To Live and To Breathe (Could Be #2)

Chapter 18

Timothy immediately regretted giving Sam enough information to know his confidant had been a female, because for the rest of the long cab ride to the office he interrogated Timothy about what the object of his unrequited love was like. Timothy evaded all answers, and was very near throwing himself out the window to escape Sam's unmerited assumptions, when they finally arrived back at the office and he had the practical excuse of an article to write. He was beginning to suspect that Sam had not left Elesol because his mother brought him to Solarium. It was more likely that he'd annoyed the residents of the New World enough that they tossed him back to the motherland like an unwanted fish.

Sam proved only manageably exasperating during the article-writing process, and when they were done and he went to deliver the product of their combined labor to Lyman, Timothy's attention wandered to a paper someone had left on the table next to him. It was open to the death notices, and as he scanned it he wondered how many of the men and women listed there had known their end would come so soon. His gaze alighted on an illustration about two-thirds of the way down the page and he frowned at it. Something was struggling to surface in the back of his mind.

It was one word: dare. As he read the notice directly above it, he realized it was for Henry Basken, the murdered man they'd been investigating. That was surprising, but not completely unexpected—as was the illustration of the word Mr. Hund had said was left on the table after Mr. Basken passed. But it was the word itself, which the paper claimed was reproduced with photographic detail, that disturbed him.

The letters were sharp, jagged, and printed. They looked nothing like any handwriting that he could recognize, but it was familiar somehow. He picked up the paper and studied it more closely, trying to capture that elusive something in the back of his mind. He thought that if he waited it might come to him, but the distracting chink of thalers on the table next to him broke his train of thought and it fled back into the darkness like a frightened rabbit.

Sam peered over his shoulder and furrowed his brow. "See anyone you know?" he asked.

"Only Mr. Basken," Timothy replied, then sneezed and offered him the paper while he dug out a handkerchief. He gestured at the illustration. "Have you ever seen handwriting like this before?"

Sam squinted at it for a moment, then handed it back with a shrug. "Can't say as I have. But we've earned ourselves another two thalers and fifty pence apiece, so I don't think that information was necessary for our article."

Timothy pocketed the thalers absently, tearing the illustration out of the paper. "No, that wasn't what I was thinking of—it looks familiar somehow, but I can't say where I've seen it before."

Sam looked mildly alarmed after this piece of information, and Timothy didn't realize until too late that he'd just claimed familiarity with a murderer's handwriting. "I don't know who it belongs to, but I've seen it before," he amended hastily. Seeing that Sam did not seem reassured, he blew his nose and changed the subject before he could damage his reputation farther. "I won't be coming here tomorrow," he said instead, folding the paper carefully. "I—I have a previous engagement."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Did we walk too far today?"

"No," Timothy shook his head, then feigned interest in a dead fly lying by the threshold of the door as he slipped the scrap of paper in his pocket. He was too tired to be annoyed by the question. "It isn't that. Good evening." He could have used his cold as an excuse, but that wouldn't have been honest either.

That night he made his habitual stop in the pantry and tried to write, but made little progress beyond finding a more comfortable way to hold his head in his hands. On top of that, his knee ached, his nose wouldn't stop running, and St. Vincent hung upside down from a shelf and shouted synonyms for "said," which did little to aid his concentration. Timothy regretted the day that he'd thought teaching them to him was a good idea. Eventually he'd learn that teaching him anything at all was a mistake, but today was not that day.

"Whisper!" cried St. Vincent in a tone that was anything but.

Timothy shook his fist at the bird and frowned at the paper. He'd written all of three words, but knew he'd have to force himself to keep going or else he'd never get anywhere.

St. Vincent croaked, dropping to a lower shelf to nibble Timothy's hair. "Mutter!"

Timothy pushed him away absently. "I'll give you something to mutter about," he grumbled, re-reading the last three paragraphs for the hundredth time. He couldn't get the image of William being taken away out of his head, but he didn't know how to incorporate it.

"Announce!" St. Vincent climbed onto Timothy's head.

Timothy removed him to another shelf and tapped the pen against his lips thoughtfully. Announce. Announcement? William lived in a shack by the river, sharing it with an old fisherman that paid little attention to him. A fragment of the old man, dressed in blue oilcloth, flitted across his mind. He was gesturing angrily at William. Timothy looked at his paper again, considering. What if the fisherman announced that he was going to evict William? The problem was why.

"Answer!" St. Vincent screamed, scratching his head noisily.

"I wish I knew it," Timothy muttered, dabbing at his nose with the handkerchief. After another pause, he dipped his pen in the ink and squinted at the wall in front of him. "What's another word for 'run,' St. Vincent?" He didn't actually expect him to answer, but he asked anyway.

The parrot gave a throaty croak. "Skedaddle!"

Timothy dropped the pen, leaving an unsightly splotch of ink on the paper. He groaned, blotting at it uselessly with another sheet, and ruining both. Mary. There she stood in the halls of his memory, framed by a sunlit door and virtuous indecision. He'd told her to come in because he was already disturbed. She'd told him to stop sharpening his wit on himself.

He blew on the ink spots, ignoring St. Vincent when he declared them to be spiders. Timothy didn't know how he'd managed to forget that he'd be seeing her on the morrow, but he gave up writing as a loss, caged St. Vincent, blew out the candle, and limped to bed. He was too distracted now to focus on anything useful.

The springs creaked noisily as he sat down, changed into his nightclothes, and indulged in the bliss of taking off his prosthetic leg—but it was only when he was in bed and planning to remain that way until morning that an idea made it through his stuffy head: he'd tell Mary about the place he was stuck, and maybe she'd know where to go with the story next. She'd already burdened herself with his stories without his help—maybe speaking of it would give him ideas, if nothing else.

It was just ludicrous enough of a concept to strike him at this time of night, and terrifying enough that he lay awake trying to talk himself out of it until nearly midnight.

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When I'm stuck and don't know where to go next with a story, I usually end up talking it out with my (long-suffering) sister.