“All right,” I said to Laura, once they were gone. “I know you’ve got him in this house. You’d better tell me where.”

“I put him in the cold cellar,” said Laura, her bottom lip trembling.

“The cold cellar!” I said. “What a stupid place! Why there?”

“So he would have enough to eat, in an emergency,” said Laura, and burst into tears. I wrapped my arms around her, and she snuffled against my shoulder.

“Enough to eat?” I said. “Enough jam and jelly and pickles? Really Laura, you take the cake.” Then we both began to laugh, and after we had laughed and Laura had wiped her eyes, I said, “We’ve got to get him out of there. What if Reenie goes down for a jar of jam or something and comes across him by mistake? She’d have a heart attack.”

We laughed some more. We were very on edge. Then I said the attic would be better, because nobody ever went up there. I would arrange it all, I said. She’d better go up to bed: it was obvious that the strain was telling on her and she was all worn out. She sighed a little, like a tired child, then did as I’d suggested. She’d been living on her nerves, carrying around this immense weight of knowledge like some evil packsack, and now she’d handed it over to me she was free to sleep.

Was it my belief that I was doing this only to spare her—to help her, to take care of her, as I had always done?

Yes. That is what I did believe.

I waited until Reenie had cleared up in the kitchen and turned in for the night. Then I went down the cellar stairs, into the chill, the dimness, the smell of spidery dampness. I went past the door to the coal cellar, the locked wine cellar door. The door to the cold cellar closed with a latch. I knocked, lifted it, went in. There was a scuttling noise. It was dark, of course; just the light from the corridor. The top of the apple barrel held the remains of Laura’s dinner—the rabbit bones. It looked like some primitive altar.

I didn’t see him at first; he was behind the apple barrel. Then I could make him out. A knee, a foot. “It’s all right,” I whispered. “It’s only me.”

“Ah,” he said in his normal voice. “The devoted sister.”

“Shh,” I said. The light switch was a chain hanging from the bulb. I pulled it, the light went on. Alex Thomas was unwinding himself, scrambling out from behind the barrel. He crouched, blinking, sheepish, like a man caught with his pants undone.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I said.

“You’ve come to kick me out, or turn me over to the proper authorities, I assume,” he said with a smile.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I certainly wouldn’t want you to be discovered here. Father couldn’t stand the scandal.”

“Capitalist’s Daughter Aids Bolshevik Murderer?” he said. “Love Nest Among the Jelly Jars Revealed? That sort of scandal?”

I frowned at him. This was not a joking matter.

“Rest easy. Laura and I aren’t up to anything,” he said. “She’s a great kid, but she’s a saint in training, and I’m not a baby snatcher.” He’d stood up by now and was dusting himself off.

“Then why is she hiding you?” I asked.

“Matter of principle. Once I asked, she had to accept. I fall into the right category for her.”

“What category?”

“‘The least of these,’ I guess,” he said. “To quote Jesus.” I found that quite cynical. Then he said that bumping into Laura had been a sort of accident. He’d run into her in the conservatory. What had he been doing there? Hiding, obviously. He’d hoped also, he said, to be able to talk to me.

“Me?” I said. “Why on earth, me?”

“I thought you’d know what to do. You seem like the practical type. Your sister is less…”

“Laura seems to have managed well enough,” I said shortly. I didn’t like it when other people criticized Laura—her vagueness, her simplicity, her fecklessness. Criticism of Laura was reserved for me. “How did she get you past those men at the doors?” I said. “Into the house? The ones in overcoats.”

“Even men in overcoats have to take a leak sometimes,” he said.

I was taken aback by this vulgarity—it was at odds with his dinner-party politeness—but perhaps it was a sample of the orphanish jeering Reenie had predicted. I decided to ignore it. “You didn’t set the fire, I take it,” I said. I meant to sound sarcastic, but it wasn’t received that way.

“I’m not that stupid,” he said. “I wouldn’t set a fire for no reason.”

“Everyone thinks it was you.”

“It wasn’t, though,” he said. “But it would be very convenient for certain people to take that view.”

“What certain people? Why?” I wasn’t pushing him this time; I was baffled.

“Use your head,” he said. But he wouldn’t say any more.

The attic

I got a candle from the stash of them in the kitchen, on hand for power blackouts, and lit it, and led Alex Thomas out of the cellar and through the kitchen and up the back stairs, then up the narrower stairs to the attic, where I installed him behind the three empty trunks. There were some old quilts stored in a cedar chest up there, and I hauled them out for bedding.

“No one will come,” I said. “If they do, get underneath the quilts. Don’t walk around, they might hear the footsteps. Don’t turn on the light.” (There was a single bulb with a pull chain in the attic, just as in the cold cellar.) “We’ll bring you something to eat in the morning,” I added, not knowing how I would make good on this promise.

I went downstairs, then came back up again with a chamber pot, which I set down without a word. It was a detail that had always worried me, in Reenie’s stories about kidnappers—what about the facilities? It would be one thing to be locked into a crypt, quite another to be reduced to squatting in a corner with your skirt hauled up.

Alex Thomas nodded, and said, “Good girl. You’re a pal. I knew you were practical.”

In the morning Laura and I held a whispered conference in her bedroom. The subjects discussed were the procuring of food and drink, the need for watchfulness, and the emptying of the chamber pot. One of us—pretending to be reading—would stand guard in my room, with the door open: we could see the door to the attic stairs from there. The other would fetch and carry. We agreed to take these tasks in rotation. The big hurdle would be Reenie, who was sure to smell a rat if we acted too furtive.

We hadn’t worked out any plan for what we would do if we were found out. We never did work out such a plan. It was all improvisation.

Alex Thomas’s first breakfast was our toast crusts. As a rule, we did not eat our crusts until nagged—it was still Reenie’s habit to say Remember the starving Armenians —but this time, when Reenie looked, the crusts were gone. They were actually in Laura’s navy-blue skirt pocket.

“Alex Thomas must be the starving Armenians,” I whispered, as we hurried up the stairs. But Laura didn’t think this was funny. She thought it was accurate.

Mornings and evenings were the times of our visits. We raided the pantry, salvaged the leftovers. We smuggled up raw carrots, bacon rinds, half-eaten boiled eggs, pieces of bread folded over, with butter and jam inside. Once a leg of fricasseed chicken—a daring coup. Also glasses of water, cups of milk, cold coffee. We carted away the empty dishes, stashed them under our beds until the coast was clear, then washed them in our bathroom sink before replacing them in the kitchen cupboard. (I did this: Laura was too clumsy.) We didn’t use the good china. What if something got broken? Even an everyday plate might have been noticed: Reenie kept track. So we were very cautious with the tableware.

Was Reenie suspicious of us? I expect so. She could usually tell when we were up to something. But she could also tell when it was more politic not to know exactly what that something might be. I expect she was preparing herself to say she’d had no idea, in case we were caught. She did tell us, once, not to go filching the raisins; she said we were acting like bottomless pits, and where did we get such hollow legs all of a sudden? And she was annoyed about the quarter of a pumpkin pie that went missing. Laura said she’d eaten it; she’d had a sudden fit of hunger, she said.