Glimmering

The girl yawned. Watching her, Jack wondered how he could have ever mistaken her for the child from his dream. She was obviously older, and obviously female. There was a piquant, almost hungry sharpness about her features: hollow cheeks and small pinched nose, black slit of a mouth. No jewelry save a simple gold ring. There was nothing remotely pretty about her, save those deep-set slanted eyes, so deep a blue as to be almost purple in the flickering light. Even now, crouched safely on the hearth, she twitched and glanced suspiciously over her shoulder, as though willing him to leave.

Keeley’s voice sounded from the entry room. There was the thump of her walking stick. A moment later she appeared in the doorway.

“Now, dear.” Jack looked up obediently, but his grandmother was staring at the girl. “Larena said she found you some clothes? Let me see if they fit.”

The girl glanced up but didn’t move. “Stand up,” commanded Keeley. “I want to see, she said they were too big.”

The girl got to her feet. The sweater’s sleeves dangled almost to her calves. Keeley shook her head.

“We’ll have to do better than that,” she said flatly. “Did Larena get you something to eat?”

The girl shrugged. “No.”

“Larena!” Keeley turned and pounded her walking stick on the floor. “Larena—”

From upstairs came a shrill reply.

“Larena will make you something.” Keeley swung back around. She reached to tug at the sweater and scowled. “Why ever did she give you that? Mary Anne would have made three of you.”

Keeley regarded her with icy blue eyes. When Larena entered, she turned away.

“Larena dear, see if there’s any of that soup left.”

“Well.” Jack stood. “I guess I’ll check the furnace.”

He headed downstairs, stopping in the basement bathroom to get a surgical mask from the box Emma had given him. Then he went to the coal cellar, a room the size of a big closet, and started shoveling.

It took forty-three shovelsful and the better part of an hour. Once he could have done it in fifteen minutes. Now the effort exhausted him. After a few minutes he had to pause between loads, turning his face from the rising cloud of black dust. He thought of the vial of Fusax on his nightstand. Had it been only yesterday that he felt so much better? He coughed, imagining the girl upstairs: a stranger’s mouth to feed, a stranger’s body soaking up warmth while Jack struggled in the mansion’s bowels like some medieval lackey.

Finally he was done. Sweating, he trudged back upstairs.

He found his grandmother in the living room, sitting in her wing chair with a tumbler of whiskey on the table beside her. No lamps had been lit. The fire had burned down to embers. “How was the furnace, dear? Did it bother your lungs?”

Jack removed his mask and stuffed it in a pocket. He jabbed ineffectually at the embers with a poker, then settled into a chair. “Fine. No trouble this time.”

“Is there enough coal?”

“Plenty. And it will be spring, soon…”

His voice died as he gazed at the window behind his grandmother, whorled with the pulsing greens and purples of an early sunset. “Well, it will be May, anyhow.”

His grandmother nodded and reached for her glass. “Your father was so set on taking that furnace out, back when he put those solar panels in. I don’t remember now how James talked him out of it.”

Jack shook his head, stifling a yawn. “He didn’t. It would have cost too much to remove it, so they decided to just leave it.”

“Lucky thing.” Keeley tugged at the mohair shawl draped across the back of her chair.

“Where’s the girl?”

“Larena put her to bed in Mary Anne’s room. Where did you say you met her?”

“I met her in the backyard. Under the hydrangeas.”

“Under the hydrangeas! How did she get in?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask—she just looked so miserable—”

“Of course, of course.”

“I’ll call someone tomorrow. Emma will know somebody.”

“Have you talked to them? How are they?”

Jack nodded. “A week or so ago. They’ve been busy—well, Emma’s been busy at the hospital, and I guess Jule’s got a few clients in the city. I think it’s hard for them right now—there’s not a lot of work for him…” His voice trailed off.

“Well, doctors are always busier than lawyers,” Keeley said loyally. She loved Jule, who had lived at Lazyland while attending law school at Fordham twenty years before. “People are always getting sick. Especially now.” She sighed. “Did they say when they could come visit?”

“Maybe before too long, if the rain keeps off,” Jack lied. “Emma used all her time off to come take care of me. Every time I talk to them, they want us to move up there with them—”

Keeley shook her head determinedly. “Too far away.”

“I know. They just worry, that’s all.”

“Well, I hope they can find her parents.”

Jack stared at her. “Her parents?” He realized she was talking about the girl. “Oh! Right—”

“She said she lived with someone in the city,” Keeley went on. “I think she was lying. Who would raise a child in the city?”