“Wow,” I said. The resemblance, that face passed across a century, was doing strange things to me; I would have envied Daniel, in some unreasonable way, if it hadn’t been for Lexie. “You do look like him.”
“Only less messed up,” Abby said. “That’s not a happy man.”
“But look at the house,” Justin said softly. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It is, yes,” Daniel said, smiling down at it. “It really is. We’ll get there.”
Abby slipped a fingernail under the photo, flicked it out of its corners and turned it over. On the back it said, in watery fountain pen, “William, May 1914.”
“The First World War was coming up,” I said quietly. “Maybe he died in it.”
“Actually,” Daniel said, taking the photo from Abby and examining it more closely, “I don’t think he did. Good heavens. If this is the same William-and it may not be, of course, my family has always been singularly unimaginative when it comes to names-then I’ve heard about him. My father and my aunts mentioned him every now and then, when I was a child. He’s my grandfather’s uncle, I think, although I may have that wrong. William was-well, not a black sheep, exactly; more like a skeleton in the cupboard.”
“Definitely a resemblance,” Rafe said; then, “Ow!” as Abby reached across and swatted his arm.
“He did fight in the war, in fact,” Daniel said, “but he came back, with some kind of infirmity. Nobody ever mentioned what, exactly, which makes me think it may have been psychological rather than physical. There was some scandal-I’m hazy on the details, it was all kept very hush-hush, but he spent a while in some kind of sanatorium, which at the time might well have been a delicate way of saying a lunatic asylum.”
“Maybe he had a passionate affair with Wilfred Owen,” Justin suggested, “in the trenches.” Rafe sighed noisily.
“I got the impression it was more along the lines of a suicide attempt,” said Daniel. “When he got out he emigrated, I think. He lived to a ripe old age-he only died when I was a child-but still, not necessarily the ancestor one would choose to resemble. You’re right, Abby: not a happy man.” He tucked the photo back into place and touched it gently, with one long square fingertip, before he turned the page.
The hot port was rich and sweet, with quarters of lemon stuck full of cloves, and Daniel’s arm was warm and solid against mine. He flipped pages slowly: mustaches the size of house pets, lacy Edwardians walking in the flowering herb garden (“My God,” Abby said on a long breath, “that’s what it’s supposed to look like”), flappers with carefully droopy shoulders. A few people were built along the same lines as Daniel and William-tall and solid, with jawlines that worked better on the men than on the women-but most of them were small and upright and made up mainly of sharp angles, jutting chins and elbows and noses. “This thing is brilliant,” I said. “Where did you find it?”
A sudden, startled silence. Oh God, I thought, oh, God, not now, not just when I was starting to feel like- “But you found it,” Justin said, his glass going down on his knee. “In the top spare room. Don’t you…” He let the sentence drop. No one picked it up.
Never, Frank had told me, no matter what, never backpedal. If you fuck up, blame it on the coma, PMS, the full moon, anything you want; just hold your ground. “No,” I said. “I’d remember if I’d seen this before.”
They were all looking at me; Daniel’s eyes, only inches away, were intent and curious and huge behind his glasses. I knew I had gone white, he couldn’t miss it. He thought you’d never made it, he had some bizarro convoluted theory- “You did, Lexie,” Abby said softly, leaning forwards so she could see me. “You and Justin were rummaging around, after dinner, and you came up with this. It was the same night that…” She made a small, formless gesture, glanced fast at Daniel.
“It was just a few hours before the incident,” said Daniel. I thought I felt something move through his body, something like a tiny suppressed shudder, but I couldn’t be sure; I was too busy trying to hide my own rush of pure relief. “No wonder you don’t remember.”
“Well,” Rafe said, one notch too loudly and too heartily, “there you go.”
“But that sucks,” I said. “Now I feel like an idiot. I didn’t mind losing the sore bits, but I don’t want to go around wondering what else is missing. What if I bought the winning Lotto ticket and hid it somewhere?”
“Shhh,” Daniel said. He was smiling at me, that extraordinary smile. “Don’t worry. We forgot all about the album as well, until tonight. We never even looked at it.” He took my hand, opened my fingers gently-I hadn’t even realized my fists were clenched-and drew it through the crook of his elbow. “I’m glad you found it. This house has enough history for a whole village; it shouldn’t be lost. Look at this one: the cherry trees, just planted.”
