The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel by David Liss Read Free Book Online

echoed in her thoughts all night, like a haunting tune that, once heard, could not be forgotten.
    Back and forth she debated with herself, pondering what was real and what was not, so the next morning at breakfast she was possessed of little appetite—in part from fatigue, and in part because, in the light of day, her situation with Mr. Olson seemed far more alarming than any supposed curse. Her life, which had been so unhappy, was on the verge of growing more terrible than she could imagine. There was no one to offer her advice, no one to tell her what to do, and this feeling of helplessness made her miss her father with such intense yearning that her stomach clenched and her lungs turned to stone in her breast.
    Even as she felt his loss as an unbearable weight, she knew he’d been the man she cherished only in the last year of his life. Until her death, Emily had been his favored child; Lucy and Martha, the middle sister, had warranted little more than staccato bursts of conversation at meals. Mr. Derrick had room in his heart for only one of his motherless children, and Emily—clever, observant, and learned—was the obvious choice for a man who spent nearly every hour of every day sequestered in his library, tending to household business or losing himself in his books.
    Lucy had never resented her father’s overt preference. Her father’s favoritism had always felt proper, so the emptiness she felt now had a familiar quality. Even when he had still been alive, for much of Lucy’s life, she had yearned for him. She’d wanted him to talk to her, to tell her his private jokes, to invite her into his library and share his ideas and frustrations, but he had been always too busy with his solitude or with Emily.
    Emily, for her part, had always appeared slightly embarrassed by her father’s favoritism. Many times he would call for her and she would cry back that he must wait, for she was talking to Martha of a book, or listeningto some gossipy story that Lucy was telling. It was Emily who taught Lucy the workings of the household, how to deal with merchants and tradesmen and laborers, who addressed her questions about the wider world and her own transition from childhood to adulthood. When she had been small, she went to Emily to cry over an injury or a slight from a friend. For a girl who had grown up without a mother and with a distant father, Emily had been the closest thing she had to a parent.
    After Emily’s sudden and unexpected death, Martha and Lucy feared their father would never recover. He shut himself away, barely ate, and spoke little but what the operation of the household required. Only once he had withdrawn entirely did Lucy understand how much of her father she had experienced through Emily—through the clever remarks no one but they understood, their conspiratorial whispers, the sounds of their laughter or spirited debates, muffled by the closed library door. Papa might have withheld himself from
Lucy
, but he had been there for Emily, and that had always been enough.
    Then, one day, Lucy and Martha had been in the sitting room, sewing in mournful silence, when the library door cracked open, spilling forth sunlight. For weeks he had kept the curtains drawn, and now both sisters looked in wonder as their father walked to the door and stared for a long moment. “Lucy,” he said, “I should like to speak with you.”
    She set down her sewing and entered the library, where he invited her, rather formally, to take a seat across from him by the window. They remained silent while Lucy breathed in the scent of tobacco and juniper. Mr. Derrick looked at his daughter, and Lucy stared out the window until she could stand the silence no longer. “We all miss her, Papa.”
    “Of course we do.” His voice was clipped, almost impatient. “Tell me of the books you like to read.”
    The demand astonished her because it had no apparent connection to what had come before and because Papa had never before shown