“Ah. What about The Secret of Clock Island? That’s Christopher’s favorite.”
“Donated to…somewhere.”
Lucy looked at him, suspicious. “Somewhere?”
“Somewhere.”
“Are you not allowed to tell me where?”
“I can tell you. I just don’t want to tell you where.”
“Hugo…”
“The Royal Family has this…you know, drawing-school charity and—”
“Stop right there. I already hate you enough,” Lucy said.
“It’s not that impressive. I mean, it’s not like it’s hanging in Buckingham Palace. Actually, it could be.”
“You can stop talking now.”
“I’ll fetch more biscuits.”
“I was told there might be cheesecake?”
Hugo rolled his eyes. “I’ll fetch the cheesecake.”
While he was out of the studio, Lucy stood up to stretch her back and noticed another painting half-hidden behind an industrial gray storage shelf. She went to it, pulled it out carefully, and saw it was another portrait. She knew that face, those eyes, that sweet nose.
“Ah, Davey,” she said. Lucy heard her host returning, and glanced at him over her shoulder. Hugo wasn’t smiling. “I’m sorry. I was being nosy.”
“It’s all right. It’s a good painting. Just…some days I want to see him. Some days it’s too hard.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
“Sometimes kids with Down syndrome have heart trouble. He was one of the unlucky ones.”
Hugo set the two plates of cheesecake onto the worktable, moving aside a half dozen paint-stained cups and glasses to make room. “When he was fifteen, they decided he wasn’t going to make it much longer without an operation.” He paused. Lucy wanted to reach out and take his hand but knew she shouldn’t. “There were complications, blood clots. He died in the hospital. Mum was with him, but I was over here. Working.”
“I’m so sorry, Hugo.” She touched his arm lightly, but he didn’t respond, just took the painting back out of its hiding spot again. He hung it on the hook that the portrait of Piper had been occupying. “It’s a beautiful portrait.”
“Easy to make something beautiful out of something beautiful.” He was quiet a moment. Then, “Davey would tell strangers on the street that his big brother drew the Clock Island books. He’d go into a bookshop with Mum, and he’d grab the books off the shelves and walk around, telling everyone who’d listen that his brother drew the pictures. One woman asked him for his autograph. It made his year.” He smiled, then the smile faded. “Jack was a prince when it happened. Absolute legend. He paid for the funeral, paid for me to fly over, paid off my mother’s house because there was no chance in hell she’d be able to work for months, as hard as she took it. He saved us both.”
Lucy knew she was treading close to dangerous waters. Open wounds needed careful handling. “Ah, no wonder you moved in when Jack was struggling,” she said softly.
“I owed him so much. And I never thought it would…” He looked out the studio window toward the ocean that had killed Autumn and carried Piper away from him. “I thought he’d come through it faster than he did. I don’t even know if he is through it yet or if he’s putting on a show for my sake so I can leave without feeling like I’m abandoning him.”
“He’s the Mastermind, remember?” Lucy picked up her plate of cake and gave the other one to Hugo, trying to get a smile out of him again. It worked. “You can guess all you want, but you’ll never know what he’s really up to.”
“I’ll eat cheesecake to that.” They clinked their forks and dove in.
* * *
—
After another forty minutes and a few thousand calories of cheesecake, Lucy had five paintings picked out from Hugo’s archives. He flipped through her choices.
“Ah, Goblin Night on Clock Island,” Hugo said, nodding his approval. “One of my favorites too.”
“That book actually scared me when I was a kid. Most of his books are spooky, but he managed to make that one genuinely scary.”
“You want to know the dark secret behind that book?” Hugo set the Goblin Night painting on an empty easel.
Lucy stood up, brushed the dust off her clothes, and stood by Hugo. “I don’t know. Do I?”
“You remember what that book’s about?”
“A boy comes to Clock Island to…I don’t remember what exactly.” She furrowed her brow. “Oh, he thinks his dad is a werewolf, and he wants to find the cure to save him. The Lord and Lady of October send him on a quest into a castle full of monsters. Right?”
“Close enough,” Hugo said. “Jack’s father was an alcoholic. He said it was like growing up with a werewolf. When he was a normal man, he was all right, he was…human. When he was drinking, he turned into a monster, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Beat him. Beat his mother. Makes my father look like a saint. Mine just sodded off when he decided he didn’t want to be a father anymore. He broke only Mum’s heart, not her arm.”
“My God.” Lucy stared at the painting, at the boy in the corner of the canvas, working up the courage to enter the castle where he’ll either find the cure for his father’s illness or die trying. “I never knew that about him. Does he ever—”
“Talk about it? No. First rule of Clock Island—Don’t break the spell. Kids need to believe in the Mastermind. They don’t need to know who’s behind the curtain.”
She understood that and appreciated it, but it broke her heart that Jack had to keep so many secrets. What else was he hiding from the world?
Hugo went on. “Jack told me years ago how he invented Clock Island on those nights his father turned into a werewolf. He’d hide under the covers staring at the face of his glow-in-the-dark watch, waiting for the hours to pass. Clocks were magic to him—ten and eleven at night were dangerous hours, werewolf hours, but six and seven and eight in the morning were human times. If he were king of the clock, he could keep those werewolf hours from coming. Somehow the clock became an island, a place where scared kids could go to find their courage.”
“That’s what I always loved about the books,” Lucy said, “even before I knew that’s what I loved about them. I just knew that if I could get to Clock Island, I would be welcome there.” No wonder Jack understood children so well, knew how to write them so well. Just like a part of Lucy was always going to be in that hospital waiting room, hoping her parents would come back and check on her but knowing they wouldn’t, Jack was always going to be in that black castle fighting off monsters to save someone he loved.
She groaned and rubbed her forehead.