*
Dinner was a quiet affair. Nobody ate with any enthusiasm, poking at their soup. Not a single conversation was struck up. They each remained at the table for long enough to take a few bites, then announced a loss of appetite.
With the Creeks tending to little Norman, and Lucian resting with a concussion, guarded against sleep by a watchful Oliver, the remaining three sat with their bowls pushed aside, twiddling their fingers.
James swallowed the last of his own soup with difficulty, glancing between Alex and Agatha, trying not to make a sound with the clink of his spoon. The silence in the kitchen was stretched tight as the drying deer hide on the back step.
Alex tapped the tabletop and stared into the candlelight with an ugly expression on his face. He hadn’t said a word, nor moved from the table, since that morning.
James watched him for as long as he could bear, while the bulge in his throat grew larger still, then muttered, “You shouldn’t have made him go away.”
Alex started and glanced at James, as though surprised to see him. “What?” he said. The ugly expression on his lips was squeezed into a polite smile.
“You shouldn’t have sent him away.” James’s voice didn’t shudder as it had at first. Now anger had taken hold. Every fibre in his body wanted him to leap up onto the table, to shout and scream.
The polite smile on Alex’s face slipped away as fast as it had come, replaced by a deep frown. “I had to,” he whispered.
“He’s going to get lost.”
“He can’t stay here, James.” Alex sighed and slouched back. “He’s dangerous, as much to us as himself.”
“We can’t just send him away!” James yelled. His chair flew back with a squeal, and then he was on his feet, fists clenched. The rage he felt for Paul came pouring out, directed instead at Alex. “He can’t find food, water. He’ll die.”
Alex’s tone remained even, but James saw his jaw tighten. “James, Paul isn’t like the men you’ve read about in your stories. He’s ill. He would have killed you.”
“He’ll starve out there, and you’re just going to let him. You bastard!”
“James!” Agatha hissed. Open-mouthed, she drew her fingertips to her lips.
James paused. He blinked, then looked down at his clenched fists. The rage drained away at the sight of her, pooling down in his legs. He sighed, looked back to Alex, and pleaded, “If we’re supposed to be saving the world, then how can we leave him? Aren’t people like him the ones we’re trying to save?”
Alex straightened. He said nothing. The ugly purse to his lips returned as he exchanged a look with Agatha. Then he began tapping the tabletop with his finger once more. “Bed time,” he muttered.
“But—”
“Go to bed, James.” Alex didn’t raise his voice, but his brow had fallen low, and a dangerous rumble lurked at the back of his throat. He didn’t turn to meet James’s gaze.
James knew there would be no arguing.
He trudged away without another word and passed into the corridor. From the bedrooms he could hear the others whispering, but nobody came out to see what the commotion was about. He paused just beyond the kitchen threshold and hung in the shadows, listening.
“You’re too hard on ’im,” Agatha whispered.
Alex, loud and clear: “He’s too young to understand.”
“O’ course he is—he’s far too young to ’ave had to watch what happened today. But you can’t leave ’im in the dark. If you want ’im to be the man he’s goin’ to have to be, you’re goin’ to have to let ’im live a real life. All he knows are words from books writ by dead men and women. It’s all black and white to ’im, right and wrong, good and bad. We can’t afford ’im to be like that.”
“I’m trying to give him the best education that I can.”
“Tha’ won’t be enough, Alex,” Agatha hissed. “He’s got to live. He has to feel and know wha’ he’s fighting for, not just be told tha’ it’s the right thing to do.”
Alex sighed. “There’s no time. There’s never enough time.”
A pause, then, “Sometimes I wonder if you put your dreams before ’im.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Alex resumed drumming upon the tabletop.
James’s heart hammered against the walls of his chest. His teeth were grinding together. He was desperate to run, to be gone from it all, and to forget that any of it had ever happened. Yet he stood his ground. He had to hear the last of it.
“I love that boy,” Alex whispered.
“We all love ’im,” Agatha said. “But do you love ’im more than that picture in your head?”
Alex didn’t reply. Over a minute of silence ticked by, but the only sound emanating from the kitchen was the rattle of fingers upon the tabletop.
James slid away into the corridor, his gaze fixed on the floor. He entered his bedroom—still cluttered with myriad children’s toys that he hadn’t touched in years—and climbed into his bed without saying a word to Oliver or Lucian. He stared at the ceiling until morning.