“It wouldn’t matter if you were one or one hundred,” Arthur said. “You would still be mine as much as I am yours. Nothing will ever change that.”
Sal exhaled sharply as he sagged. When he looked back at Arthur (at, not up, seeing as how he was almost as tall as Arthur now) his vision was clear, sure, and he said, “I didn’t know my parents. They were gone before I could remember anything about them. But you’re here. You said you would be, and you’ve kept your word.”
“And I meant it,” Arthur said.
The train whistled sharply, signaling an imminent departure. Arthur turned toward it, only to jerk his head back when Sal blurted, “We love you, you know? We don’t say it very much, but we do.”
Arthur pulled Sal toward him, wrapping his arms around the boy as tightly as he could. Sal gripped his back, forehead on Arthur’s shoulder. “I know,” he whispered. “And I—”
An attendant—a burly fellow in a snappy uniform with two rows of gold buttons down the front—leaned out from the train and called, “All aboard! Final call for those leaving Marsyas!”
They hugged the children for the last time and lifted their luggage—two suitcases between them—as they headed for the train to find their seats.
But as the train began to pull away, Arthur did not sit. He hurried from carriage car to carriage car as the train picked up speed, waving frantically to the children as they ran next to the tracks, Theodore coasting on the wind. Soon, the train proved to be too fast, and the children stopped. He leaned out the window and shouted, “I love you! All of you!”
Whatever they said in reply was lost to the sounds of the train and the warm wind.
Bowing his head, he struggled to control his breathing. He looked up when a gentle hand squeezed his shoulder. He didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. “I’ve never left them before,” Arthur whispered. “I didn’t expect it to be so hard.”
“Leaving is never easy,” Linus said, laying his forehead against Arthur’s back. “But knowing they’ll be waiting for us to come back will make it that much sweeter when we do.”
Arthur turned and gathered Linus up in his arms. “It’s as if I’ve left my heart behind.”
He felt Linus smile against his throat. “I’ve never seen you so out of sorts before. You delightful man, they will be well because you taught them how to be. Come, now. Calm, even breaths. The sooner we arrive, the sooner we can return home.”
Midway through their journey, the first raindrops began to fall.
The city was as Arthur remembered from his youth: extraordinarily loud, cars trapped in gridlocked streets, people bustling on the sidewalk, umbrellas up against the rain that fell in droves, the black and gray of the metal buildings gloomy under a darkened sky. Stepping off the train, Arthur entered a different world, one where he was a stranger. He couldn’t smell the salt of the ocean, couldn’t hear the crashing of waves against rocky cliffs. The stench of petrol and rubber mingled with the sounds of honking horns, and part of him—the child trapped in the cellar—screamed at him to get back on the train.
Linus bumped into him from behind, grumbling under his breath about the never-ending rain. “Remembered my umbrella for once.” He glanced up at the clock hanging against the far wall of the train platform. Arthur did the same and saw it was the middle of the afternoon.
“The hotel, then?” Arthur asked, taking Linus’s suitcase so he could open the umbrella.
With the umbrella sorted, Linus took his suitcase back. He looked at Arthur, that funny little wrinkle in his forehead making an appearance. “I … I have something to show you first. Will you come with me? We’ll have to take the bus.”
Arthur would follow him anywhere and told him as much. Linus rolled his eyes (though he couldn’t hide his smile) and said, “Besotted fool. Come on.”
The trip on the bus took almost forty minutes. Linus promised the journey to the hotel wouldn’t take half as long after. Arthur, for his part, didn’t mind, fascinated by the way everyone standing swayed each time the bus came to a stop at a light. They were, for a brief moment, all the same. The farther they went, the more the bus emptied, and though they had seats available to them, Arthur told Linus he preferred to stand after the long train ride, for some reason enjoying the simple act of being on a bus, something he hadn’t done in years.
“We’re approaching our stop,” Linus said, reaching up to pull the cord hanging from the ceiling. A bell sounded from somewhere near the front of the bus, which began to slow, turning into a pullout off the road next to a small stand.
The rain hadn’t lessened. Linus and Arthur had to jump from the last step on the bus to the sidewalk to avoid a large puddle. As the bus pulled away, Arthur waved. No one waved back.
“They don’t care,” Linus said.
“Perhaps,” Arthur replied. “Still, it’s only polite.” He took in their new surroundings. The buildings of the city rose in the distance, hulking giants reaching toward a slate-colored sky. Around them, a neighborhood of middle-class housing, single-story homes made of brick and wooden paneling. It was much quieter here, the traffic nowhere near as severe as it’d been closer to the city center. The only sound came from the splatter of rain and a dog barking somewhere.
“This way,” Linus said, the umbrella open. They began to move down the sidewalk, Linus quiet, tension making his shoulders stiff.
Arthur wanted to ask where they were going but got distracted by the trees that lined either side of the road. They didn’t look like the trees back on the island. Even though it was summer, the leaves were dull, dark, as if all the color had been sapped from them. It was off-putting in ways he couldn’t describe, and he was about to tell Linus as much. But before he could, he saw a street sign that led farther into the neighborhood. HERMES WAY, it read.
“This is where you lived,” he said.
“It is,” Linus said in a clipped voice, as they turned onto Hermes Way, a boxlike lorry driving past, splashing water near their feet. Arthur found it odd that no lights seemed to be on in the darkened houses. Even if people were at work, wouldn’t they want to come home to brightness rather than shadows?
It didn’t take long for them to reach their destination. Linus stopped in front of a house. Eighty-six Hermes Way. It wasn’t much: small, brick at its base, with paneling in a dark shade of blue. A porch with white railings, complete with a rocking chair tucked away safely out of the rain. And there were flower beds, but they held no flowers, just misshapen bushes that could use a trim.
“This is it,” Linus said quietly, but he didn’t look at Arthur. He stared at the house with an expression Arthur didn’t like, a tinge of sadness that made him look older than he was.
“It’s … lovely,” Arthur decided.
“Is it?”
“It’s small,” Arthur admitted, looking back at the house. “I don’t know how it could contain all that you are.”
Linus was startled into laughter, eyes bright. “I’ll have you know I’ve lost half a stone.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it. I happen to love those stones, lost or found. It’s just … it’s not you.”
“It was,” Linus said. “Perhaps no longer, but this was my home.”
“You’re still the owner.”
“I am.” He nodded toward the house next door. “Mrs. Klapper lives there. Her nephew is in the process of purchasing the property, but he and his new husband went abroad, and we’re waiting for him to get back to finalize everything. We don’t need to go inside, but there’s something I need to do.”
“What’s that?” Arthur asked as they made their way up the walkway toward the house.
Linus ducked his head. “I made a promise.”
