For the first few days, they pretended nothing was happening. Every morning, Amelia sat and drank coffee as Jonas read the paper, relaying bits of news out loud and adding commentary to items he found interesting.
“There’s a smallpox outbreak at the almshouse in Jersey City. ‘Health authorities were thrown into a state of alarm’.… I should say so.… A former congressman is divorcing his wife and asking for $50,000 in damages from her lover—apparently she’s been carrying on with a banker.… The London Times liked President Cleveland’s inaugural address.… The Princess of Wales and her children had an audience with the Pope.… The body of a young doctor was found in the river.… Lily Post has taken over the role of Gianetta in The Gondoliers. I like her. We should try to see that.”
This relentless pursuit of normalcy soothed them both, for a time.
But the nightmare was always waiting, as vivid and terrible each time as if it were new. As the days passed, the strain began to tell on both of them. Sleep became difficult, Amelia lying awake in her room and Jonas in his, both dreading what they knew would happen when she closed her eyes.
Jonas stopped chattering over the paper in the mornings, instead clenching its edges in whitened fists and casting furtive glances at Amelia over the top of the page when he thought she wasn’t looking. There was something speculative in his gaze.
Three more times that week, he brought her the cards and nagged her into drawing. Each time the Tower fairly leapt from the deck.
They became snappish with each other. Amelia withdrew, ignoring all but direct inquiries and answering in monosyllables. Jonas stopped going out and began to find increasingly pallid excuses not to leave her alone. Their apartment took on the choking atmosphere of a city under siege.
She refused to draw a card the fourth time he offered them, waving them away with a scowl. He muttered something under his breath as he put them away. Their tempers frayed, each of them spent the rest of the day brooding, looking away whenever their eyes met.
On the ninth day, a package arrived for Jonas: two books, one a beautifully bound copy of Leaves of Grass. The other, Amelia saw before he hastily covered the front, was a popular traveler’s guide to Paris. He read the note it contained, then shoved it in his pocket, glancing at Amelia as if to gauge whether she’d noticed. She made a point of averting her gaze, her jaw clenched against the words threatening to spill from her mouth. The air between them darkened.
That afternoon, Jonas offered her the cards once more.
“No,” she snapped, knocking his hand away and spilling the deck to the floor. “I’m not drawing again. It means nothing! And you’ve got to stop this damned hovering. Everything is fine. Nothing has happened. Nothing is going to happen. I’m recovered. You should go and tell Sabine we’re ready to come back to work.”
“I will do no such thing. None of this is fine,” Jonas spat, gesturing at the scattered cards. “This thing with the Tower, it’s important. And you know it. That’s why you won’t talk about it—because it’s scaring you. All of it—Mrs. Franklin, and the cards, and that god-damned nightmare.” He nearly shouted the last. “And you are not recovered. You’re thin as a rail and pale as milk, except for those black circles under your eyes. I doubt you could make it all the way out to the street without falling over, let alone work a full night. You’re exhausted. You can’t—”
“I can do whatever I damned well want,” Amelia shot back. “I want to get back to work. I want things to get back to normal, and that isn’t going to happen until—”
“It isn’t going to happen at all,” he cried. “Don’t you see? Things are different now. You are different.”
“Nothing is different. It’s just a dream. It’s just a stupid dream, and this,” she said, plucking up the Tower card, where it had fallen face up at her feet, “is just paper.” She ripped it in half and flung the pieces at him.
Jonas scoffed. “You know better than that.” He shoved her seer’s crystal across the table at her. “I’ll bet if you tried, you’d see something in it now. But you won’t, because you’re terrified I’m right. Something’s happened to you, Amelia. Lying to yourself about it won’t help anything.”
She batted the crystal back at him. “I’m not the one who’s lying.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You think I don’t know? About the gifts, and the poetry, and Paris?” The last word was a sneer. “Are you a fool? You’re his toy, and when he’s tired of you, he’ll drop you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve never even met him, for god’s sake, you don’t know—”
“I know enough. I know he wants you to leave with him. And you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
He hesitated for an instant, and the pause was answer enough. Rage swept over her.
“What’s happened to you? I never thought you’d be content to be nothing but someone’s whore!” She hurled the last word like a knife.
Jonas looked as stunned as if she’d slapped him. His face flushed red. Without a word, he turned, stalked out of the apartment, and slammed the door behind him. Amelia seized the crystal and heaved it after him. It shattered against the doorjamb. She kicked the table’s leg, earning herself nothing but a bruised foot. “Damn it,” she hissed, rubbing the injury.
She threw herself down into a chair, let out a shuddering breath, and buried her face in her hands. Her anger drained away, replaced by a searing mixture of guilt and shame. Her barbed words still echoed through the empty room, pricking her anew with each reverberation. She felt as if she might climb out of her own skin.
Enough. She had to get out of here. She stood, snatched up her new cloak—still hanging on the hook by the door since the night of the brawl—and tied it on as she made her way down the stairs.
Amelia was winded by the time she reached the bottom. She swore again with more force, irritated anew that Jonas had been right. She looked up at their door but couldn’t bear the thought of sitting alone in the oppressive silence.
I’ll go for a walk, she thought, squaring her shoulders. It will be good for me. If I tire myself out, then maybe tonight I won’t— She cut herself off, her mind skittering away from the subject of her dream.
She crossed the yard and started down the alley. As she passed the spot where she’d been injured, regret for the things she’d said to Jonas stabbed through her. She’d gone too far. He worried about her. He didn’t deserve the way she’d spoken. As she reached the street, she promised herself she would apologize as soon as he returned.
The resolution made, she set off feeling if not unburdened, then at least lighter. The season had begun to change while she’d been stuck inside, and the air held a faint hint of spring, though the breeze was still chilly enough to make her glad of the cloak. At her favorite café, she bought a sausage on a soft roll and a cup of cider. She sat at one of the outdoor tables facing the park, watching the passersby and enjoying the salty meat and the mild alcoholic bite of the cider. She finished her meal and turned her face up to the sun.