To Live and To Breathe (Could Be #2)

Chapter 53

It was a relief to suggest that they go outside, where, after a series of blunders in etiquette, they decided that she would go on ahead and he would meet her there. He didn't understand himself with her. Mary's presence drove everything sensible out of his head and left him only tongue-tied and wondering how he'd got there. Timothy was more than glad to depart, carrying a slip of paper upon which Mary's friend Edith had written the O'Connors' address.

He was even more pleased to find that his parents had not yet arrived home. It was their absence that had occasioned the difficulty of how to proceed, but at least now he wouldn't have to explain the notes he'd left them. St. Vincent, however, protested the moment Timothy tried to submit him to the indignity of a shoelace.

"Help, help, murder!" he shrieked.

Timothy put him back in his cage but left the door open, wishing now for another pair of hands. "You feathered ingrate! I'm the one that feeds you walnuts every day, and you think I'm trying to murder your now? Tsk, tsk, sir."

"Tsk, tsk, sir!" St. Vincent croaked, pulling his foot out of Timothy's grasp the moment the lace came near it.

"Tsk, tsk, yourself, you overgrown feather duster!" Timothy retorted. "You're going to make a young girl's day, and you won't cooperate. If she knew what you're really like, she wouldn't be putting us both out right now."

After several minutes of struggling with the parrot, Timothy was struck by inspiration and fed him a walnut. While the bird was engaged in eating it, he tied the knot, and cinched it tight enough that St. Vincent couldn't pull his foot out. Thusly armed, Timothy went back downstairs with the bird flapping on his shoulder, and astonished the cabby waiting for him at the bottom.

Half an hour later, the cab brought him to a dreary part of town with the kind of alleys that Timothy thought could easily harbor the sort of villain he and Sam had just exposed. Since he didn't want to repeat the experience of being clubbed, he thanked the cabby and stepped out of the vehicle with his eyes and ears about him, wondering that the O'Connors could live safely in such a place. The address on the paper led him down a narrow, crooked little side street, and his pilgrimage ended at a sunken doorway.

He stopped on the doorstep, stomach suddenly hollow. What was he doing here? What was he thinking? Was he thinking? These people knew him as the crippled boy that had forced a friendship with their daughter, and now here he was forcing his presence upon them all. Oh, God.

He was just on the cusp of retreating to collect his wits, when the door opened and Mary poked her face out as if to see whether he was coming or not. He almost fell off the step.

"Come in! Come in!" she exclaimed with a start, holding the door wide. Timothy forced his legs to obey him, though he felt he was going to be sick. Don't let me trip.

"I brought the talking mattress," he said, then wished he'd said anything else. Surely he should have said something about the weather! Or perhaps he should have introduced himself to her parents. Charmed her siblings with St. Vincent?

Mary grinned at the bird, then shut off all escape by closing the door and feeding him to her family. All nine of them were introduced so fast it made his head spin. He'd known the O'Connors had many children, but to see such a crowd belonging to one household was another thing entirely. He was never afterwards sure what he said, but suddenly he was shaking Mr. O'Connor's hand and getting the breath squeezed out of him in the most delightful way possible by Mrs. O'Connor. His mother never hugged like that.

Whatever he'd done must have been passable, because a lanky little freckle-faced girl separated herself from the rest and gazed with undisguised admiration at St. Vincent. "He's beautiful!" she breathed.

"Marvelous creature," St. Vincent croaked, scratching an eye composedly. Timothy laughed before he could stop himself.

"Kathleen has talked of nothing else since Mary arrived," Mrs. O'Connor explained. She was a short, plump woman somewhere near fifty with graying streaks in her red hair. Timothy could see Mary reflected in her mother's face.

"Really!" This was not at all surprising given what Mary had told him, but he knelt down on the floor with St. Vincent and beckoned for her to come near. "Would you like to hold him? He's a frightful chatterbox, but I think he'd like you."

Kathleen clapped both hands over her mouth, then gave a tiny little nod and crept closer, bare feet pattering over the floor. When St. Vincent crab-walked onto her arm, she squealed, eliciting a shriek from the bird. "Hallelujah!"

Timothy gave her the lace, then stood with some difficulty. "Hold tight to that now, I think he'd be hard to get down from the rafters if he decided to roost there."

Kathleen giggled and tickled St. Vincent under the chin. "Aren't you a pretty bird!"

"Don't spoil him," Timothy snorted. "He'll be insufferable at home."

"Tsk, tsk, sir!" St. Vincent screeched, and the youngest half of Mary's siblings departed with their favorite visitor in a peal of laughter.

As soon as they were gone, Mary showed Timothy to a seat, and Mrs. O'Connor brought him tea. The look of dismay on Mary's face as soon as she realized what her mother had done was almost enough to make amends for having to drink leaf water. Timothy was just taking a sip when Mr. O'Connor terrified him by sitting down beside him with an air of purpose.

"We've enjoyed the stories you put in the paper, we have," Mr. O'Connor said, and Timothy almost choked.

"I'm glad to hear it," he replied when he could stop coughing. Timothy rested the drink on his knee lest he take another badly-timed sip, and wondered if those first attempts at writing would ever stop haunting him. Perhaps they would if they'd stayed safely locked away in a drawer somewhere.

Mr. O'Connor was a big man, with the advantage of gray-flecked red whiskers to stroke. "Are you still writing?"

Timothy watched the steam wreath out of his cup, heart suddenly heavy. All around him was happiness—Kathleen was the queen of the hour in a corner surrounded by her fascinated younger siblings, while Mary and a gangling brother helped Mrs. O'Connor to get dinner on the table in a flurry of spoons and plates. It was warm here, in more ways than one. "Yes," he said, returning to the conversation reluctantly. "Though it's mostly news articles now."

"Do you now!" Mr. O'Connor exclaimed, Veridan brogue coming through stronger in his amazement. It reminded Timothy of the wisp of a girl in the garden, shocked to see her employer's son finding solace in a book. "Have you written anything on the murders?"

"I did, a time or two," Timothy admitted, unwilling to set the O'Connors' in an uproar with the whole truth. Sometimes his memories seemed to belong to someone else. Surely he hadn't done those things—not the Timothy that was just now quietly drinking tea. It didn't add up.

"Right then," Mary's voice was a welcome intrusion on the conversation. She appeared next to Timothy, beckoning them both to dinner. "Mum has sent me to tell you that the soup isn't getting any readier."

Timothy was glad to leave the conversation and see where Mary had learned the culinary arts so well that she became the cook's assistant at the Lancasters'. The rough table was barely long enough to seat all of them without a visitor, but with the addition of Timothy it became distinctly crowded. Elbows knocked into arms, and no one thought anything of reaching. There was one brown loaf of bread to go for all eleven of them, and one moderately-sized pot of soup to do the same.

But the fire was so warm, and the dinner so willingly given, that no one minded.

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Timothy's relationship with St. Vincent was subconsciously inspired by my cat, who only really likes me (not the rest of my family) and is a lovable stinker by nature.

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