direct look. “You remember things too. You knew Mrs. Abernathy is allergic to shellfish. You knew before the daughter did.”

I laugh, and it comes out more tired than I mean it to. “God. The Abernathys.”

“The disastrous wedding.”

“The disastrous wedding.” I set my spoon down. “Can I complain? I need to complain and Lucy’s heard it all and Theo just says charge them double.”

“Please.”