To Live and To Breathe (Could Be #2)

Chapter 20

Timothy found that telling Mary about his story was harder than he had thought it would be. He'd imagined it would be difficult—embarrassing, even—but attempting to force his scattered thought process into a coherent, linear narrative had proven to be a nearly impossible task. More than once he'd had to retrace his steps and start over because he'd forgotten to mention the significance of a person or place that was vital to the understanding of what he was telling Mary, but in the end he was left only with the overwhelming conviction that he knew too much about William's backstory, and not nearly enough about his future.

Timothy sat back and shoved a distracted hand through his hair, distressed that Mary still seemed at a loss of what to say after he was done. "As you can see, I've completely lost my mind since you knew me last."

Mary's nose wrinkled up with that funny earnestness unique to her. "It's a very sad story, isn't it?" she asked, refusing to acknowledge what Timothy had said. "William's orphaned and driven out of every place he's ever known, without any hope. I'm afraid if I was hearing that read, I might find it too sad to continue."

That stung. "Right then," Timothy said, crossing his arms just as the maid brought them the dishes they'd ordered. In a fit of extravagance, Timothy had paid for both of their lunches with his murder story money. "What do you suggest I do?"

Mary looked with dismay at the size of the meat pie the girl had brought. "Well," she said, turning back to him with an effort. "If you really want my opinion, William needs a friend—a friend that's more cheerful than he is."

Timothy mulled over this new idea, looking at his pie without seeing it. He still wasn't hungry, even if he had spent his hard-earned pence on it. "Friends are hard to come by," he said quietly.

"But not impossible."

Timothy glanced at her and found those wide green eyes trained on him with a searching expression. Reminded forcibly of the handkerchief—and still unable to make heads or tails of that unaccountable incident—he took a sharp breath and plunged into cutting into his pie as if his life depended on it. "All right, supposing he has a friend," he went on, watching the steam burst from the fissure like a miniature volcano, "What do he and this friend do?"

"What does William want?" Mary asked. "We all want something. If he wants something he'll try to get it, and that takes doing."

Timothy put down his fork. Mary had a way of boiling things down to their essence. What does William want? He wanted so many things—belonging, a life, family, love. His stomach twisted, the tortured image of William being thrown out of the fisherman's shack rising unbidden in his mind; the very opposite of everything William was looking for. To narrow down what the poor boy really wanted was almost as difficult as telling Mary about his story had been. "I—don't know."

"What do you want?"

Perhaps she asked it with a view towards helping Timothy decide what he wanted the book to become. Perhaps she was gifted with clairvoyance enough to see that what Timothy wanted might also be what William wanted. Either way, Timothy had just taken a bite of the meat pie, and between a scorched tongue and Mary's question, he nearly choked. He doubled over coughing, unable to clear either his windpipe or his head. What he wanted! What did that have to do with it? "I want," he wheezed, starting when he realized Mary was suddenly crouching next to his side of the booth, "is to live—not just breathe."

Mary's concern melted into an expression of affectionate humor. "If it's all the same to you, the rest of us rather like it when you breathe."

Something welled up inside his chest that Timothy had no name for. She still cared about him—scattered, broken, struggling Timothy. The one who had to take a cab to travel more than a mile. The one who could never seem to settle to practicality because his head was too full of people that only existed in his fancy. The one who had to remind himself to breathe every morning, and yet was still foolhardy enough to hope for more. Here she was, helping him resolve his characters' imaginary problems and not looking at him as if he was due for a trip to the asylum.

To hide his embarrassment Timothy blew his nose, but pulling the handkerchief out of his pocket also knocked a scrap of folded paper out onto the table. He opened it as he put the handkerchief away, unable to remember why he'd thought that piece of paper was worth keeping. Four jagged letters met his eye: dare.

"Oh!" he gasped, staring at Mary over the piece of paper. She'd taken her seat again. "Good afternoon!" The thing struggling to surface through the murk of his memory finally did. He was standing in the dark stuffiness of their house after twilight fell, quieting Mary's fears about a note neither of them knew the meaning of.

Mary looked at him in evident bewilderment. "Are we—done?"

Timothy showed her the paper, and she recoiled against the back of the booth. "It's like the robbery notes!"

He couldn't be mistaken if Mary remembered it too. Timothy stared at the paper while a hundred questions leaped through his mind, but the most important was what had Mrs. Bradley been mixed up in? What horrible fate had his family avoided? "Mary," he tore his gaze from the paper and found her looking at him in alarm. "This is a reproduction of a note found at the scene of a murder I helped to write an article on. It says 'dare.'"

"The Dare Murder!" Mary exclaimed. "You wrote about that? Edith wouldn't stop talking about it. She said it was the thrillingest thing to happen to Thameton in our civilized century."

Timothy didn't know who Edith was or why she had a taste for blood, but he was too distracted by his own questions to let the full impact of what she'd said sink in. "I've got to speak with Mr. Webb again," he muttered, vacantly watching the other patrons of the shop. He'd never thought those notes would ever be linked to murder. His family's ignorance frightened him. What if they'd never ever been connected to anything as innocent as thievery?

"Mr. Webb? What has he got to do with it?" Mary asked, disconcerted.

Timothy frowned. "Sam and I interviewed him for an article following the one about the Dare Murder because he was a witness."

If it was possible, Mary's round eyes grew rounder. "He's going to be attending a charity ball at the Lancasters' tomorrow evening at seven with the Armstrongs, and—"

Timothy looked at her, the beginnings of yet another terrible idea taking shape in his mind. "Who can attend?"

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One of my favorite parts about this story was exploring the re-emergence of the adventurous side of Timothy's personality—the side that got him into trouble as a child.

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