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?”
They sat in silence for several minutes. Then, Jack asked, “What was that Irish word you used before, Grandmother? Like ‘banshee’—?”
Keeley tilted her head, as though listening to faraway music.
“Lunantishee, you mean? That’s what your grandfather used to call me. They were fairies of some kind, I don’t remember. Pretty girls. That’s all I meant.” She looked at him. “Why don’t you go check on her on your way upstairs, dear. Thank you.”
He was being dismissed. “All right. Maybe I’ll try calling Emma tonight—the phone was up a little while ago.”
“Very good, dear.”
He stood and stared out the window. Beyond the line of the Palisades a molten glow lingered, sending ruddy flourishes across the rain-swollen Hudson. Jack felt the strange blurry sensation that overcame him sometimes, when some bright fleck of his childhood surfaced and the terrible weight of the poisoned sky momentarily lifted. Almost he could imagine the sun bulging red upon the western horizon; almost he could see the first stars showing through, and the glitter of electric lights in distant skyscrapers. A spark of gold leapt across the darkness and Jack’s heart with it, as upon its promontory overlooking the Hudson the skeletal arches of the Sparkle-Glo factory blazed with sunset.
And then it was gone. A blast of wind shook the window as a rain squall swept through, bringing with it sheets of coruscating yellow and acid blue. The sun disappeared, swallowed by brilliant gouts of green. Day had ended, but there was no night, only a tumult of hail against glass.
“Good night.” Jack kissed his grandmother’s cheek and left.
On the second-floor landing a candle burned within a glass mantle. There was the creak of a shutter that had gotten loose, the tired exhalation from a hot-air register. Jack debated going straight up to bed, but then he heard a small sound from the bedroom that had been his aunt Mary Anne’s. He peered inside. A hurricane lamp cast its glow across the huge old four-poster. He could barely make out a lump beneath the spread.
“Knock knock.” He rapped softly at the door. “Can I come in?”
“Okay,” a muffled voice replied.
“Uhumm.” He cleared his throat. “Are you—how are you feeling?”
The bed loomed before him, an eighteenth-century cherry four-poster complete with white chenille spread and canopy. An alpine array of pillows marched across its head; at its foot a down comforter waited like an immense nougat to be devoured at need. Somewhere in between was the girl. He could hear her breathing, uneven and noisy.
But it was another minute before he could pinpoint a bulge beneath the worn chenille, neither long nor wide enough to form a decent bolster, with a faint feathering of silver where her hair tufted from beneath the blankets. He could make out her slanted eyes staring at him with a ferocity that might have been fear or just fatigue.
“I feel like shit,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately aware of how un-sorry he sounded. He asked in a gentler voice, “Can I get you anything?”
“No.”
This time the voice sounded distinctly like a sob. It would have been nice if the sound had torn at Jack’s heart, but in fact it annoyed him—everything about this girl annoyed him—and that in turn made him feel guilty.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. He traced a raised diamond on the bedspread, trying hard not to stare at the sharp little face an arm’s length away. “Can’t I get you something? Some milk maybe?”