The day after, as I was leaden and aslumber in my bed, a hand from our service took his chance and challenged the Mister for the rights and stewardship of the freehold at Ghost Perch. I suppose since Mr Sadiqi was removed on his errand, and Nick was quit of us, the man had felt the hour’d been ripe as would be coming for his mutiny.

I’d barely knew the man’s name. Even from my daily errands, I’d barely known him at all: the late Liam Rondhed, of Pennsylvania. He was a thoughtful man, overcome by a quiet resentment of unfairness. On that height of noon, he levied all of the Mister’s sins against him (in the yard, as public as you like), and impugned his honor in all manner of ways which might even have been just. He’d cultivated a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol, in secret, into his first rosary of her Lady’s grace.

The Mister shot him through his throat, and left old Maynard to oversee disposal of the corpse.

I woke by late afternoon into the disquiet of the aftermath. My head raised from the pillow into elation of what I’d done, and self-doubt that I’d done it at all. I blinked into frightful imagined scenarios of the consequences of my choice; that all shields of affection would be withdrawn from me, and that I’d face alone against overwhelming and implacable anger. How could I hold to glum, though? I split my face with grinning, and punched the air in victory.

Hard light diffused through the tall, pulled curtain and left a strip of blanket hot where it fell over me. Throwing off my blanket, I just about leapt down from my bunk – then dressed myself practically from my suitcase under the bottom bed. Years of wear, and the stresses of tear had left my work denims and shirts oft repaired till they were thick in patches at the knees, cuffs and elbows – and my indoor slippers were roughly stitched from rabbit-skin.

A lightness of anticipation welled up from my guts, up to my eyebrows. My fingers were near to dancing as I pushed aside a length of shelf. There, from under a stack of dry, inaccessible memoirs of academic critics, was revealed my ledgers.

There is no means or sense I had (at that time) by which I could tell you the object was changed. But it was. The squared missal had roughly cut and trimmed vellum pages. I had once considered binding larger, irregular leafs: but comparably, that neglect of craft would have paid a small advantage of surface. I had now was had planned this hallow for months, and an insufficient vessel could not have done for it. That was would have been obvious, surely.

Some faint thought came to me, that I became impressed with my own forethought as I turned open the book. My derivations of the various names of Minerva were clear and directed, which was outside of my general chirography of half-formed thoughts and tangents gone awander. If I hadn’t have penned each line myself, I’d have surely suspected myself of transcribing my work from drafted notes. I’d have to be careful, it occurred to me, with each touch of ink I should intend to add to it: such that I not make a mess of the whole. I would need to lay out a separate workbook, and I chided myself for then now past have been ignoring the practicality of that need.

The childrens’ room was empty except of me, and further I was aware of a particular quality of absence. The bones of the house simply hadn’t the squeak or timbre I’d expect of our daily bustle, but then again neither was it creaking in the distinct echoes of vacancy. You know, I have wondered, once or twice, if there is some subsonic sense folk have got, that even without sight it’s natural we intuit the shared occupation of space...

Anywho, that there’s a whole other possum entirely. You catch my meaning: I was alone but not quite entirely, so I squirreled away my book again, and stepped out into the hall.

I found my family in the dining room, sat at the table with plates set and served with cold cuts of left-overs and dry biscuits. They were all of them huddled about the table, and deathly quiet. Priscilla was in Auntie Hektor’s lap, and Saleena in Seung-Hee’s. Su-Hope and Ursula shared a chair even though there were empty seats, and Cooper was driving a fork into a block of butter with a slow and deliberate intention.

Auntie Jeminee stood nervously as she spied me. “Todd’s up.” She set down a cup of tea unevenly and it clattered against its saucer. Her voice was hoarse, and she dabbed away at the corner of her eye with a napkin. “I’ll fetch you up a plate if you like,” she said as she whirled fast towards the kitchen.

I looked towards Momma, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. My cousins had a harried look, like they’d already exhausted themselves of weeping. Auntie Hektor lifted her youngest off as she rose, and passed the child into Momma’s keeping.

“There has been some unpleasantness,” Ms Hektor so understated. She folded her hands and lifted her chin severely.

I searched the table for some other hints. I found Ashli slumped along the floor against the kitchen doorframe with a wrung out expression. She made the sign of a salute to me, and gnawed bleakly on a rolled stick of willow bark. Ms Jeminee had to step over her.

“Ma’am?” I inquired carefully. There were any number of ways a loyal man might incriminate his fellows, and if my kin had cooked up trouble, I didn’t intend to become the convicting testimony.

Auntie Vaunda leaned her chair away from the table. “Boy was out like a log,” she muttered into her coffee. Her eyes were shut as she savored the rising steam of it.

“I am afraid one of our men came into a mood for usurpation today,” Anne Hektor declared. “And the house determined it was necessary to defend against his ambition.”

The words she chose were impersonal, and euphemistic and I recognized it of them. I calculated my way past her to the end of her telling. “The Mister done kilt a hand?” I near spat. “Oh by gods gone, who?”

It said something to my Aunties that I reached this conclusion so readily, which I suspect they were unhappy of. There was long moment no one answered, until Ashli shrugged and slid lower.

“Middle height,” she supplied. “Tiny nostrils, dirty blonde, had the Cesar Chavez griffindor?”

I racked my brain at length until I found some residue of the man. “Oh,” I whispered stupidly. “I liked that hat.” Then I sat and joined my family for supper.

All measure of dissatisfaction found its outlet during the course of that unpleasant meal. Su-Hope and Cooper came to blows. Priscilla keened gleefully like a banshee until she passed right out from lack of air. Ashli and her mother snapped at each other like vipers. I cut into salted ox-haunch without satisfaction, and dipped it into vinegar with raw strips of wilted kale.

By the end of our refreshment, we were strung taut as fiddle strings.

The worst came when Auntie Jeminee stood and announced she might as well check in on the Mister, so as to see if he had need of anything. She’d said nothing more than that, and I’d thunk it innocuous enough. But Momma flew off the handle. She grabbed at her plate, and at least had the mind to pass it over in favor of her napkin.

But she flung it into Mabel Jeminee’s face, and then took a spoon and threw that too. By the time Momma’d used every other nearby blunt cutlery and committed to picking up the fork, the little ones were screaming. It took both of the feuding Hektors to set aside their argument to subdue her.

“What is your problem, Mabel?” Momma spat. “A man’s dead.”

She wrestled against a panicked Ashli and an overwhelmed Ms Hektor. Auntie Jeminee turned scarlet and sputtered in confusion. Seung-Hee Park spilled her tea and cast about before pulling the girls away from the table. Rather than help, I believe I chose to be preoccupied (in the opposite of heroism) by keeping the staining fare from spilling on the tablecloth.

Momma and the A. Hektors struggled just until my Auntie Vaunda spoke up from her chair in a chilling surety. “My coffee here is worth more in bullion than the life of any one man,” she said, “if you make me spill a drop, I swear to you now, I will put a gap in your teeth.”

At that, the spat was ended. Ms Jeminee fled upstairs at haste, and Anne Hektor recovered herself enough to assign every body at the table to tasks about the down stairs and cellar until we were apart and exhausted and the general order was restored.