The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

Author:Hannah Tinti
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-440-33789-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

Dolly was asleep underneath a maple tree, and Ren thought he looked almost peaceful. His head was resting against the rough bark, his hood pulled over his face. It was a warm night. The trees on the common were set in a line like pawns across a board.

Ren shouted in his ear. He held his nose and slapped his cheek, but Dolly did not respond. Ren sat on the grass and watched the sun go down. Every once in a while he would lift Dolly’s collar to make sure that his chest was still rising and falling. Ren counted seventeen links on the tattooed chain. He tried to imagine what it might be like to have that many ghosts behind him.

It was nearly an hour before Dolly finally opened his eyes.

“How long have I been sleeping?”

“About a hundred years,” said Ren.

Dolly felt his face for whiskers. He gave his broken grin. “Then how come I’m not old?”

“You are,” said Ren. “It just doesn’t show.”

The streets were dark as they made their way home. Dolly followed in a daze, stumbling over bricks in the sidewalk. Ren steered him down an alley and past another group of soldiers, smoking on the corner. Their uniforms were dirty, their guns hung casually from their shoulders. When Ren turned to look, one of the men nodded, showing the gaps in his brown teeth, and Dolly made the sign of the cross in return.

By the time they approached the boardinghouse it was early evening. The windows were shuttered as they came along the sidewalk. Ren tried the door and found it unlocked. The fire in the kitchen was cold. The knife and pie-makings were still on the counter, the rolling pin covered with flour, but Mrs. Sands was nowhere to be found. Dolly stood by while Ren opened cupboards and closets, turned over the potato basket, pushed the cloaks hanging by the door aside, then thundered up the stairs.

“Mrs. Sands?”

Ren checked their beds, then went to the landing above. He pushed his way into the mousetrap girls’ room. The space was large enough to hold four single cots. Shards of mirror hung on the walls. In the closet were their Sunday clothes—their heavy boots and navy dresses missing. He knocked over a box of rouge. He stumbled up another flight of stairs to the attic.

When no one answered his banging, he went inside. The room was narrow, with a pitched ceiling and two skylights. Underneath these openings was an old rope bed, and flung across it, still in her kitchen clothes, was Mrs. Sands.

Her face was flushed, the top of her collar torn loose. Her hands were pasted with flour. Ren touched her shoulder. “Mrs. Sands,” he whispered. She began to shake, lightly at first in response and then harder, so much that she nearly fell to the floor. Ren reached for the blanket, pulled it across her body, and held her down, leaning all his weight onto the mattress.

“YOU’RE MURDERING ME.”

“I’m trying to help.”

Mrs. Sands focused for a moment on Ren’s face.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.