To Live and To Breathe (Could Be #2)

Chapter 39

Timothy felt a sense of relief as soon as he shut out Thameton and began to climb the stairs leading to his family's rooms. It might be foolish, but he'd had a creeping sensation similar to a dreadful game of hide-and-seek the entire time he'd been traipsing around Thameton with Sam. How long did they have before they caught the murderer's attention? Or was he growing paranoid for nothing?

Mrs. Wright came to meet them the moment they stepped through the door, exclaiming how good it was to see Sam. Timothy took the papers and spread them out on the table while Sam charmed his mother, then Timothy went to St. Vincent's cage and let the parrot out.

He fed him a walnut as he climbed onto his shoulder, earning a, "Thank'ee kindly," from the bird.

"You're in a good mood I see," Timothy said, going back to the table as the bird whooped and flapped in an attempt to hold on.

He sat down next to Sam with a sigh. "All right, remind me what we've got again. Mr. Hund might have an errant brother, Mr. Graham is dead, and Mr. Webb is not the murderer even though he was around both Mr. Basken and Mrs. Armstrong right before they died. Correct?"

"Who's dead?" Mrs. Wright asked, setting a belated bowl of porridge in front of Timothy.

"Another journalist at The Thameton Pry," Sam said cheerfully, before Timothy could warn him to be less helpful.

Mrs. Wright dropped the spoon next to the bowl. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "What happened to him?"

Timothy tried to catch Sam's attention before he terrified his mother out of her wits, but wasn't successful. Sam was too busy looking at Mr. Graham's notes, and oblivious to the existence of things like finer feelings. "Mr. Graham died investigating the Dare Murders," he said as a matter-of-fact. "We're trying to learn who killed him."

Timothy couldn't muster the courage to see what his mother's reaction to all of this was, especially since a sudden silence told him that it wasn't a good one. St. Vincent solved the problem by letting out a screech that made everyone jump. "Help, help, murder!" he cried. "How dare you!"

Sam gaped first at the bird, then at Timothy. "Does he often do that?"

Mrs. Wright settled a pot on the stove with a clatter. "Ever since he came to us," she answered stiffly, and Timothy winced. "Terrible bird. Scares me out of my mind half the time."

Sam finally seemed to notice that Mrs. Wright was rumpled in spirit, and lowered his voice. "Where did he come from?"

"My Aunt Wright died and left us the bird four years ago," Timothy answered, removing St. Vincent from his head rather grumpily. "All the rest of her worldly goods went to the Astors—my cousins' family."

Sam's eyebrows went up. "That dreadful girl and her brother?"

Timothy sighed, taking a bite of porridge. "Unfortunately, yes. Prissy and George—they're the children of my father's sister. Uncle Astor owns a thread-spinning factory that my father used to manage. And—oh." A jumbled piece of something he'd almost forgotten surfaced with a bump. "Prissy told me that a reporter I believe was Mr. Graham had been to interview Uncle Astor, but that he'd turned him away."

Sam sat back, rubbing his chin. He didn't seem surprised. "But why, I wonder? Why would Graham want to interview him?" He fell into a meditative silence for so long Timothy felt justified in going back to reading Mr. Graham's papers while he ate his porridge, but then Sam began again as if he'd never left off. "You said once that your father quit a well-paying job for moral reasons. Am I justified in assuming that your father and Mr. Astor hold different views about the issue of child labor?"

"Yes," Timothy answered slowly, wondering where this was tending and why his mother had suddenly ceased banging dishes around.

"Mrs. Armstrong championed the end of child labor," Sam murmured, almost as if he were talking to himself.

Suddenly Timothy caught his meaning, and he shrank from it as from a dead thing. "No!" he exclaimed, then dropped his voice to a whisper. "No, no, no! The Astors will never act to benefit anyone but themselves, but I can't believe—I won't—" The thought made his skin crawl.

Sam leaned close, glancing over Timothy's shoulder at his mother. "You said yourself that most of your Aunt Wright's living went to the Astors, and the parrot cries murder."

"No, Sam, no," Timothy repeated. "You don't know what you're saying." He stopped, grasping at something, anything, to form a defense with. "They were at the charity ball. Remember? And what do Mr. Basken and Mr. Webb have to do with them? It's preposterous."

"They both worked for your uncle," Sam said, quietly.

The blood pounded in Timothy's ears. "Why Mr. Graham, then? If Uncle Astor didn't interview him, why kill him? He doesn't have any information. It makes no sense. We have to have solid evidence to form an accusation, and it may not be your family name that hangs in the balance, but mine does and I will not soil it without undeniable proof."

Sam must have seen something in Timothy's face that caused him to drop the argument. Timothy was glad. A stormy silence succeeded their quarrel, but Timothy wouldn't change his opinion. A part of him thrilled with fear at Sam's implications. Another part sickened at the thought that his parents would have sacrificed so much and still come out the worse for it just because his uncle's family served only greed.

The rest of the day passed in the fruitless effort to comb through Mr. Graham's notes and find a clue they missed before. When Sam left, Mrs. Wright put away her sewing and joined Timothy at the table.

"Tim," she asked softly, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder the same way she'd done when he was a child. "Do you know that I love you?"

Timothy was still so disturbed by Sam's ideas that it took him several seconds to process what she'd said, but when it finally slid into his brain he scooted his chair back and looked at her with wide eyes. "Yes, mother. Of course." At his lowest points he'd sometimes wondered whether anyone would really miss him if he were gone, but his mother worked tirelessly day after day to make the little attic as homelike as she knew how. She wasn't very good at it—but she did it—and what was love if not trying for someone else's sake?

Mrs. Wright nodded, tears in her eyes. "I thought I'd lost you once before," she said. "And I don't want to do it again. Please, be careful."

She went back to her rocking chair and resumed sewing, but Timothy's throat was too tight to force any reply. He sat there for several minutes fiddling with the thread on the sleeve of his shirt, wishing he could say the words back. He wanted to—he wanted to so badly. But something kept them stuck in his heart.

Miserable with self-reproach, he got up and limped into the pantry, striking a match with trembling hands and almost burning himself as he lit the candle. His story was scattered over the shelf, full of useless words tending nowhere, but he swept it aside and pulled out a new sheet of paper. The urgency was now.

He could scarcely get the cap off the ink or dip his pen in it, but when he did he wrote, frantic to unburden himself. He wrote of his fears and his hopes, his anger and confusion and what few things he was certain of. At the end, as his words subsided, bottled up as they had been and spewed in melancholy disarray, he wrote what he'd wanted to tell his mother like a child at lessons. He had to write it to tell himself that what he felt was real.

"I love you," he wrote, for mother.

"I love you," he wrote, for father.

"I love you," he wrote, and stopped, frightened at the name that leapt unbidden to his mind. The idea of a young Mrs. Wright was an apparition that had not visited him before.

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When I wrote What Is and Could Be I had no idea why St. Vincent screamed, "How dare you!" so it was interesting to explore the possible causes of that occurrence in To Live and To Breathe.