The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

In the clatter of the club, he would find the other people at his table staring at him askance when he spoke like that, turning their backs in wounded delicacy, as if they couldn’t understand why he’d set out to ruin their fun. Even when he wasn’t speaking of his lost friends, Leonard lacked the silvery flint of frivolous conversation. He was too earnest. Too straight. The world was a bubble now, thin and glistening, and everyone else had found their way inside. But Leonard was too heavy for the bubble. He was a man out of time: too old to be one of the spirited young people and too young to fit in with the hopeless drunkards who lined the river. He felt a connection to nothing and to nobody.