“All right,” my father said finally. “It would be great to hang out with you for a little while.”
I tried to give him our room, since Matthew wouldn’t be able to sleep with a strange person in the house and I could easily fit on the window seat, but my father refused. Pierre gave up his bed instead. I stood on the landing and listened enviously while Jack and my father chattered away like old friends.
“I think Stephen has everything he needs,” Matthew said, sliding his arms around me.
“Is he disappointed in me?” I wondered aloud.
“Your father?” Matthew sounded incredulous. “Of course not!”
“He seems a little uncomfortable.”
“When Stephen kissed you good-bye a few days ago, you were a toddler. He’s overwhelmed, that’s all.”
“Does he know what’s going to happen to him and Mom?” I whispered.
“I don’t know, mon coeur, but I think so.” Matthew drew me toward our bedchamber. “Everything will look different in the morning.”
Matthew was right: My father was a bit more relaxed the next day, though he didn’t look as if he’d slept much. Neither did Jack.
“Does the kid always have such bad nightmares?” my father asked.
“I’m sorry he kept you up,” I apologized. “Change makes him anxious. Matthew usually takes care of him.”
“I know. I saw him,” my father said, sipping at the herbal tisane that Annie prepared.
That was the problem with my father: He saw everything. His watchfulness put vampires to shame. Though I had hundreds of questions, they all seemed to dry up under his quiet regard. Occasionally he asked me about something trivial. Could I throw a baseball? Did I think Bob Dylan was a genius? Had I been taught how to pitch a tent? He asked no questions about Matthew and me, or where I went to school, or even what I did for a living. Without any expression of interest on his part, I felt awkward volunteering the information. By the end of our first day together, I was practically in tears.
“Why won’t he talk to me?” I demanded as Matthew unlaced my corset.
“Because he’s too busy listening. He’s an anthropologist—a professional watcher. You’re the historian in the family. Questions are your forte, not his.”
“I get tongue-tied around him and don’t know where to start. And when he does talk to me, it’s always about strange topics, like whether allowing designated hitters has ruined baseball.”
“That’s what a father would talk to his daughter about when he started taking her to baseball games. So Stephen does know he won’t see you grow up. He just doesn’t know how much time he has left with you. “
I sank onto the edge of the bed. “He was a huge Red Sox fan. I remember Mom saying that between getting her pregnant and Carlton Fisk hitting a home run in the sixth game of the World Series, 1975 was the best fall semester of his life, even if Cincinnati did beat Boston in the end.”
Matthew laughed softly. “I’m sure the fall semester of 1976 topped it.”
“Did the Sox actually win that year?”
“No. Your father did.” Matthew kissed me and blew out the candle.
When I came home from running errands the next day, I found my father sitting in the parlor of our empty apartments with Ashmole 782 open in front of him.
“Where did you find that?” I asked, putting my parcels on the table. “Matthew was supposed to hide it.” I had a hard enough time keeping the children away from that blasted compendium.
“Jack gave it to me. He calls it ‘Mistress Roydon’s book of monsters.’ I was understandably eager to see it once I heard that.” My father turned the page. His fingers were shorter than Matthew’s, and blunt and forceful rather than tapered and dexterous. “Is this the book the picture of the wedding came from?”
“Yes. There were two other pictures in it as well: one of a tree, another of two dragons shedding their blood.” I stopped. “I’m not sure how much more I should tell you, Dad. I know things about your relationship to this book that you don’t know—that haven’t even happened yet.”
“Then tell me what happened to you after you found it in Oxford. And I want the truth, Diana. It must have been terrible. I can see the damaged threads between you and the book, all twisted and snarled.”
Silence lay heavily in the room, and there was nowhere to hide from my father’s scrutiny. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I met his eyes.