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“Well,” she said, “this house has been in our family for a very long time. My grandparents built it, and lived in it with their children. They hoped that it would stay in the family, and that there would always be children living in it.”
“Did they own the books in my room?” asked David.
“Some of them,” said Rose. “Others belonged to their children: my father, his sister, and-”
She paused for a moment.
“Jonathan?” suggested David, and Rose nodded. She looked sad.
“Yes. Jonathan. Where did you learn his name?”
“It was written in some of the books. I was wondering who he was.”
“He was my uncle, my father’s older brother, although I never met him. Your room was once his bedroom, and a lot of those books were his. I’m sorry if you don’t like them. I thought it would be such a nice room for you. I know it’s a little dark, but it had all those shelves and, of course, the books. I should have been more thoughtful.”
David looked puzzled. “But why? I do like it, and I like the books too.”
Rose turned away. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” said David. “Please tell me.”
Rose relented.
“Jonathan disappeared. He was only fourteen. It was a long time ago, and my grandparents kept his room exactly as it had always been, because they hoped that he would come back to them. He never did. Another child disappeared with him, a little girl. Her name was A
“In time, they had two more children, my father and his sister, Katherine, but my grandparents never forgot Jonathan, and never stopped hoping that he and A
“My father did as she asked: he left the books as they were, and later, after my father and mother died, so did I. I always wanted a family of my own, and I suppose I just felt that Jonathan so loved his books that he would have liked to think there might be another little boy or girl in there someday who would appreciate them, instead of them being left to decay, unread. Now it’s your room, but if you’d like us to move you to another one, we can. There’s lots of space.”
“What was Jonathan like? Did your grandfather ever tell you about him?”
Rose thought. “Well, I was as curious about him as you are, and I would ask my grandfather about him. I made quite a study of him, I suppose. My grandfather said that he was very quiet. He liked to read, as you can tell, just like you. It’s fu
Rose was staring out the window now, lost in memories of her grandfather and her missing uncle.
“My grandfather went back to that bookshop after Jonathan and A
The doorbell rang, breaking the spell of harmony between David and Rose. It was the postman, and Rose went to greet him. When she returned, she asked David if he would like something to eat, but David said no. Already, he was feeling angry with himself for lowering his defenses against Rose, even if he had learned something as a result. He didn’t want her to think that everything was now all right between them, because it wasn’t, not at all. Instead, he left her alone in the kitchen and headed back to his bedroom.
On the way, he looked in on Georgie. The baby was fast asleep in his crib, his big gas helmet and the bellows for pumping air into it lying close by. It wasn’t his fault that he was here, David tried to tell himself. He didn’t ask to be brought into the world. Still, David couldn’t rouse himself to care terribly for him, and something tore inside him each time he saw his father holding the new arrival. He was like a symbol of all that was wrong, of all that had changed. After his mother had died, it had been just David and his father, and they had become closer as a result because they had only each other to rely upon. Now his father had Rose too, and a new son. But David, well, he didn’t have anyone else. It was just himself.
David left the baby and returned to his garret, where he spent the rest of the afternoon flicking through Jonathan Tulvey’s old books. He sat in the window seat and thought that Jonathan had sat in this seat, once upon a time. He had walked the same hallways, had eaten in the same kitchen, played in the same living room, had even slept in the same bed as David. Perhaps, somewhere back in time, he was still doing all of those things, and both David and Jonathan were now occupying the same space but at different stages in history, so that Jonathan passed like an unseen ghost through David’s world, unaware that he shared his bed each night with a stranger. The thought made David shiver, but it also gave him pleasure to think that two boys who were so much alike might somehow share such a co
He wondered what could have happened to Jonathan and to the little girl A