This turned out to be a pretty accurate assessment of the following events. Well, maybe “unsettled” isn’t quite a strong enough word for Theodorus’s mood.

  I just stood there and shrugged. Mr. Bomar looked back behind him, shrugged himself, then leaned over and unlocked the door. Just as I climbed in, it started to drizzle.

  “Hey there, Clovis,” I said.

  Mr. Bomar just turned his head and looked straight forward.

  I turned around to face the music and Theodorus was right there. His head and torso were stretched out of his shell to such an extent that his face was just a few inches from mine.

  Over the years, he would come to master a range of expressions at least as broad and subtle as anyone’s—any actor’s even. But he hadn’t been in that strange, mutable body for very long at that point, so I couldn’t read his face. There was no mistaking what he said, though. “I trusted you,” he said.

  Which was not exactly what I expected. “What do you mean? I thought it went pretty well.” I did not think that, from his point of view, it had gone well. I didn’t think it could have gone well.

  “Why did you stop listening to me?”

  Acting and lying aren’t the same thing at all. But that doesn’t mean being an actor prevents you from being a liar.

  “The machine stopped working,” I said. “Maybe it was the batteries.”

  Theodorus retracted a little. “Clovis,” he said.

  I hadn’t noticed the reel-to-reel sitting between the driver’s and passenger seats. Mr. Bomar reached down and hit a button. The reels spun for a moment. He stopped the rewind, then punched Play.

  “You kiss by the book,” I heard myself say. Was my voice really that breathy?

  “Just because you decided not to listen to me doesn’t mean I stopped listening to you,” said Theodorus.

  “Theodorus,” I lied, “I don’t see what the problem is. You wanted me to pretend to be you—to be this version of you that you made up—so Peri could meet you in person. Or this other you…Hell, this is so mixed up you’ve got me confused. You want her to be in love with you, to stay in love with you. What did I do wrong?”

  That stumped him. I knew he had to be upset, angry, confused. I knew that because, Method or no Method, I was myself upset, angry, and confused. One thing I wasn’t, though, was a fourteen-year-old joker with a lot of money but very little experience with matters of the heart. “It was supposed to be just pretend,” he said.

  “You’re only pretending to love her?” I asked.

  “No. You were supposed to be just pretending.”

  I briefly entertained the idea that he had some kind of wild card mind-reading ability, but by this point I was committed. “Theodorus,” I said. “We don’t call it pretending, but for the sake of argument, yes, I was pretending.” I was moving back into acting from bald-faced lying.

  “She sounded…” He trailed off. If you’ve ever wondered what a kid whom fate has cruelly warped into an inhuman shape sounds like when he’s choking back tears, well, he sounds just like any other kid choking back tears. “This was a terrible idea,” he said.

  I didn’t have an answer for that. He was right.

  It started raining a lot harder just then. The sound of it on the metal roof of the van was like a drum line, and the view through the windshield blurred. We sat there for what seemed like a very long time. Longer than you want a pause to go on in a play.

  It was me who broke the silence. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  Theodorus had withdrawn from where he’d been right behind me. In fact, he had retracted so far that his torso and arms had disappeared into his shell. His voice sounded shaky. “I don’t want you to do this anymore,” he said.

  It seemed cruel to ask, but I had to know. “What about Peri? What about tomorrow?”

  “I’ll leave her a message. A family emergency, like you said.”

  But you’re supposed to be all alone in the world, I thought. Oh, God.

  “What do you want me to do now?” I asked.

  “I want you to go away.”

  The rain hadn’t let up, but I didn’t bother asking Mr. Bomar for a ride back to my hotel.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, I was trying not to think about the events of the previous few days, and especially not the events of the night before. In order, I had considered and rejected the notions of contacting Theodorus, which I had no idea how to do, packing my bag and returning to the apartment where I’d been staying at the sufferance of the dinner theater management, which I wasn’t sure would be allowed, and going to hang out at Peri’s hotel and checking to see what time the bar started serving piña coladas.

  I had rejected all of these ideas in turn because—it came to me like a punch in the stomach—I probably wouldn’t be welcome any of those places.

  So I was sitting in a chair in my fancy hotel room presumably being paid for by money from Theodorus’s Christmas stocking or whatever, wondering when and even whether I was supposed to be checking out, and picking over the remains of my room service breakfast. The room came with a robe; I’d never stayed in a room that came with a robe.

  I had just decided to call my agent on the assumption that I wouldn’t have to foot the long-distance bill and was actually reaching for the phone when it rang. This took me aback for a second, but not nearly so much as the voice on the other end of the line when I answered, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald,” came the drawl. “This is Mr. Bomar.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh, hey.” I was trying to figure out what possible reason Mr. Bomar might have for calling me, then decided to hazard a guess. “Are you, um, are you calling about my fee?”

  These days, with smartphones and all, you have the option of actually talking face-to-face over the phone. Back then, you more or less had to depend on the person you were speaking with to verbally express disdain. Mr. Bomar managed it with a slight sigh. I wondered if he’d ever acted. “No, Mr. Fitzgerald. My understanding is that there is an envelope waiting for you at your hotel’s reception desk.”

  “Well, thanks. That’s good. Because I have to tell you, Clovis, I just ate a thirty-dollar plate of scrambled eggs.”

  “That is of little interest to me, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  “Right,” I said. “Right. So, uh, what’s up? How’s your morning been?”

  The pauses between sentences and words are as important a part of delivering lines on the stage as the dialogue itself. Those silences can communicate tension like almost nothing else. “My morning has been unfortunately eventful, Mr. Fitzgerald. It has been most unpleasant.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Bomar.” You know? I really was.

  “The unpleasantness shows no sign of abatement, Mr. Fitzgerald, because it has become necessary for me to insist that you come to my home.”

  Okay. Not what I was expecting.

  “Well, like I said, I’ve already had breakfast, so…”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald, I have arranged for a taxicab to pick you up in thirty minutes. You should be here within the hour.”

  This had gone on for about as long as I could take. “Why do you want me to come to your house, Mr. Bomar?”

  This time the pause didn’t feel tense. It didn’t feel hopeful, it didn’t feel cautious. It felt…worried. “Because Mr. Witherspoon used my address in his correspondence with Miss Peregrine.”

  “Okay. What’s that supposed to tell me?”

  “It’s supposed to tell you, Mr. Fitzgerald, that this is where she came when she did not find Mr. Witherspoon in the offices of the English department at the College of Charleston.”

  Oh.

  Oh, shit.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Bomar retired relatively young, so I actually only met him one other time after all this. I think it was around four years later, when I made my triumphant return to tread the boards of the Charleston Dinner Theater as Willy Loman. He actually came to the show with his wife and daughter.

  Neither the wife nor the daughter was at home, though, when I knocked on the door of the suburban split-level ranch the taxi dropped me off at. No columns, if you were wondering.

  Mr. Bomar opened the door, stepped aside, and pointed up a set of stairs. I guess he felt like he’d met his quota of talking to me for the day.

  She was waiting in one of those dens that look like nobody ever sits in it. She was holding a coffee cup in both hands, her wings were folded behind her back, and it looked like she’d done some crying but was now past that part.

  I stood in the doorway, as unsure of what to say as I’ve ever been in my life, before or since. She didn’t look up at me, but she knew I was there. She said, “I don’t shoot outdoors when it rains.”

  Of course. I didn’t need her to line up the dominoes for me, not now that she’d knocked over the first one. The shoot was canceled, so she went to surprise her lover at work. Maybe give the undergrads a thrill and a reason to like the distinguished professor of Elizabethan poetry even more than they no doubt already did. But she couldn’t find his name on the directory in the English department building, or maybe they didn’t even have a directory, so she’d just gone straight to the secretary’s office to ask for Professor Witherspoon’s office number. Or it happened some other way. What was important was that all of the possibilities ended with her learning that nobody at his supposed place of employment had ever heard of a Professor Theodorus Witherspoon.

  So what to do next? What to do when it turns out that your boyfriend isn’t who he claimed to be?

  Go to his house and confront him, of course.

  Except it’s not even his house.

  Like I said, she didn’t look up at me. Like I said, I didn’t know what to say.

  She did, though. “So, I know who I am,” she said. “I’m an idiot. Now why don’t you tell me who you are?”

  “You’re not an idiot,” I said, like an idiot.

  “You don’t get to tell me what I am,” she said, anger and sadness both in it.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t know where to start. What has Mr. Bomar told you?”

  She shot me a look. “Is that the man whose house we’re in?”

  I nodded. Clovis playing it close to the vest, as ever.

  “Mr. Bomar has told me that he didn’t have any cream and that he would have you here in forty-five minutes. Unless he was lying about the cream, he’s told me one true thing then. Which is more than you can say, obviously, Professor Witherspoon. If that’s your name.”

  This was going so badly. “No,” I said. “No, I’m not him.”

  She set her coffee cup down on a side table, first carefully moving a coaster over to place it on. “You’re not him,” she said. “What’s that supposed to mean? All those letters you sent, all the books and poems and cards. You obviously know all of that shit, so why did you pretend to be a professor of it? Why would I have cared?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Shut up!” she shouted. “Will you shut up?”

  “No,” I said. “No, you need to hear this. Listen, I did lie to you, I lied to you about everything, and I deserve whatever happens because of it and you deserve absolutely none of the hurt you’re feeling. But the thing is, I’m not Theodorus Witherspoon.”

  Her wings moved then, fast, reflexive, like she was trying to take flight. A framed photograph hanging on the wall behind her was knocked awry—it was of a beach somewhere tropical. She ignored it. “You even lied about your name?”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this. No, I’m not Theodorus Witherspoon. But there really is a Theodorus. He’s the one you’ve been writing all this time.”

  Confusion warred with the anger and sorrow on her face. “What the hell is all this?” she asked.

  I tried to think of an answer, any answer that was true, that could come close to explaining this tangled-up situation. Finally, I asked her, “Do you know who Edmond Rostand was?”

  Before she could answer, Mr. Bomar brushed past me into the room. He was dressed in his chauffeur’s uniform and carrying a coat. “I brushed this dry for you, miss,” he said. “And I’ve brought the car around.”

  Peri and I both looked at him, confused. “You already told me this isn’t Theodorus’s house,” she said to him. “And you brought this…this man here to tell me he’s not Theodorus. Who are you? Who are you both?”

  Mr. Bomar held out her coat. “We are the accomplices,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  This time I sat in the front seat of the Duesenberg with Mr. Bomar. Once she had entered the back passenger area, Peregrine had reached over and slammed the door shut herself. Not that I had imagined she wanted me to sit next to her anyway. I could practically feel the ice of her gaze on the back of my neck and settled in for a silent and uncomfortable ride.

  But, shocking me, Clovis Bomar began talking as soon as he pulled out of the driveway. “The Witherspoons have been a moneyed family in South Carolina since the late sixteen hundreds,” he said. He took a hand off the steering wheel and waved vaguely in the direction of downtown. “Which is not unique among the wealthy and powerful of this city, of course. Their family history, like that of all their peers, is shameful.”

  Even if I had expected him to talk, this wasn’t what I would have expected him to talk about.

  “My faith, though, teaches the possibility of redemption. Now, I don’t claim to know what redemption looks like for a family living in comfort so extensive that it is practically obscene. But I do know that there are families in this city who are wealthier than my employers, and whose characters test my belief in redemption far more than the Witherspoons. I’ve worked for some of them.”

  I noticed that he was driving much more carefully than he had on my previous ride out to the Witherspoon estate.

  “But I am not the redeemer, of course. I am no judge. I am an observer.”

  We halted at a traffic light where we were apparently turning left. The turn signal of the old car was loud. Click, click, click.

  “And it is my observation that Theodorus Witherspoon exhibits the potential to be a better person than his parents, who are better people than their parents were. Now, what does that mean?”

  The traffic signal didn’t have a left-turn arrow, so even after the light turned green, we sat there, waiting out oncoming traffic.

  “It would take no great effort,” Mr. Bomar continued, “for him to become a philanthropist of the sort who soothes his conscience and silences the ghosts of his ancestors through foundations and grants and charitable contributions. This is what his parents do, in fact. They have done, I suppose, good of some description. But they stay insulated from the people they believe they are saving.”

  In a bit of the old Clovis Bomar daredevil driving style, he sent the Duesenberg flying left across oncoming traffic in a gap I wouldn’t have guessed the car would fit through. The driver of the car that almost hit us laid on the horn, but Mr. Bomar paid it no mind. Neither did I. I doubted Peregrine did, either.

  I didn’t turn to look at her during Mr. Bomar’s oration. I wondered if she was listening. I found myself hoping she was.

  “Young Mr. Witherspoon, though—Theodorus—has more than generosity in his heart. His magnanimity toward others is not self-serving. He does not seek redemption for himself, or even for others. He is…a dreamer. A dreamer of a sort that I have not encountered before.”

  The suburbs gave way to fields and forests.

  “And what has happened to him will challenge his potential. His potential to do great good. His potential to redeem himself…himself, of course, being the only person he can redeem.”

  The ride was taking longer than I remembered from earlier in the week. I wondered if it was because Mr. Bomar was driving more sensibly or if it was because he was taking a more circuitous route, giving himself time to say his unexpected piece.

  “Miss Peregrine, you are soon to learn some very painful things. More painful, even, than what you have already learned this morning. It may not be possible for you to forgive Theodorus for what he has done to you, just as it may not be possible for you to forgive me and this man sitting beside me. I do not ask your forgiveness, and even the apology I sincerely offer is tempered by the fact that my loyalty to Theodorus outweighs my shame at my role in this…” He trailed off.

  “Farce,” I offered.

  “Tragedy,” he said, then went on. “So, I understand if you will not honor, not even consider, my request of you.”

  There was silence from the back seat, but Mr. Bomar was a great one for silences. Finally, Peregrine said, “What is it? What’s the request?”

  “My request, miss,” said Mr. Bomar, “is that you consider that what Theodorus has done, he has done from love.”

  Another long silence.

  And then she said, “I know who Edmond Rostand was.”

  This time, the gates were open.

  * * *

  —

  I still work, a little. The roles directors are willing to cast me in are limited, though, by my age and by the fact that my voice is raspy from projecting all those years. There are wireless microphones these days, of course, but the shows I’m in don’t usually have that kind of budget, and even if they did, the venues are usually small enough that they’re not really called for.

  So I’m semiretired, I suppose you could say. I saved up a little money over the years, though, and I get a check from Equity and a check from the Social Security Administration, and I more or less have an easy time of it. I never married, never had kids, never, as I’ve said, caught the big break.

  I only watch television when somebody I know is on a show. I don’t go to the movies because I don’t like explosions or car chases. What I do these days is remember and read. The remembering has been well on display here. The reading, well, if I’m being generous with myself, I’d call it diverse, but more to the point it’s diffuse. Disorganized and random. I read a lot of detective novels and a lot of biographies.