could not be revived. There were furious, whispered conversations, closed doors, his father yelling at the nurse.
Danny had spent his days at the Peabody Museum. The staff didn’t mind. There was a
whole herd of kids who got dumped there during the summers. He’d walked through the
mineral room; communed with the mummy, and the giant squid, and Crichton’s raptor; tried to redraw the reptile mural. He walked the Yale campus, spent hours deciphering the
different languages above the Sterling Library doors, was drawn again and again to the Beinecke’s collection of tarot cards, to the impenetrable Voynich Manuscript. Staring at its
pages was like standing at Lighthouse Point all over again, waiting for the world to reveal
itself.
When it started to get dark, he took the bus home and crept in through the garden doors, moving silently through the house, retreating to his bedroom and his books.
Ordinary subjects weren’t enough anymore. He was too old to believe in magic, but he needed to believe that there was something more to the world than living and dying. So he
called his need an interest in the occult, the arcane, sacred objects. He spent his time hunting down the work of alchemists and spiritualists who had promised ways of looking
into the unseen. All he needed was a glimpse, something to sustain him.
Danny had been curled up in his high tower room, reading Paracelsus beside Waite’s translation, when his grandfather’s attorney had knocked on the door. “You’re going to have to make some choices,” he’d said. “I know you want to honor your grandfather’s memory, but you should do what’s best for you.”
It wasn’t bad advice, but Danny had no idea what might be best for him.
His grandfather had lived off the Arlington money, doling it out as he saw fit, but the
estate prohibited him from leaving it to anyone but his son. The house was another story.
It would be held in trust for Danny until he was eighteen.
Danny was surprised when his mother appeared at his bedroom door. “The university
wants the house,” she said, then looked around the circular turret room. “If we all sign off, then the profits can be shared. You can come to New York.”
“I don’t want to live in New York.”
“You can’t begin to imagine the opportunities that will open for you there.”
Nearly a year before, he’d taken the Metro-North to the city, spent hours walking Central Park, sitting in the Temple of Dendur at the Met. He’d gone to his parents’
apartment building, thought about ringing the bell, lost his nerve. “I don’t want to leave Black Elm.”
His mother sat down on the edge of the bed. “Only the land is valuable, Danny. You have to understand that this house is worthless. Worse than worthless. It will drain every
dollar we have.”
“I’m not selling Black Elm.”
“You have no idea what the world is like, Daniel. You’re still a child, and I envy that.”
“That’s not what you envy.”
The words emerged low and cold, exactly the way Danny wanted them to sound, but
his mother just laughed. “What do you think is going to happen here? There’s less than thirty thousand dollars in the trust for your college education, so unless you think you’d
like to make some friends at UConn, it’s time to start reevaluating. Your grandfather sold
you a false bill of goods. He led you on just as he led us on. You think you’ll be some Lord of Black Elm? You don’t rule this place. It rules you. Take what you can from it now.”
This town.
Danny stayed in his room. He locked the door. He ate granola bars and drank water from the sink in his bathroom. He supposed it was a kind of mourning, but he also just didn’t know what to do. There was a stash of one thousand dollars tucked into a copy of
McCullough’s 1776 in the library. When he was eighteen he’d have access to his college fund. Beyond that, he had nothing. But he couldn’t let go of Black Elm, he wouldn’t, not
so someone could put a wrecking ball through its walls. Not for anything. This was his place. Who would he be untethered from this house? From its wild gardens and gray