The River of No Return

like that.”
    “You made me!”
    “Yes, I did. Do you really think that will happen to me?”
    “No, of course not. Of course not, Clare, you mooncalf.”
    Clare straightened her cap on her head. “I know I’m neither going to hell nor organizing monkey parades while I’m there. I don’t even believe in hell.”
    “You don’t?”
    “No. Do you?”
    “I . . . I . . .” Julia realized she had never thought about it. “Yes, I think I do.”
    “Oh,” said Clare. “How strange. I always felt, you know, that hell was a story made up to frighten us into doing what they want us to do.”
    “You sound like my grandfather.”
    “I shall take that as a compliment, I suppose. But my point, Julia, is this. They hold whips over our heads to make us be good and do what they want. Many of the whips are imaginary. Or at least I believe them so. Hell, for instance, and apes. Other whips are very real. Poverty. Hatred. Loneliness.” Clare smoothed her hand over her deformed Apollo. “I am lucky. I have an income, friends and family, and a roof over my head. Do you know what that means to me?”
    “Happiness?”
    Clare looked at Julia, and it wasn’t happiness Julia saw in her face. But Clare smiled and said, “Yes, exactly. Happiness. And just an inch of freedom. But you are an orphan, Julia. And you do not come into your inheritance for three years.”
    Julia blinked. Recently other problems had overwhelmed these everyday sorrows. But her old troubles remained, waiting for her, as a cough outlasts a fever.
    “I want you to know you may live with us for as long as you like,” Clare said, arranging herself to sew again. “Do not rush into a marriage simply to be rid of us, or to rid us of you.”
    “Thank you,” Julia managed to say.
    Clare touched her cheek with a thimbled finger. “To be honest, Julia, I am not especially fearful for you. You have always had a good head on your shoulders.”
    Julia laughed. “Thank you! I have not had much occasion to use it, locked up at Castle Dar.”
    “No, no,” Clare said. “In my opinion, anyone who manages to survive beyond the age of eighteen with their character intact should be hailed as a hero. Such a person must have the courage of Jason and the strength of Hercules! Most of us do not make it, you know. We emerge on the other side of childhood as specters, not as real people.” She turned and looked at the enormous portrait of the Falcott family that dominated one wall of the room.
    Julia contemplated the painting, too. She usually avoided looking at it, for she did not like what the artist had done with any of the subjects. Bella and Clare were all hair and flowers, and the seventh marquess looked like a kindly, if dreary, vicar, when in fact the man had been a self-congratulatory bore who never took notice of anyone but himself. The dowager marchioness was painted to look like a long-suffering angel, which must have flattered her opinion of herself. But the worst part of the painting was the youthful Nicholas, who, as the new marquess, was the center around which all the movement of the painting swirled. The artist had made him far shinier—hair golden, eyes blue—than he really was, but it wasn’t that which repelled her. It was the way the painted youth leaned forward, grasping at attention, his too-pink lip curled in smug self-congratulation. That was not, had never been, Blackdown. Or perhaps it was Blackdown, but it had never been Nick.
    Julia glanced at Clare and saw that she, too, was unimpressed. “My mother loves this painting,” she said.
    “I was just thinking that it must be a comfort to her,” Julia said.
    Clare rolled her eyes. “Please. Be honest. It represents the family she wishes were her own. Her dead husband appears to worship her, her daughters are beautiful ninnies, and her son is a smug Adonis. Not a single one of us looks like ourselves, nor appears to have any character at all. Each of those painted people looks tedious to me. And while you may say any number of unpleasant things about the Falcotts, I do not think we are tedious.”
    “Meeting men in the kitchens in the middle of night, plotting revolution . . . I’m sorry, Clare. You are a tiresome girl. So dull.”
    Clare smiled, but then her eyes grew intent. “Tell me truly, Julia. Do you think Nick has come back changed?”
    Julia blinked and let her eyes stray back to the painting. “I don’t know,” she said.
    Clare studied her for a moment, then