Chapter 24: April Fools'

I opened the door, and Linus came in holding Mr. Fenn by one thread ear.

He climbed over my feet and into the gap between Abel and me, and nobody said a word about it.

"It was the box again," he said into the pillow.

"Did you say the thing?" Abel asked.

"I asked to see the blades."

"And?"

"They were fake. They folded up like a ruler." He yawned. "I woke up anyway."

I put my hand on his back and felt it rise and fall.

Three slow squeezes came through the quilt, from his hand to mine.

I squeezed back.

He was asleep before Abel turned off the lamp.

A year later, to the day, the Rialto was sold out again.

I stood in the wings in a plain black dress with no clip in my hair, and I watched three hundred and twelve people find their seats.

They were not the same crowd.

Some of them were.

The woman from the lobby who had once said my son and Imogen could pass for aunt and nephew sat in row F, and she would not look at the stage.

Good, I thought.

She could look at her hands for a while.

Hattie had the aisle seat in the front row, with her silver braid pinned up and her reading glasses on their chain.

She had been up since five, polishing the gold box.

"Don't let him rush the blades," she had told me that morning. "A magician who rushes the blades is a magician who gets sued."

Abel was in the back row.

He had insisted on it, and I knew why.

From there he could see the whole room, and the whole room could see him if it looked.

He caught my eye across all that dark and lifted two fingers off his knee.

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