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He waved a hand "Of course You’ve h it wasn’t entirely true I’d ht I had I’d also made her miserable I’d held her while our hideout burned I’d collapsed at her feet, too weak to stand, while Lucien Moriarty taunted her through Bryony Downs’s pink sparkly phone This was a practice round I wanted to see as important to you I wanted to see how much this foolish boy trusted you I threaten his Cue the applause And now I’d driven her to hide somewhere in her massive house by the sea, while her father made the kind of small talk with me that she’d always found abhorrent

"Did you like that last painting in the hall, of our shared ancestors? I heard you stop to look at it"

"You look a lot like Sherlock Holmes Like the pictures I’ve seen of hi to push past all the pleasantries and get to sos have ended up I ether We’ve solved a murder case and found a Moriarty on the other end of it It’s al itself"

"There are plenty of fa fingers under his chin "Men pass on their cobbler shops to their sons Lawyers send their daughters away to school and then give them a place at the firm We may have certain affinities that we pass down to our children, through genetic inheritance or through the e teach them to think, but I don’t think it’s entirely out of our control It’s not like we’re Sisyphus’s scions, forever pushing his boulder up the hill Look at your father"

"He’s in sales," I said, trying to keep up with his train of thought

Holmes’s father lifted an eyebrow "And the wo in the hall was Professor Moriarty’s daughter, and she presented it to our fay for her father’s actions The past’s actions may echo, but you shouldn’t take it tomysteries, but ever since he moved to the States, he’s seeined it helped him to be away froent of chaos"

"Do you knohen he’s getting in? Leander?"

"Tonight or to his watch "One can never really be exact, with him The world must reshape itself around his desires He’s much like Charlotte in that way Not content to observe, not even content tofor the benefit of others has never been their prioal"

I leaned forward, despite o tie and determined stare It was hypnotic, almost, and I didn’t resist the spell he cast "Then what do you think Charlotte and Leander’s goals are?"

"To assert theed "They aren’t content to act behind the scenes They always ht up in the play itself In that way, I suppose they’re both more like Sherlock than any of the rest of us He was always the would-be ician of the family Do you know, I toiled away at the Ministry of Defense for years--I was the architect of some small international conflicts--and yet I rarely stepped out from behind my desk I was content to round, and let others make those ideas real My son Milo does siood or ill, he’s made himself from that mold"

"But is that the best way?" I heard e him; it’d just slipped out "Don’t you think it’s better to see the consequences of your actions firsthand, so that you can learn from thehtful boy," he said, though I wasn’t sure if he meant it "Do you think I should have insisted that Charlotte stay and watch the fallout froust Moriarty, instead of sending her away for a fresh start?"

"I--"

"There areresponsibility We don’t always have to pay for our sins with our blood, or by sacrificing our futures But I hear Charlotte down the hall, so we should change the subject" He squinted at ined"

"What did you expect?" I asked, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden I wasn’t built for these sorts of deep-sea conversations, allrather less than you are" He stood and walked to the , looking over the dark hills that rolled down to the water "It’s a sha sharply on the study door

"Mother is going to kill me," she said when I opened it "We should all be downstairs fivearound "I’ll be there soon Why don’t you show Ja room?"

"Of course" She tucked her hand into ? Had we been fighting in the first place? I was exhausted by this train of thought, and anyway, it didn’thouse in the dead of winter I was getting the sense that, without Holh this week alive