“Listen,” he would say, his eyes rheumy and wet when you looked this close. “Listen.
They’ll try to take the house when I die. They’ll try to take it all. You don’t let them.”
“You’re not going to die,” Danny would say.
And his grandfather would wink and laugh and reply, “Not yet.” Once, installed in a red booth, the smell of hash browns and steak sauce thick in the air, Danny had dared to
ask, “Why did they even have me?”
“They liked the idea of being parents,” his grandfather said, waving his hand over the
leavings of his dinner. “Showing you off to their friends.”
“And then they just dumped me here?”
“I didn’t want you raised by nannies. I told them I’d buy them an apartment in New York City if they left you with me.”
That had seemed okay to Danny at the time, because his grandfather knew best, because his grandfather had worked for a living. And if maybe some part of him wondered if the old man had just wanted another shot at raising a son, had cared more about the Arlington
line than what might be best for a lonely little boy, the rest of him knew better than to walk down that dark hall.
As Danny got older, he made it a point to be out of the house when the Layabouts came
to town. He was embarrassed by the idea of hanging around, hoping for a gift or a sign of
interest in his life. He’d grown tired of watching them play out the same drama with his
grandfather and seeing them indulged.
“Why don’t you leave the old man alone and go back to wasting your time and his money?” he sneered at them on his way out of the house.
“When did the little prince become so pious?” his father had retorted. “You’ll know what it’s like when you fall out of favor.”
But Darlington never had the chance. His grandfather got sick. His doctor told him to
stop smoking, change the way he ate, said he could buy himself a few more months, maybe even a year. Danny’s grandfather refused. He would have things his way or not at
all. A nurse was hired to live in the house. Daniel Tabor Arlington grew grayer and more
frail.
The Layabouts came to stay, and suddenly Black Elm felt like enemy territory. The kitchen was full of his mother’s special foods, stacks of plastic containers, little bags of grains and nuts that crowded the counters. His father was constantly pacing through the ground-floor rooms, talking on his cell phone—about getting the house assessed, probate
law, tax law. Bernadette was banished in favor of a cleaning crew that appeared twice a week in a dark green van and used only organic products.
Danny spent most of his time at the museum or in his room with the door locked, lost
in books he consumed like a flame eating air, trying to stay alight. He practiced his Greek,
started teaching himself Portuguese.
His grandfather’s bedroom was crowded with equipment—IVs to keep him hydrated,
oxygen to keep him breathing, a hospital bed beside the huge four-poster to keep him elevated. It looked like a time traveler from the future had taken over the dim space.
Whenever Danny tried to talk to his grandfather about what his parents were doing, about the real estate agent who had come to walk the property, his grandfather would seize
his wrist and glance meaningfully at the nurse. “She listens,” he hissed.
And maybe she did. Darlington was fifteen years old. He didn’t know how much of what his grandfather said was true, if the cancer was speaking or the drugs.
“They’re keeping me alive so they can control the estate, Danny.”
“But your lawyer—”
“You think they can’t make him promises? Let me die, Danny.
They’ll bleed Black Elm dry.”
Danny went out alone to sit at the counter at Clark’s, and when Leona had set a dish of
ice cream in front of him, he’d had to press the heels of his hands against his eyes to keep
from crying. He’d sat there until they needed to close and only then taken the bus home.
The next day, they found his grandfather cold in his bed. He’d slipped into a coma and