Sam’s mother, frightened: “I don’t like the plan.”
“It will be fine. There are precautions.”
“What you want to do—it’s dangerous. It will draw bad spirits.”
“We’re going to win. Come to the Harbor, Miriam. I’m asking. They won’t.”
Evie lost her footing in the reading. Images came too fast, like a film sped up—so much memory and emotion she felt sure she’d be lost inside them if she didn’t let go. She collapsed against Sam as she took her hands from the photograph. He put his arms around her, holding her close. “I got you. It’s okay.”
Evie rested her cheek against his warm chest and listened to the rhythmic comfort of Sam’s heartbeat as she waited for the dizziness and trembling to subside. She liked the weight of his chin atop her head and the smell of shaving cream clinging to his neck. She should sit up, she knew, but she didn’t want to.
“Did you get anything, doll?”
Should she tell Sam she’d seen Will? What would he do if he found out that Will knew his mother and had been lying all this time?
“You were at a table, and Rotke was asking if you could guess at the cards in her hand. But you couldn’t. I don’t understand: Why was she testing you?”
“Beats me, Sheba. I don’t remember any of this stuff,” Sam said, frowning. He rubbed at his forehead, as if that motion could shake loose the memories. “How come I can’t remember?”
“Your mother loved you so much, Sam,” Evie said, and she felt Sam’s arm tighten around her. “Objects don’t lie. I could tell.”
“Thanks,” Sam muttered. “Anything else?”
“I-I couldn’t see everything,” Evie lied. “But someone was asking your mother to help the government with Project Buffalo in some way. But she thought what they wanted was too dangerous, that it would draw bad spirits, whatever that means. And I heard something about ‘Come to the Harbor.’ Do you know what that means?”
Sam shook his head. “Plenty of harbors around, though.”
“Do you know anything about where this picture was taken?” Evie asked.
Sam stared at the photograph. He shook his head. “I don’t recognize it. Why?”
“I couldn’t tell precisely, but it looked a bit like a castle.”
“A castle castle?”
“No, Sam. A sand castle,” Evie retorted. “Yes, of course, a castle castle. But here’s the strange part: I’ve seen this particular castle before, in my dreams.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “And were you married to a handsome prince in that dream? Was there a scepter and a throne?”
“Ha, ha.” Evie rolled her eyes. “Haaaa. But I have seen it in my dreams. At least, I think I have. Or one like it.”
“Someday, I’m gonna buy you a castle, future Mrs. Lloyd,” Sam said. He liked the feel of Evie leaning into him, his arm around her.
“I don’t know what to think when you’re not horrible. It’s very confusing,” Evie slurred. Impulsively, she kissed Sam, then laid her head on his shoulder again.
Over the past few months, when he wasn’t picking pockets, searching the museum for clues to his mother’s whereabouts, betting on the fights, or sweet-talking chorus girls into passionate encounters in speakeasy cloakrooms, Sam had had the occasion to imagine kissing Evie. At first, these imagined scenarios had been full of hot air and Sam’s ego: Evie saying, Oh, my darling. I never knew it could be like this. Kiss me, you fool! before going limp in his arms due to Sam’s manly demonstrations of love. These fantasies were never quite satisfying, though, as if even Sam’s fevered imagination knew that was a load of bunk.
What he’d never imagined was a day like they’d had—breaking into an office in a federal building, finding secret coded cards, and narrowly escaping from cops, Evie’s hand in his and a smile on her dusty face because she enjoyed the hunt as much as he did and they were in it together.
“The room’s gone fuzzy. Does it look fuzzy to you, Sam?” Evie mumbled.
“I think one of us is drunk, Lamb Chop.”
“Must be the room,” Evie sighed.
“It’s not the room.”
“Well, it’s not me. I can hold my liquor like a sailor,” Evie slurred, her words getting very messy. A few seconds later, she was snoring.