Matilda glanced up at me; I could offer nothing but a shrug of my shoulders. Reaching into her bag, she withdrew a copy of yesterday’s newspaper. For a moment, I thought she had stolen copies of the Saunders’s News-Letter from Marsh’s Library and was relieved to see her bag held nothing else. She placed the paper on the table before Thornley and pointed to the story.
Thornley retrieved a pair of spectacles from his pocket, perched them on his nose, and leaned over the newspaper. He perused the story for a long while, long enough to read the article twice over. He leaned back in his seat and removed the spectacles, cleaning them with his shirttail before returning them to his pocket. “Bram, could you please pass me that glass of wine next to you?”
A full glass of claret stood beside an empty crystal decanter—I handed it to my brother and watched him drink the wine down without a single breath between gulps.
Thornley then placed the empty glass beside the newspaper on the table, studied us both, and sighed deeply. “He has been in my dreams of late, Patrick O’Cuiv. I suppose the stories of what he did, as horrific as they were, stuck with me over the years. Perhaps he is the reason I have not become a father as yet. The idea of murdering your entire family, your wife and children, for no reason other than an inability to put food in their mouths, this terrifies me.”
“Only in your dreams? Did you see him?” Matilda asked.
Thornley fiddled with his empty wineglass. “Not him, no. Not at first anyway.”
My heart thudded. “Not at first? But you saw . . .”
The theater performance I planned to attend now forgotten, I watched as my brother stood from the sofa and made his way across the room to the sideboard. He retrieved a bottle of whiskey and held it out to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and filled the wineglass about halfway, then resealed the bottle and gave the glass a wobbly shake, watching the amber liquid coat the sides, then run back down. Thornley returned to the sofa, took a sip, and let out another sigh.
“The first time I encountered her,” he said, “a couple years had passed since she left us. I was walking down Castle Avenue after purchasing some cod for Ma down at the pier. The day was young; the sun’s rays had yet to burn away the dew, and I remember how it made the toes of my shoes damp. But it felt good, too, to be away from the house, away from my chores, entrusted with the task at hand. Ma gave me two shillings for the cod and said I could keep any change for myself, so I was careful to find a fish that weighed just enough to meet her dinner needs while still depositing a few pence in my pocket.
“I stopped in Roderick’s Confections and ordered a quarter bag of saltwater taffy, cherry-flavored, my favorite. I can still taste that taffy to this day. As I counted out six pence, I happened to glance out the window at the street and there she was, Nanna Ellen, standing on the other side of the glass, watching me as I watched her. She was standing very still, as if I might see past her. And I almost did, for something in my mind did not believe this was her. How could it be? But when I realized it was her on the other side of the glass, I dropped my change on the counter, forgot my taffy, and rushed out the door to greet her, the fish in Ma’s canvas bag swinging from my arm. I expected to find Nanna Ellen standing there, waiting for me, arms wide and a smile across her lips. But when I found myself outside, she was nowhere to be seen. Only a second or so had passed, you understand, but she was gone, vanished. I searched up and down the street; I had a clear view in both directions, but there was no sign of her. She had no time to enter another store—frankly, she didn’t have time to go anywhere—yet she’d gone somewhere. I told myself I imagined it, it was a trick of the light reflecting on the window