“Everyone respectful can come in,” Freddy said, her eyes darting to her niece.
“Well, then,” Free said. “That settles it. I suppose I’ll just wait here in the hall while you finish up with her.”
“You can’t—” Freddy’s mouth pinched, and in that moment Oliver realized that his aunt looked awful.
Her skin was sallow and sagging. There was a slight tremor to her hand. And there was something else about her, something that made her seem thin and fragile. She was only a few years older than his mother, and yet anyone seeing them together would have imagined Freddy to be the elder by decades.
Freddy took a deep breath. “Oliver, tell your sister that she can’t wait in the hall. Laborers live above me now, and heaven knows what they would do if they found her here. They’re likely all excited from whatever it was they’ve done today.” She said the word laborer in a low voice, as if it were somehow filthy, and then frowned. “You weren’t at that…thing, were you?” She glanced at Free as she spoke. “Even you would not be so foolhardy.”
Free tossed back her head. “If you hear me screaming, Oliver, I hope you can come to my aid. I know Freddy won’t, as I’ll be out in the hall, and that’s two feet too far for her to bestir herself.”
Freddy’s eyes flashed.
“Maybe,” Free tossed off, “I’ll go outside. There’s a park two streets away. I might sit on a bench. It’s not that dark.”
“Free,” Oliver said, “can you manage to be civil for a few moments?”
Her nose twitched.
“You might as well have her come in,” Freddy muttered. “I can’t have her death on my hands. She’d make the most uncivil shade ever, and I refuse to have her haunting my hallway.”
Free actually smiled at that—as if the thought of being an extremely rude ghost pleased her—and she came in. Freddy closed the door behind them and locked it carefully. Then she did up a second lock. Oliver and Free took seats at her tiny table.
“Oliver,” she said. “It’s good to see you. Would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“I don’t want to hear ‘no’ for an answer. You’re a—” She paused. “You’re not a growing boy, are you? But other people here might still be growing, and there’s nothing like tea with milk for retaining one’s health.” She glanced over at Free. “Even if some people here don’t care for their own health. And clearly have not been wearing their bonnets, no matter how often they are told of the danger.”
“Oh, yes. In my future, a man will control all my possessions if I marry him, I shan’t be allowed to vote, and I won’t be given the opportunity to earn a living by any means except on my back—but by all means, the most dire threat I face is freckles. Maybe I should just spend all my time locked in a room. That way, I won’t freckle at all. It will be lovely for my health.”
Freddy’s lips tightened. “Tell your sister I take my exercise,” she snapped. “I do twenty circuits of my room every day. I’m fitter than she is.”
Free looked Freddy up and down. She probably hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and the changes were even more dramatic, Oliver supposed, spaced out over that many months. Free was no doubt cataloging the stoop in their aunt’s shoulders, the shallowness of her breath, the thin bones of her wrist.
Her eyes glistened, and she sniffed. “Tell my aunt that I’m so glad that she’s in such formidable health.” Free’s voice shook. “That I see that her choices are excellent.”
“Tell your sister that it’s none of her business if I die early.”
Free jumped to her feet. Her eyes glittered. “It’s none of my business if you die early? How hard is it for you to accept that we love you, that you’re killing yourself like this?”
Freddy folded her arms and looked away. “Remind your sister,” she repeated, “that I’m not speaking to her until she talks to me civilly. Until she apologizes for every harsh word she’s spoken.”
“What, like telling you that I hate seeing you like this? You want me to apologize for saying that you need to bestir yourself? You want me to apologize for caring about you? Never. I am never going to apologize. You are wrong, wrong, wrong, and I hate you for it!”
“Tell your sister,” Freddy said, even more cuttingly, “that if she cannot speak to me civilly—as I required when I opened the door—that she’s no longer welcome here.”
“Very well! Don’t stop me.” Free strode to the door. Her grand exit from the room was only partially foiled by the intricate locks—she fumbled with them—but she still slammed the door behind her once she’d worked them open.
Oliver stood.
“You’d better go after her,” Freddy said. Her eyes darted to the locks, now hanging uselessly. She didn’t say a word, but her breathing accelerated. “You don’t know—what’s out there.” She swallowed. “It’s dark. She really shouldn’t be alone.”
“She’ll be all right for a few moments.” Oliver went to the door and redid the locks. “She won’t go outside. She really does have more sense than that.”
All the ire went out of Freddy, but none of the unease. She slumped in a seat. That, in and of itself, tugged at Oliver. He sat down again, reached across the table, and took her hand. “Freddy,” he said, “if it’s making you so miserable, why do you keep fighting with her? I know she loves you. All you would have to say was that you miss her, that you love her, and you could end all of this.”
Freddy stared straight ahead. “I know,” she whispered.
“Why do you persist?”
“Because she’s right.”
Oliver jumped. In all his life, he’d never heard Freddy utter those words about anyone other than herself—or, on rare occasion, people who agreed with her.
“She’s right,” Freddy whispered. “She’s right. I’m trapped in here.” Her eyes glittered. “I’m too terrified to go out, and yet here I’m stuck. Without anyone at all, with nothing to do. I don’t even know who I am some days.”
“Oh, Freddy.”
“I opened the door yesterday,” Freddy said. “I put one toe out before I had such palpitations of the heart that I had to stop.”