“My heart was black, Alice. Black with hate. Bent on revenge. And then I saw you through that lens—my dreamer—and it felt as if the cloud that had been consuming me was lifted and there was beauty and light and it would be possible to live again.”
Her lip quivered, and she took a deep breath. These were the things she’d wanted to understand for so long. It felt like he was mining a place she’d closed up. “Why—why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I was already playing a fool’s game,” he continued. “I’d gotten it into my head that as a German I could infiltrate those circles convincingly and see if I could find out anything that would help to bring those devils down.”
“Emmett Fischer takes down the Nazis.” She said the words slowly, rolling them around her tongue to see if it felt as naive as it sounded.
The coffee arrived. She closed her eyes and inhaled its steam. The sound of jackhammers behind her was drilling into her heart. And Emmett sat in front of her squeezing it. She felt she’d go crazy in the middle of this tug-of-war.
She breathed out again.
Emmett folded his arms. “I suppose that’s what I thought. I was young and stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid. You had a very large chip to remove from your shoulder,” Emmett.” His name rested on her tongue. It had been so many years since she’d spoken it out loud.
“By the time I met you, they’d already begun to suspect that I was up to something, and I knew I was being followed. In hindsight, I don’t think they realized that I was just a boy with a mission. They must have thought I was working for the US government. Really, they paid far more attention to me than what was warranted. In a moment of panic, I gave you a different last name for me. If they ever saw me talking to you, I wanted you to know as little as possible.”
He’d been telling the truth. He’d left so that she would be safe.
“Why did you pick Adler as your name?”
“The eagles. I always liked looking up at the eagles when I entered the station, and it was the first thing that came to mind when I started submitting my photographs to magazines and newspapers.”
She smiled. The birds had had that effect on so many people.
“Well, speaking of young and stupid,” she said, taking a breath and trying to return it to a normal cadence. “The first time I realized that Adler meant eagle in German, I took it as some kind of cosmic sign that I was supposed to be with you.”
She saw his jaw tighten.
“And yet that’s not what happened. No sooner was I gone than you married. You married well, I see.”
“You don’t understand, Emmett. I thought I’d lost you. I’d even begun to think that those men had killed you. Not a word from you.”
“Are you saying you didn’t love him, then?” Emmett held her eyes and challenged her.
Tears welled up, and she dabbed them with a napkin. Dear William. She loved him deeply.
“Of course I loved him. I still do. I wasn’t an opportunist, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Well, you have to know that I escaped from those guys after a few days. When they realized that I really didn’t know anything, nor did I even know what those damn letters were that I was photographing, they lightened their watch on me, and I got away.”
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
“Because I didn’t want to endanger you. They knew about you, Alice. Not by name, but they had been watching my apartment, and they’d seen you coming and going. I heard them talking about how they had to find that girl in case she knew anything.”
She put her hand to her mouth. Yes, Emmett had been protecting her. Poor Emmett. How lonely, how brave. He’d stayed away to save her, and she’d—she’d married someone else.
The old wound rose in his voice. “So imagine my surprise when I came across a copy of the New York Times to see the ‘wedding of the year’ in a headline, and how William Pilkington, the clothing heir, had married Alice Bellavia—my Alice in Wonderland—in so quick a time. I even harbored hopes—silly, romantic hopes—that you were perhaps pregnant with my child and that my staying away had forced you into this. But I watched the papers. I saw you in pictures in these society rags. But there was no child. Not until later, so she couldn’t have been mine.”
Alice bent her head in apology. “Her name is Elizabeth. We call her Libby.”
“I didn’t stick around long enough to know that. I returned to Germany with as much blackness and hate in my heart as when I’d left.”
She clutched the napkin on her lap under the table. She’d done that to him. She’d exiled him with her actions. Guilt was a suffocating force, she realized.
“Did you ever marry?” she asked. She had to hope that he’d found happiness. The tragedy of Emmett’s life had to come around to something better.
He leaned back, and his voice softened. “I did. Her name is Heidi. She is a wonderful woman.”
Alice was so relieved, though a bit envious. It didn’t negate all that she felt for William. But Emmett had a way of opening things she kept hidden. She hoped the woman he’d married realized what a good man he was. “Where is she now?”
“She is here with me, as is our daughter. We live in Munich, but she’s always wanted to see New York. The girls went shopping today.”
It was just as well. Alice wasn’t sure she could handle meeting them.
A cheer rose from the crowd behind them. Alice turned around and saw another of the eagles being pulled down, ripping her heart out. It was like living the deaths of her opa and her father all over again. Suddenly, she couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. She wrapped her arms around her waist and bent over.
Emmett pulled his chair over to her and pulled her in. She soaked the shoulder of his shirt as he stroked her hair. He was no longer the man she was in love with. But he was the one who knew her better than anyone in this moment.
It was not only Penn Station that was being torn down. It was the wild optimism of youth. The tie she had to the love she’d lived within those walls.
She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I know,” he whispered. “You don’t have to say anything.”
It was nice to be in Emmett’s arms again, but as she started to breathe, a peaceful feeling washed over her. It wasn’t Emmett’s arms that she wanted to lie in at night. It was William’s. A first love might be the most intense, the most passionate kind one would ever know. But it wasn’t the love that was enduring.
It was William who laughed with them as her family sat around the dinner table. William who surprised her with her first trip to Rome. William who walked the ruins with her and bought the pistachio gelato her father had always talked about. William who held back her hair as she retched with the sickness of pregnancy. William who was there when Libby cut a tooth, when Alice graduated, when Vera had her first gallery showing.
It was William who’d held her hand as her father breathed heavily from pneumonia.
“Why did you return today of all days, Emmett?” She pulled back and rubbed her hands across her cheek to wipe away any mascara that might have stained her skin.
Emmett looked at Penn Station as he spoke. “The happiest time of my life was spent in that building. When I heard about its destruction, it was like being at the bedside of an old friend.”
She knew what he meant. “Why did you decide to send me a note? And how did you know I was there if you thought I was married and living in a different part of town?”
He squeezed her hand. “Why did you rush down when you received it? Because despite everything, I know this about you, Alice. If you are anything like me, then the best days of your life were also spent inside those walls, and there was no way that you were not going to be here watching it. And your old apartment, sadly, had the best view for it.”
She nodded, but he was wrong about one part. At the time, she would have said that those were her happiest days. But in fact, it was what came after—the li
fe she’d built with William—that she would never exchange for anything.
But that didn’t diminish the very real pain of the memories.
“My daughter is over in that crowd,” she said. “She’s among the supporters. Excited about the new sport arena that will go up in its place. And maybe that’s what the city needs. What do I know? I’d hold on to every old brick and gutter pipe of every edifice ever built, but I suppose nostalgia, like anything else, has to be balanced out with progress. I just wish this particular place did not have to be the sacrificial lamb.”
“I know what you mean.”
His eyes told her what he didn’t say in words. That he would hold on to her if he could.
She pulled away from him and smoothed the folds of her skirt. “I’m actually working with the mayor on creating a landmarks commission so that this kind of catastrophe doesn’t happen to other important places in New York. We’ll have architects, historians, and real-estate agents all advising on which buildings should be saved and preserved and which can be let go of in this path toward modernization.”
She realized that she spoke more quickly as she talked to him about her favorite topic. “Believe it or not, Grand Central is on the chopping block, but I think we’re going to manage to save that one. Good thing. Bertie moved his little business over there, and he’s rallying the troops to preserve it. People are already realizing what we’re losing here at Penn Station. They ignored our warnings, but it’s awakened a sense of respect for the past, and I suppose if this one loss saves hundreds more, then it’s a cost worth bearing.”
“Spoken like a girl who’s found her purpose.”
She smiled. “I suppose I have. Your dreamer, two decades later.”
“I always knew that about you.” He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but return it.
They turned their chairs to face Penn Station. The coffee had gotten cold, and the waiter poured new ones.
Just like memories. They cooled in time, and fresh ones took their place.
Their story was just one of millions that had played out under the grand ceilings of Penn Station. And in its place would be an arena that would create new stories for the Libbys of the world. The concerts she would see, the rallies she would attend, the sport teams she would cheer for. Her young path was illuminated with possibilities that hadn’t been open to Vera and Alice, its pavement laid by Pearl and many nameless women who imagined a future for granddaughters they would never know.
Alice thought of all these things as she watched the past fade stone by stone in front of her eyes, and she grabbed Emmett’s hand. What was beautiful was coming to an end. What would rise would be a new kind of beauty. She would serve as a bridge between the two. Preserving what had been dear in times before her. Championing her daughter in the opportunities. That was the way it was meant to be. Birth, life, death, renewal, repeating over endless years.
She stood up and released Emmett’s hand for the last time. He joined her and pulled her into a prolonged embrace that eliminated the need to say anything else. Then she slipped her purse over her shoulder and walked to the curb. She hailed a cab and asked the driver to take her uptown, where William was waiting for her.
Author’s Note
In my research, I did not find any records of suffragettes dying during their hunger strikes. However, many of them became gravely ill, and the force-feeding by tubes was unspeakably painful. I also don’t have any evidence that suffragettes went on a hunger strike in Albany particularly, let alone at the real-life former police station on Pearl Street. (The real street name of the station! Authors love such coincidences.) My intention here is to merge real-life occurrences with the details that propel the story in order to honor the sacrifices of the suffragettes and all who rally so selflessly for the causes they believe in.
As my stories often do, this one started with an image in my head: of a soldier kissing his girlfriend goodbye in a train station as he left for war. For whatever reason—providence’s hand, I suppose—I put Penn Station into a search engine instead of the more famous Grand Central. I’d been through Penn Station before, and its ugly, dark halls that make the description of a rat in the opening quote seem apt. But I had no idea that a remarkable, timeless station had once stood on top of it where Madison Square Garden is now. I pored over pictures, and as its story unfolded, I imagined three women whose lives intersected with the station. I saw a parallel arc of the rise, heyday, and fall of the station, much like our own stories as humans. But we get a say in our own renewal, unlike edifices. The way of beauty.
I decided not to go deeply into the history of the station—there are many informational texts for you to read if you’d like to learn more. But I wanted to tell the tale of it through the stories of the women. Because buildings, after all, are still bricks and mortar, while we are flesh and bone.
It is true that Penn Station was the sacrificial lamb in a movement in the 1960s that valued modernization over nearly everything else. The Landmarks Preservation Commission was established in 1965 in direct response to the loss of such a beautiful building. Since then, it has designated about thirty-six thousand landmark properties and has protected about fourteen hundred. Among those directly saved have been the Astor Library, Grand Central Terminal (with large assistance from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), the Guggenheim Museum, Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, and several Broadway theaters.
As of this printing, plans are under way to create a new Penn Station inside the grand post office building that is located just across the street. McKim, Mead, and White designed both the original Penn Station and the current post office building, and I am personally ecstatic that the city is embracing a way to combine the old with the new.
Acknowledgments
This story owes its roots to an afternoon when I was sitting on my bed with my daughter Gina, brainstorming about what I would write next. We came up with secret journals, a father/daughter story, hidden letters, and all sorts of things that didn’t become a book. But there was one image that we loved—the idea of soldiers kissing their girlfriends goodbye in a train station.
So, big thank-yous to Gina and the rest of the brood who give me tremendous support and encouragement as I write—my husband, Rob, and the other kiddos, Claire, Mary Teresa, and Vincent.
Sadly, they’re barely kiddos anymore. They’re almost all taller than me. That’s not saying much, though.
Thanks to my agent, Jill Marsal. If I write a hundred books, I will always be thanking you for taking me on and guiding my career.
To Danielle Marshall, my acquiring editor—I’m so happy that you’re at the helm, and I marvel at how you do it all. It’s been a joy to get to know you and continue to work together.
To Chris Werner, my primary editor—thank you for being in my corner. I’ve been told many times over how lucky I am to have you as my editor, and everyone is right!
To Tiffany Yates Martin—oh, girl, you handle the hard work like nobody’s business! Two books in together, your words haunt my dreams and my writing sessions—“But what is she feeling?” You make me better in many, many ways.
To Gabe Dumpit—you are a flawless champion of authors and a beautiful person to know, inside out. What a blessing it was to spend your birthday together along with Goofy and Pluto and quotations and friends. You are family.
And thank you to Sara Brady for incomparable copy edits that ushered me through a time period that is a world of its own.
I wrote this book in the middle of a huge cross-country move. It was terribly difficult to leave friends and family behind, but new friends in a new state made me feel welcome immediately. Thank you, Susan Schlimme (you are awesome!), Joyce Hoggard, Mary Clare Sabol, Amber Spivey, Andrea Erskine, Kaylie Lane, Lauren Wittig, Sharron Warren, and Erin Gross for embracing a frazzled woman and showing her the ropes here. Erin—God’s hand was all over introducing us.
The writing community is unbelievably awesome. Thank you to Rochelle Weinstein, Emily Bleeke
r, and Heather Burch for an unforgettable week in Florida. Friendships can bloom quickly and grow deep roots when women like you are in the picture. To Fiona Davis—can’t wait to see our books side by side in New York! To Barbara Davis—what fun we had in Camden! Thanks for driving up for lunch and for making me a fan of your books and of you as a person. To Aimie Runyan—why do I get the feeling that we’re going to be partners in crime someday?
To the Ladies of the Lake (and a few lads)—you are the most amazing tribe. I can’t name you all here, but each and every one of you is a treasure to me, and I smile every time I have a new Facebook notification from our group.
To those who promote books and the readers who read them, I would not be living this dream if it were not for you. I am particularly grateful for Andrea Peskind Katz, Suzanne Leopold, Ann-Marie Nieves, Kristy Barrett, Lisa Montanaro, Cindy Roesel, Jennifer Gans Blankfein, Jennifer O’Regan, Kristine Hall, Elizabeth Silver, Sharlene Martin Moore, Barbara Bos, Peggy Finck, Sylvia Denisse Cuervo, Tasha Seegmiller, Hailey Fish, Dianne Guevara, Amy Voorhees, Pam Carpenter, Gisela Riddle, Marie DeGennaro, Melissa Khadimally, Linda Zagon, Sandra Gomez, Susan Cunningham Roberts, Marisa Gothie, Alicia Kendall Krick, Marilyn Grable, Lauren Blank Margolin, Becky Kunasz, Gwen Score, Trina Burgermeister, and Beth Sullivan Cheshire.
To Max Tucci—thank you for the research help! Can’t wait to see your book on shelves.
And, as always, to my parents, Pete and Chris, for their support of me my whole life.
About the Author
Photo © 2015 Gina Di Maio
Camille Di Maio always dreamed of being a writer, and those dreams came to fruition with her bestselling debut novel, The Memory of Us, and her second novel, Before the Rain Falls. In addition to writing women’s fiction, she buys too many baked goods at farmers’ markets, unashamedly belts out Broadway tunes when the mood strikes, and regularly faces her fear of flying to indulge in her passion for travel.
She and her husband homeschool their four children and lead an award-winning real estate team in San Antonio, Texas. They split their time between Texas and Virginia. Connect with Camille at www.camilledimaio.com.
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