“Really?” I asked, bemused. “He’s helpful?” My father was excitable, irresponsible, a little touched in the head. I had some trouble imagining him as an analytical genius.
Leander raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I would involve him if he wasn’t?”
I raised my eyebrow right back. My father might be helpful, sure, or he might just be the audience for Leander’s magic show. With Holmeses, you never really knew where you stood.
Next to me, mine was ripping up her biscuit. “Yes, but the bruises. And the kissing.”
“Deep cover,” her uncle said in a dramatic voice. “Deep, deep cover.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Then why are you here, in England? Not that I’m not happy to see you.”
Leander stood and gathered our plates. “Because your father has contacts I can’t gain access to through my illegitimate means. And because I wanted to get a good look at Jamie, here, since the two of you are now attached at the hip. Morning and night, apparently.”
Holmes shrugged, her shoulders thin under her shirt, and she brought a sliver of biscuit to her mouth. I watched her, the line of her arm, how her lips still looked bee-stung from the night before. Or was I imagining that detail, coloring it in because I needed to make it a story, to see cause and effect where there wasn’t any?
She’d almost kissed me. I’d wanted her to. Everything was fine.
“If it matters at all,” Leander said from the sink, rolling up his sleeves, “I approve.”
Holmes smiled at him, and I smiled at him, because neither of us knew what to say.
It was like the night before existed in some other universe. A lone hour in a sea of awkwardness where we could talk to each other the way we used to, and now that it was over, we were adrift again.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED SLOWLY, AS MOST PUNISHMENTS do. During the day, I read the Faulkner novel I’d brought in a sunny alcove off the servants’ quarters. Those rooms stood mostly empty now, so I didn’t have to worry about being found. Which was a relief. I’d run out of things to say to Holmes’s parents fairly quickly. Even if I found her mother terrifying, I didn’t hate her. She was ill and worried about her daughter.
Then Alistair told us that Emma’s condition had begun to deteriorate. She stopped eating meals with us. One night before dinner, I found Leander giving directions to nursing staff as they hauled a hospital bed in through the front door.
“I thought she had fibromyalgia,” Holmes murmured over my shoulder. “Fibromyalgia doesn’t require a live-in team. I thought—I thought she was getting better.”
I managed not to jump. She’d taken to doing that, to ghosting at the edges of whatever room I was in, and then, as soon as I noticed her, giving an excuse and running away. So I didn’t say anything, didn’t try to comfort her, just watched Leander grimace as the orderly crashed the bed into the doorframe.
Upstairs, a man’s raised voice said, But the offshore accounts—no, I refuse. Was it Alistair’s? A door slammed.
It didn’t matter. By the time I turned to her, Holmes was already gone.
I found Leander later in the living room. “Living room” might have been too friendly a name for what it was—a black sofa; a low, expensive-looking table; a cowhide rug beneath them. I’d been prowling the halls, looking for my absent best friend, and found her uncle and mother instead.
I was surprised. A hospital bed had just come through the front door, and I’d expected that she’d be in it. But no—she was on her back on the sofa, the heels of her hands pressed against her forehead, while Leander loomed over her.
“This is the last favor I’ll do for you,” he was saying, in a low, furious voice. “For the rest of our lives. This is the last one. I want you to understand that. No school tuition. No bailouts. You could have asked me for anything, but this—”
She dragged her hands down her face. “I know what the word ‘last’ means, Leander,” she said, and in that moment, she sounded exactly like her daughter.
“So when?” he asked. “When will you need me?”
“You’ll know,” Emma said. “We’re almost there.” At that, she stood, swaying on her feet. Like all the soft parts of her had shriveled away, leaving a dusty, exhausted shell.
Leander noticed it, too, reaching out a hand to steady her, but she held up a hand in warning. With slow, labored steps, she left the room.
“Hello, Jamie,” Leander said, his back still to me.
“How did you know it was me?” I said lightly. “You all need a different party trick. I almost expect that one now.”
“Sit,” he said, and motioned me over to the sofa. “Where’s Charlotte?”
I shrugged.
“I thought it might be like that,” he said.
“Is everything okay with Mrs. Holmes?” I asked, in an attempt to change the subject.
“No,” he said. “That’s obvious, though. Tell me—I’ve been in touch with your father, of course, but I’d like to hear it from you—how’s your family doing? How is your darling little sister? Is she still into Your Little Sparkle Ponies, or whatever they’re called? James misses her something awful.”
“Shelby’s good,” I said. “She’s past the sparkle ponies and on to painting portraits of dogs. Starting to look at secondary schools near our flat.”
Leander smiled at me. “James was making noises about having her sent to Sherringford. It might be nice to have you both in the same place. Do Sunday dinners. Go mini-golfing on the weekend. Or to the roller rink. Roller rinking is a family activity, right?”