Page 95 of Persephone's Curse
If Evelyn were here, she would have said something poetic and sweet like,It looks like a postcard.
If Bernadette were here, she would have said something witty and dark like,I wonder how many dead bodies are in there.
If Clara were here, she would have said something innocent and completely random like,Do you know Dante Alighieri dedicated most of his poetry to a girl named Beatrice? Like Aunt Bea! Isn’t that a weird coincidence?
But I was alone.
Or—Iwasalone.
Because just then, Henry sat down beside me, cracking the ice on the bench, bringing with him the faint but beautiful smell of jasmine.
It was so strange to see him here, so far from the attic. For a long time I just looked at him, trying to process the fact of his existence. I reached out and poked his arm. He smiled, then shrugged.
“I know, it’s hard to believe.”
“Buthow?” I asked. “How are youhere?”
“I don’t think any ghost has gone there and come back again,” Henry said. “I imagine there will be some… side effects?”
“And this is one of them?”
He shrugged again, then turned toward the reservoir. The expression on his face was hard to read.
“I thought I’d never see this place again,” he said after a long silence. “We used to go ice-skating here,” Henry said. “My sisters and me.”
You weren’t allowed to ice-skate here anymore. Instead, everyone crowded into Rockefeller Center and rented cheap ice skates and hoped not to fall on their ass.
More importantly, though: Henry had sisters. Henry hadsisters.
It was the first new piece of knowledge I’d learned about Henry in years. Henry, who was so careful and so private and so reserved.
Henry had sisters.
“You had sisters,” I whispered, and he nodded slightly.
“Three of them. Just like you.”
“Will you tell me about them?”
He smiled, and I knew, as he looked out at the reservoir, that he was remembering them. That maybe he waslettinghimself remember them, for the first time in a long time.
“Emma, Lucy, and Olive. We were all very close in age. I was the oldest, Lucy and Olive were the youngest—they were twins—and Emma was in the middle. Our father was a doctor. Our mother was an expert embroiderer. She had years-long commission waits for her work. Pillows, chairs, curtains, she did everything. We had a dog. Aramis.”
“The Three Musketeers,” I said.
Henry laughed. “We were obsessed with it. And obsessed with that dog; we took him everywhere with us. He’d slip and slide all around us while we skated. Emma was the best. She looked like a ballerina out there, which was ironic, because on dry land, she was quite clumsy.”
He paused, lost in thought. I elbowed him gently.
“I know you all want to know how I died,” he said. “And I didn’t want to tell you because… it’s sad. It’s terrible. It’s… private, Iguess. But that’s silly. It was a lifetime ago. Literally. A hundred years ago. I was born in 1901. Emma in 1903. The twins in 1906. And everything was pretty quiet. Everything was nice. My childhood was… peaceful. And then right around 1918…”
“Oh,” I said.
“My father was a doctor,” Henry continued. “He brought it home early. We all got sick. My parents died first, then my sisters… They say thirty thousand people died in New York, but now they think that number is so much higher… The Farthings took me in. Our neighbors. Even though… Even though I was sick, too. They were taking a big risk. I stayed in the attic, away from them. They gave me a safe place to die, a quiet place… I’ll always love them for that. I’ll always love all the Farthings.”
He smiled at me, his eyes watery.
“Henry…” I whispered.
