Alden’s room, only to be ambushed by Mrs. Humphrey and
regaled with tales of her various medical maladies. She seemed
to think because he was caring for his sick younger brother he
had an intense fascination with all the ways a body can break.
It was only by promising to play her favorite songs — Brahms,
horrid, boring Brahms — that evening that Thom was finally
able to break away.
And now Minnie was here.
“Won’t you come in?” Charles asked, as though it were per-
fectly normal for a girl to come knocking at a second-story
window.
“Of course not,” Minnie said, sitting down with her feet
hanging into the room, banging her stockinged heels against the
wall. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
Charles laughed, then tried to stifle a cough that rattled
through his chest like something had come unstuck in there. It
hurt Thom to hear it.
Minnie pretended not to notice the cough. “Cora has gone to
nap. Apparently whe
n she gets the summer off, she doesn’t know
what to do with herself besides sleep. And I’m not to bother you, as
she insisted Charles needed to be doing the same.”
“He does,” Thom said, trying to convey with an urgent
expression and a jerk of his head that his brother needed to tell
Minnie to leave.
Charles grinned, willfully ignoring him.
“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, Thomas,”
Minnie said.
Thom paced a few steps, nervous energy too big for the
room, then stopped and fixed his eyes on her. Well, if she was