“Aren’t you too old for Cinderella?”
“You’re never too old to want to be a Disney Princess. But that’s beside the point, it’s barely six thirty!” I’m surprised I’m up at all, my bed is so comfortable.
“Please, Holly. Come quickly. It’s Hugh. He’s hurt himself on the stairs and smashed into something really hard.”
“Oh, no. What did he do?” I hurry out into the hallway, ignoring the fact that I’m currently wearing the kinds of jammies that most five-year-olds would be embarrassed to be seen in. I mean, I’ll defend my right to wear them, but that doesn’t mean I want to be seen in them. As the door slams behind me, Archie’s fingers tighten on mine as he begins to pull. “Where’s your mom?”
Isla—no need to use so formal an address, so she’s insisted—usually takes care of the boys in the morning. I take over at eight, beginning with the school run.
“She’s in her room. She says her contact lenses are making her eyes watery, but we know she’s been crying. Daddy called this morning,” he adds, his tone morose. But he’s still hustling, his blue school shirt untucked and flapping from the back of his pants. “I told him not to do it. I said he’d hurt, and now he’s lying at the bottom of the stairs, probably dead!”
“Holy fudge!” I mutter, overtaking the kid as my heart tries to escape from my ribcage. My sock-clad feet skid on the shining floorboards as we race through the long gallery, littered now with a badminton net, a football, and a pair of rollerblades. Past bedrooms and parlours, and out onto the landing, I almost barrel into the bannister. Hand flattened to my chest, I give thanks that the kid isn’t dead because there, at the very base of the grand and ancient staircase, sits a dazed but smiling Hugh, rubbing his head. Next to him lies a piece of statuary that once stood in a row of them. On black marble pedestals, the whole lot of them would look right at home placed next to the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum in London. Though this one had been in better condition than those antiquities . . . until it very recently lost its head.
“Hugh, I’m glad you’re not dead,” his little brother shouts over the bannister.
“I’m glad you didn’t get mum,” he calls back with an impish grin.
“Watch it!” Wrapping my hand in the younger boy’s shirt, I pull him back from where his arms are dangling over the burnished handrail, just in case he decides to take a shortcut. “One near death before breakfast is all I can take.”
“I’m not nearly dead,” Hugh happily calls back.
“Only because I haven’t gotten down there yet,” I mutter under my breath, setting Archie away from the sheer drop. No wonder families were so big back in the day. With houses like this one, they probably needed to keep more than one spare for the heir. “What happened?” I begin to trip down the stairs two at a time, my heart rate still galloping. I’m relieved that he’s talking, but the statue!
“I slid down the stairs on a tray,” he answers as though this fact were completely obvious. And maybe it is obvious once I notice the large silver serving tray a few feet away from him. Probably real silver. Almost certainly an antique.
“Oh, my Lord, have you had Pop-Tarts for breakfast? The amphetamines of the breakfast world?”
“We’re not allowed Pop-Tarts,” Hugh answers, his tone more than a little awed. “They’re not healthy.”
“And careening down a staircase with your butt strapped to a kitchen tray is?”
“It wasn’t strapped. I just sat on it. Do you think that would help next time?”
“Next time? Friend, do you need your head rattled?”
“Nope. I think I already did that this morning,” he says, fake shaking it between his hands.
“Why?” I fall to my knees in front of him. Why now? Why with me? I mean, technically, the boys aren’t under my charge at this hour, but I am not going to kick their mother while she’s down. I might not have a husband, but I know what betrayal feels like. In the three weeks that I’ve been here, I’ve seen firsthand the effects of her husband’s infidelity. She was slim three weeks ago, but now she looks like a bag of bones. I know she’s hurting, and I hate that I know what it takes to come back from it. So no, I’m not passing the buck on this one. Let the woman cry and blame her contact lenses.
“I did it because Uncle Sandy said it was fun. He said he did it lots when he was a boy. I’ve been dying to give it a try because our stairs at home aren’t as big as these.”