If he minded my question, he didn’t act like it.
“I don’t remember much,” he admitted. “I remember feelings. My family, some of my closer friends. Some of the things I liked to eat. I used to love food.” He smiled wistfully. “I remember the house I lived in.”
“What was it like?”
“Small,” he said, chuckling. Looking around his spacious living room, he added, “You could probably fit three of them in this apartment. And there were four of us living there.”
“No McMansions in England three hundred years ago?”
He shook his head, still smiling. “No. Certainly not in the small village where I was raised. No one had the money or the resources to build anything bigger than what was absolutely required to keep a family protected from the elements.”
I thought of what little I’d learned of the architecture in eighteenth-century England from my art history classes. I could almost picture Frederick’s little house in my mind’s eye. A thatched roof, possibly. Floors made of simple wood.
How did a boy raised in a place like that end up here—in wealth and splendor, in a fabulous apartment across the ocean—hundreds of years later? The details he’d shared with me only whetted my appetite for more information about him. But he leaned back against the couch cushions then, arms folded across his chest, signaling that he was done sharing for the evening.
I didn’t have to be done talking, though. After sharing with me what he had about his sister, the urge to reciprocate and share something of my own life was too strong to resist.
“I’m glad you had your sister, for a time,” I said gently.
“Me, too.”
“I don’t have any siblings.”
His eyes—which had once again been resting on my opened art notebook—flicked to mine. “You must have been very lonely growing up.”
“I wasn’t.” It was the truth. “My imagination and my friends kept me company.” The only real problem with having no siblings was there was no one else around to distract my parents from me—and my many failings. But I wasn’t about to complain, given what he’d just shared. My dumb only-child guilt was more than Frederick needed to know.
We sat together in comfortable silence after that. Frederick’s eyes drifted once again to my art notebook, but his gaze was unfocused.
“I would like to hear more about your life, Cassie.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I wish to know more about you. I wish . . . I wish to know everything.”
The quiet intensity of his tone shot straight through me. The atmosphere in the room seemed to shift, the nature of what we were to one another suddenly tilted on its axis.
I looked at my notebook, which had suddenly become the only safe place in the room for either of us to rest our eyes.
THIRTEEN
Mr. Frederick J. Fitzwilliam’s Google Search History
how do you kiss if it has been three hundred years since
how can you know if she wants to kiss you
is it a bad idea to kiss your roommate
is it bad to think about or have sex with your roommate
age gap relationships
best breath mints
* * *
[EMAIL DRAFT, UNSENT]
From: Cassie Greenberg [[email protected]]
To: David Gutierrez [[email protected]]
Subject: submission for Contemporary Society art show
Dear David,
I wish to submit for consideration my three-dimensional oil and plastics mixed-media piece, Manor House on a Placid Lake, for River North Gallery’s Contemporary Society art exhibition in March. The dimensions of the canvas itself are three feet by two feet, with a cellophane-and-tinsel sculpture attachment extending out from the canvas another ten inches.
I have attached five JPEG images of my completed piece to this email for your consideration. Pursuant to the parameters set out in the Request for Submissions, the finished piece will be available for display in your gallery upon request.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Cassie S. Greenberg
By the time I got to the art studio, Sam and Scott were already there, standing in front of Manor House and staring at it with matching expressions I couldn’t parse.
They didn’t look horrified, at least. That was something.
I dropped my bag off at an empty cubicle and stood beside them. “Thanks so much for taking pictures for me,” I said to Scott. He had a fancy camera with a name I didn’t recognize and was a great amateur photographer. I was grateful he was available to do this. I was planning to submit to the River North Gallery art exhibition that evening, and while I’d already drafted my email to David, I needed to attach five pictures of my piece to it to be considered.