Later that evening, Margaret Rowbotham boils huge pots of cabbage and potatoes, saving the fattened chicken for tomorrow’s birthday dinner. The family eats the meal with a little bacon fat and thick slices of brown bread as they sit around the table—Grandmother Castle; Mabel’s parents; her brothers Angus, Julian, Paul, Albert, and William; Honora; and she—all of them grinning wide moon-slice grins at one another.
After dinner, Julian swings William up onto his shoulders. Second oldest of the boys, Julian is underweight, his shoulders square, broad, and bony. But his face is angular and cheerful because he resists all things unpleasant, and at nineteen, he is not too old to play. With William clutching his head, he chases Paul and Albert outside, where the three brothers engage in a game of catch, an hysterical William tossed between them.
Mabel watches for a while, until William wets himself and the fun stops.
“He stinks,” Paul says.
Julian swats him when William’s shrieks of laughter turn to wails. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s true. He has feelings, too.”
Angus, the eldest, the quiet one, reads by the window. It is his copy of Sherlock Holmes on the windowsill. He looks up when he hears his brothers arguing, but he’s never drawn in easily, and Frankenstein holds him fast.
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