Fullepub 
Chapter 11
Before
I’m swinging my legs back and forth under our worn-out breakfast table as I chew each bite of my breakfast twenty times because (a) it aids with digestion, (b) it’s delicious, and (c) there are children in the world who don’t eat every day, so best be thankful for every single bite.
It’s now been a week since Mr. Grimthorpe’s tirade, and from time to time I’ve heard his telltale footfalls beyond the fourth wall, but I haven’t seen him in the flesh. I can’t stop thinking about him, though. Why does a man who has so much seem so unhappy? And what did I do to anger him so? Will I ever see him again?
The great physicists are right—the universe is expanding, or at least mine is. The proof is in the number of new questions I have for Gran every single day. Last night, I lay awake in my bed searching for answers yet again. It wasn’t like this before, when I was going to school every day. Then, my mind was imprisoned, a caged tiger, stunted and pacing restlessly behind bars. I couldn’t think at all, much less question things. But since visiting the Grimthorpe mansion, my imagination is unfettered, my curiosity insatiable.
Sitting at our table, legs dangling, I come to an important realization—that education is not something that happens exclusively in classrooms, that education is a state of mind. I launch into my new set of queries with a dogged enthusiasm that must have exhausted my gran, not that she ever showed so much as an iota of frustration. She always treated me like an adult and spoke to me as though I were one. Did she know that one day I would remember our conversations, that I would replay them over and over in my mind, uncovering layer after layer of her wisdom?
“Gran, is it possible to be rich and poor at the same time?” I ask as I glug milky tea and prepare for a new bite.
“It most certainly is,” she replies. “One can be rich in love and poor in worldly goods.”
“Or one can be poor in health and rich in wealth,” I add.
“Touché.” She butters her crumpet with artful precision until her knife is wiped clean.
“Gran, how did the Grimthorpes get so rich?”
“When Mr. Grimthorpe became a bestselling writer, he earned a small fortune,” she replies. She raises her crumpet but pauses before taking a bite. “However, he was rich even before his books hit it big. His grandfather was a wealthy investor and so was his father.”
In my mind’s eye, I try to picture Mr. Grimthorpe’s father, but all I can conjure is the mustachioed banker from my Monopoly game board.
“Do you think his family was kind to him?” I ask.
“I don’t know, Molly, but somehow I doubt it. What I do know is that Mr. Grimthorpe was an only child and that both his parents considered him a failure.”
“Did he fail at school like I did?”
“He was brilliant at school. And for the record, Molly, you’ve never failed in my eyes. But as for Mr. Grimthorpe, all he ever wanted was to write rather than run the family investment business. And a creative temperament was considered a curse to his family in those days. Mr. Grimthorpe inherited this mansion, alongside considerable wealth, when his parents died. But he also inherited a great deal of baggage, Molly, the emotional kind, which he carries to this very day. He may be Old Money, but that hasn’t brought him much happiness.”
A thought occurs to me. “Gran, if the Grimthorpes are Old Money, does that make us New Money?” I ask.
She laughs out loud, but I know she’s laughing with me, not at me. “My dear, we are No Money.”
Of course, I know that. I know it from the way we cut coupons and darn our socks. I know it from the rarity of clotted cream, from having a landlord who demands the rent, a public library we have to walk to rather than a private one in our home, and from the mismatched cutlery we buy from thrift stores rather than have handed down to us through generations.
It’s time to ask the question I most want to ask, the one that’s been burning a hole in my brain for days. “Gran, if Mr. Grimthorpe is such a genius, why does he hide himself away in the mansion?”
She cocks her head and looks at me in a funny way that I don’t quite understand. “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes,” she says. “Have you heard that one before?”
“I have,” I say, “but I don’t see how it applies. Mr. Grimthorpe wears slippers, not shoes.”
“It applies to him nonetheless. And to you, my dear,” she says, as she grazes my cheek with her palm. “It means you can’t really know someone without experiencing all the things they have lived through. Make no mistake, Mr. Grimthorpe has reckoned with demons. He’s recovered now, but the darkness took over during his illness.”
“He was ill?”
“He was,” she replies. “Terribly so. And his affliction turned him into a monster for a time. But we survived all that. We made it through. Mrs. Grimthorpe and I helped him at the mansion, and he improved. He got clean, Molly, do you understand what I mean by that?”
I imagine sharp-winged gargoyles surrounding Mr. Grimthorpe as Gran and Mrs. Grimthorpe fend them off. “How did you shoo the demons away?” I ask.
“With patience and persistence,” Gran replies. “Mrs. Grimthorpe asked me to sit for hours by her husband’s bedside and read to him, which I did. It distracted him from the worst of his symptoms. I also served him tea, Molly, which was certainly not his beverage of choice at the time,” she says. “Tea is an amazing drink. I tell you, it can cure almost anything.”
“But what if Mr. Grimthorpe gets sick again?” I ask. “What if his illness returns?”
“There’s no need to worry. He’s recovered. And Mrs. Grimthorpe and I have forgiven him for any past mistakes made under the influence. But as a result of those dark times, he keeps to himself. Shame is the scar the demons leave behind. You remember that, Molly,” Gran says.
I look down at my half-eaten crumpet on the table. A moment ago, it looked so appealing, but it now appears congealed and grotesque on my plate.
“Are you finished with your breakfast?” Gran asks.
I nod.
“Good. It’s time,” Gran says as she puts a warm hand over mine. “To the mansion we go.”
—All morning long, I work in the silver pantry while Gran cooks and cleans in the kitchen. She sings like a sparrow just outside the pantry door. Mrs. Grimthorpe is elsewhere, at least for now, which is probably why Gran is singing.
With each passing day, I’m becoming more skilled at using the lye solution and much less elbow grease to remove the tarnish on the silver. Today, I have elected to clean silver in the morning and read in the afternoon. I have completed buffing a full tea service, several serving trays, and an entire set of cutlery, right down to the final silver spoon, which I’m holding in front of my face. I study my image in the bowl, contorted and reversed, a warped world turned on its head like everything in the Grimthorpe mansion.
Someone appears upside down behind me in the bowl of the silver spoon—it’s Mrs. Grimthorpe, her frown turned into an incongruous smile. I face her as she surveys the newly polished wares on the table.
She tips her chin in begrudging approval. “You’re dismissed,” she says. “You may read your book in the library.”
I curtsy and leave the room, joining Gran in the kitchen, where she’s removing freshly baked scones from the oven.
“You’re doing a fine job,” Gran whispers. “Even Her Ladyship can’t deny it. Go on up, then. I’ll call you down later for tea.”
I head to the front of the mansion and creep up the main stairs. I pause at the landing on the second floor, looking down the long damask corridor to the library at the end. Mr. Grimthorpe is not a troll—I know this now—and yet when I met him face-to-face a week ago, he raged and roared at the end of our encounter. He called me a terrible name and ordered me away. I still don’t know what I did wrong, but then again, I never do until it’s too late. I’m reminded of that time at school when I corrected a word Ms. Cripps misspelled on her blackboard, for which I was ordered to stand in the corner of the classroom, remaining there for so long that shame found its exit, streaming hotly down my legs.
Now, I tiptoe my way to the threshold of the library and pause. I don’t enter, not yet. Instead, I look at the forbidden wall of books and the crack by the floor—dark, no signs of life on the other side.
I walk over to the shelf and remove Great Expectations, returning to my spot on the chaise longue to crack open the book. Over the last while, I’ve made good progress, and although I don’t know that I fully understand everything about Pip, I’m fascinated by Miss Havisham, the old and withered bride with a singular mission in life—to torment a boy with a good heart. Somehow this is more frightening than anything I’ve ever read, so why is it that I keep turning the pages?
Click.A tiny sound, but it echoes in the vaulted silence of the high-ceilinged library.
Light through the crack in the wall spills onto the library floor.
Footfalls, the swish of slippers.
For the first time in days, there are signs of life beyond the forbidden fourth wall.
My eye is on the Oxford dictionary, which juts out past the other spines. And just like that, the wall of books opens to reveal Mr. Grimthorpe standing in the doorway looking rumpled and slack, his shoulders slumped. I clutch my book to my chest.
Then the strangest thing happens.
“I am sorry,” Mr. Grimthorpe says.
I can hardly believe my ears. Is that an apology from the mouth of an adult man? The concept is so foreign that he might as well be speaking in tongues. I have to shake my head back and forth just to be certain I’m hearing correctly.
“My behavior the other day was inexcusable,” he says. “I raged like an idiot. I called you a name that in retrospect refers more to myself than it does to you, for I am the true imbecile, the vain king with a title to nothing. The only explanation I can offer for my irrational lunacy is my personal ailment, one of its lingering symptoms being an unhealthy penchant for lashing out against the innocent. Please accept my apology.”
I don’t quite follow what he’s saying, but his face is lined with pain. I make an important discovery in that moment: it doesn’t matter if you understand another person’s pain because their injury is real nonetheless.
“I forgive you, Mr. Grimthorpe,” I say. “But do you know what ‘sorry’ means?”
“Enlighten me,” he replies.
“It means you promise never to make the same mistake again.”
He sighs and walks over to his desk, plopping himself down in his chair. “I’ll never make that error again, though I can’t be certain I won’t make others. The truth is, Pip, I have lost all my mirth, if indeed I ever had any.”
“Mirth?” I ask as I hang back in the doorway.
“Meaning: joy, contentment, happiness,” he offers. “I used to find it at the bottom of a bottle, but I’ve given that up. And a few other things besides. Where mirth lives now, I do not know. Sometimes I’m convinced I’ll find it when I reach the end of my next novel, but I’m contending with a new and even more severe affliction.”
“Meaning: illness?”
“Yes. An affliction peculiar to writers known as writer’s block. I find myself unable to complete my current work. It eludes me in every way, and yet if I knew how to finish it, I’m certain it would get me what I want.”
“Which is?”
“Further infamy. Notoriety. A place on bookshelves for centuries to come. An end to my restlessness, a return of my mirth.”
I carefully step forward into his study, pausing a safe arm’s length away from his desk and from the teetering piles of monogrammed black Moleskines.
“May I ask what your book is about?”
He leans forward. “It’s a mystery. A writer is being held captive in his home by his wife. He has two choices: kill her or kill himself.”
“Which does he choose?” I ask.
“He kills his wife. But then he has a new problem.”
“Which is?”
“He must make her body disappear or face murder charges and a new form of imprisonment, this time in a jail rather than in the relative comfort of his own home.”
I observe the spindly man sitting in front of me, with his errant hair and the eyes of a wild stallion. What if this isn’t make-believe? The thought makes my stomach curdle and churn.
“Are you planning to kill Mrs. Grimthorpe?” I ask.
He throws his head back and laughs uproariously at my question.
“Why are you laughing?” I ask.
“Because it’s absurd. I have no intentions of killing my wife. There’d be no point. She’s been as good as dead for at least twenty years, and it’s my fault. That long-suffering woman has spent her entire adult life protecting my reputation and seeing to my health and well-being. I assure you, I’ve not made any of it easy. Let’s just say there are more faithful husbands in the world, but there are few wives quite as loyal as she.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Never mind. The point is I need a resolution to my novel. A dénouement. A twist. Maybe two. And I need to make that imaginary body disappear.”
“Lye,” I say.
“Lie about what?” he asks.
“Not that kind of lie,” I say. “Lye as in the chemical. It burns. Use enough of it, and I suppose you could make an entire body disappear.”
He stands and paces. He stops in his tracks, his icy blue eyes drilling into mine. “How do you know this?” he asks.
“There once was a maid,” I say. “She was so unhappy with her master that she dissolved his hands in lye.”
His eyes go wide. “Who told you this?”
“I made it up, kind of. Gran told me a true story, but then I changed it just now. What do you call it when there’s truth in a story but it’s not a fact?” I ask.
His face morphs. All the hard lines soften. All the pain dissolves. For the first time ever, he looks giddy and happy and light.
“A novel,” he replies. “You call it a novel.”
