“You can’t be out like this in a place like that,” he says, nodding in the direction we came. “What you’re doing won’t bring your mother back. She wouldn’t want you to be doing it. And I’m sure your father doesn’t.”
We stand there looking at each other, both with our losses raw and new and out in the open like they just happened.
“What’s your name?” he says.
“Willa,” I whisper.
“I’ll walk you home now, Willa,” Mr. Weiss says. “And tomorrow, you come up to the bakery to meet Louisa, Gretchen’s mother. You can have some apple strudel and then you can take Fritz for a nice long walk and you can play with him as long as you want. You can come back to play with Fritz every day if you wish, and I won’t say anything to your father about where you were tonight if you promise you won’t ever go back to that place. Do we have a deal?”
It suddenly occurs to me there won’t be a Silver Swan after tonight. I won’t know what has become of Albert or Mr. Trout or Foster. Or Lila. A peculiar sadness envelops me. Everything I love always gets taken from me in one way or another. Even that little dog will someday be taken from me.
“Do we have a deal, Willa Bright?” Mr. Weiss asks.
I tell him yes.
It is easy to make promises in a world where nothing lasts.
CHAPTER 66
• December 1925 •
Evelyn
Oddly enough it was when Maggie told me that she broke off her engagement to Palmer back in November that I first began to see the slender strands of the solution to my own predicament.
We were all of us—Papa, Maggie, Willa, and I—living in the same house but isolated and alone in our remote mental wastelands of sorrow. Our shared grief was that Alex had left us, but we were all suffering from private wounds we did not speak of to one another. We were getting a taste of what it would have been like if Mama had died and we hadn’t had Alex to soften the blow.
Papa has always been a quiet man, never one given to expressing his feelings aloud, and with Willa, it was always better just to let her vent her anger and be done with it. She was never one to seek solace from us anyway. If I had asked her if she wanted to talk about how she was feeling regarding Alex’s absence, she would have told me to mind my own business.
But Maggie is different. She is neither reserved like Papa nor unreceptive like Willa regarding any consolation I might be able to offer.
When she came to my room to tell me she’d given Palmer back his ring, I was fairly sure I knew why.
“It would have been a terrible mistake,” she’d said, sitting down beside me on my bed. “I couldn’t marry him when I loved someone else. When I will always love someone else.”
It was this little string of words, which my sister had practically whispered, that sounded like clarion bells within me. I loved Conrad. I would always love Conrad.
“Does Jamie know?” I’d asked.
“Does Jamie know that I broke off my engagement or that I have always loved him?” Maggie replied.
Before I could answer, she continued.
“He’s always known I was in love with him when I was younger. He thought it was sweet. And he knew I must have continued to love him when I kept writing to him after he left and was gone all those years. He came home wondering if I still loved him, hoping maybe I did. And then he thought he was too late.”
“He almost was,” I said.
“No, not really. I’m the one who almost got it all wrong. Not him.”
“What will you do now?” I’d asked her, hoping her answer would help me choose my own next steps.
She’d shrugged. “He wants us both to settle in to the way things are right now. Him being back, Alex having been taken from me, my breaking off the engagement, us being more than just friends. These things seem more like a season I need to abide patiently rather than something I need to do. So what I’m going to do is go on loving Jamie because I can do no other.”
I knew then, as sure as I knew my own name, that my heart would only ever belong to one man. What I lacked now was not a single-minded purpose, but the courage to believe the bold plan forming in my head was attainable.
The next morning at the asylum, I retrieved Sybil Reese’s file from the archives. I flipped to her admission papers and noted her place of residence, memorizing the address for the soon and coming day when I would have no doubts.
• • •
December’s first snow is falling like dandelion cotton as I step out from underneath a towering elm across the street from Conrad and Sybil’s house. The sun is just starting to set. Conrad is home from work; I made sure of it. I had earlier watched as he left his printing company. I saw him get into his car and head for home. I’d hailed a taxi and followed him, getting out on the opposite side of the boulevard and waiting twenty minutes before coming out from my place of cover.
His house is a redbrick Colonial with white trim. Empty flower boxes hang from all the windows, and a hearty hedge all around the house sports a feather dusting of snow. Warm lamplight shines mellow through window sheers. No one has pulled the heavier curtains closed yet. I sense welcome and it makes me smile.
I ring the bell at the front door, and my hand does not shake. Nor does my voice tremble when a housemaid in a black frock and white cap answers the door and I tell her I wish to speak to Mr. Reese. I have never been more sure of anything. Four weeks after memorizing Conrad’s address, I am fully convinced of my destiny. It begins here on this doorstep.
The maid invites me in out of the cold. She asks who she may say is calling and I give her my name. I have no sooner spoken than I see Conrad appear at the doorway of a room just off the tiled entryway. He heard me come inside, heard my voice.
The maid is about to announce me when Conrad thanks and dismisses her. But he doesn’t quite know what to do with me. For several seconds we just stare at each other. Then he realizes he let the maid go before she had a chance to take my coat.
“May I . . . that is, shall I take your coat?” he asks, hesitantly.
The question is really: “Why are you here?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He helps me off with it and then hangs it on an enormous hall tree with cherubim and ivy carved into its frame and which sports a bench to sit on to pull on overshoes. Or take them off.
“Please?” Conrad motions to the room he just came out of. It is a sitting room paneled with bookshelves. A cheery fire is blazing. Pages of a newspaper lie open on a mahogany desk, and the chair is pulled out. A pipe sits on a brass holder, ready to be lit. The room is warm and wonderful.
If I had been any other caller, Conrad would have no doubt asked me to sit down and perhaps rung for tea. But after I admire the room, I turn to see that he is standing in the middle just like I am, looking at me. I don’t care. I don’t want to sit and pretend this is just an ordinary social call.
“I had to see you,” I say, in answer to his unspoken question.
“Is everything all right?” he asks, but I can see that this isn’t what he is most curious about. He wants to know why I have come, unbidden, to his house.
“Perhaps.” I want to say that I have come with a proposition. A solution to our dilemma. A way for us to have what we want. All that we want.
He finally remembers his manners. “Would you like to sit down?” he says, wide-eyed but polite.
What I must say will not entail a long visit that requires chairs or tea. I move toward him, and I take his hands in mine. “What I would like, Conrad, is to spend my life with you.”
He sucks in his breath, fully unprepared for this answer I’ve given him, but not completely surprised and definitely not repulsed by it. I see in his eyes he has already thought of this, too: what it would be like for him and me to be together. For a second he imagines it again, but then he shakes his head. “That is impossible.”
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“No. It is not impossible,” I reply. “It might be difficult. Certainly different. But it’s not impossible.”
“Evelyn.” He says my name but nothing else. What I am about to propose has not occurred to him. And why should it have? It is the most outlandish, unheard-of, remarkable, singularly amazing answer to the question that has been haunting us both. I swallow back any trace of fear and I tighten my hold on his hands.
“I will help you take care of Sybil,” I say. “We can watch over her together. Here. In this house.”
“What are you saying?” Conrad’s voice is airy with surprise.
“I’m saying you and I can care for her. For as long as she draws breath. I’ll be yours and you’ll be mine and together we’ll care for her.”
He stares at me as the full weight of what I am suggesting begins to fall on him. “I don’t understand. How would you be mine?” he says.
I am already yours, my heart replies. “I would be yours to whatever extent you would want me to be,” I say aloud. “You said the other day at the asylum that I deserve to be happy. I can’t be happy if I am not with you.”
Conrad closes his eyes and swallows hard. “But—” he begins.
“But you can’t abandon her. I know you can’t. I’m not asking you to. I can care for her. I know how to care for her.”
His gaze is intense as he studies the features of my face. I can’t tell if he’s imagining his lips on every part of me or memorizing my contours before he refuses me and sends me away. His eyes glisten.
“I love you, Conrad,” I tell him, when he says nothing. “I won’t love anyone else. I can’t.”
He pulls me to him then and kisses me and I taste salt where his tears and mine mingle. It is not the kiss of raw, physical desire that we shared in the shed. It is instead the melding of two wounded hearts that somehow, after all that has happened to both of us, can still love. I could die this moment and be happy.
Conrad breaks away first and kisses my forehead. “I can’t ask you to live here, with me and Sybil, as . . . as my mistress, Evelyn.”
“You’re not asking me to.”
“But I could never debase you that way. I just couldn’t.”
I place my hand over his heart, and I can feel it pulsing beneath his shirt. I was destined to love only this man just as Maggie was destined to love only Jamie. It is inevitable that he and I will be together. “Then don’t.”
CHAPTER 67
Maggie
Papa and I are getting the viewing parlor ready for an afternoon service when the front doorbell rings. It’s the week before Christmas and Willa’s at school, so I offer to answer it. Papa, who always wanted me to think of my job at the funeral parlor as temporary, is nevertheless happy that I’m no longer preparing to move to Manhattan.
He was only momentarily disappointed when I called off the wedding. When I explained to him that I’d only ever and always loved Jamie Sutcliff, he understood. He understood probably better than anyone, because that’s how he felt about Mama. He still loves Mama. Her being gone hasn’t changed anything.
Palmer, on the other hand, did not take the news as easily as Papa did. God knows I never wanted to hurt Palmer. I tried to tell him this. I tried to explain that I would only be injuring him further if we went through with our plans to marry. I could never return the love he had for me. He should not want to marry someone who could not. I’ve heard nothing from Palmer since I called off the wedding, not that I would expect to. He returned to Manhattan angry and disappointed and wounded. But at least he has not called or written begging me to change my mind. I believe he will move on from me to love another. I am counting on it.
Jamie isn’t one to rush anything, so even though I know I’ll be marrying him someday, there is no ring, there is no wedding date, and he hasn’t come to Papa like Palmer did. We are becoming acquainted with each other on the ordinary, day-to-day level. So in the meantime, I am still Papa’s assistant.
I pass through the kitchen and into the entryway. I don’t recognize the man who stands on the other side of the front door glass. I wonder if he is a visitor who’s been given the wrong time for the funeral today. I open the door, and a swirl of frigid air blows past me. I ask if I can help him.
He takes off his hat. “Yes, ma’am. I’d like to speak to Thomas Bright, if I may.”
“Is my father expecting you?”
The man turns the hat by its brim. “No, he’s not.”
“Oh. And you are?”
“My name’s Cal Dabney.”
For a long moment I can only stand and stare at Alex’s father. I know the blood drains from my face because I feel it.
“Look, I’m not here to raise a fuss over what happened. It was a long time ago and nobody’s to blame.”
“What do you want?” My voice sounds stiff.
“Are you one of the girls? Are you Maggie?”
I nod once.
“I just want to talk to your father.”
I open the door wide, a silent gesture for him to come inside.
“May I take your coat?” I say, mechanically.
“I don’t reckon this will take long.”
I show him to the sitting room. Papa and I have let the morning fire die down and the room is chilly. Unwelcoming. Cal Dabney doesn’t seem to notice.
I excuse myself and retrace my steps to the viewing parlor. When I tell Papa who is at the door, he says, “What does the man want?” I recognize the fear in his voice.
“He said he just wants to talk to you. He said it wouldn’t take long.”
I return to the sitting room with Papa. Cal Dabney is looking at the family photographs on a table by the bay window. Alex is in one of them.
Papa thrusts out his hand. “I’m Thomas Bright. How do you do?”
Alex’s father shakes Papa’s hand. “Cal Dabney.”
I start to leave the room, though I am planning to stand where I can hear everything being said. But Cal calls out to me.
“You don’t have to go. It might be better if you stay.”
“Is Alex all right?” I ask as I turn back around. “I mean, Leo. Is he all right?”
“You can call him Alex. That’s what we’re calling him. We found out pretty quick he doesn’t like the name Leo.”
I want to laugh. To smile. To cry. To scream.
“How are things working out?” Papa says kindly but with a measure of displeasure. It’s been eight weeks since Alex left us, and we’ve heard nothing from him or about him.
Cal shakes his head. “Well, that’s why I’m here. They’re not exactly working out.”
“What do you mean? What’s happened? What’s wrong?” I practically shout these three questions. I am picturing Alex cowering in a closet, or wasting away because he’s not eating, or crying himself to sleep every night.
Papa touches my arm to calm me. “How can we help?” he says.
“It was wrong what happened to my boy all those years ago. But it was wrong what happened to him now, too. I see that,” Cal says. “He doesn’t know us. He doesn’t love us or trust us. You’re the people he loves and trusts. My parents got no call to raise that boy just because they want back what they think is theirs. Fact is, he’s not theirs. Alex is mine. Only mine. And if Ines was still alive and she and I had spent the last seven years searching for our son, it’d be different. But she’s gone, and I had to move on. I have a new family and a new life now. Just like this boy was given a new family and a new life when you took him in. I’m not saying I don’t want to be a part of Alex’s life. I do. I want to take him fishing and maybe to a baseball game now and then. I want him to grow up knowing his little brother. I want him to learn to love me and trust me.” Cal turns to face me. “But I want him to live here with you. With all of you. This is where he wants to be.” He turns to Papa again. “So what I’m aski
ng you is, will you take him back? Can he live here?”
I want to slap this man for not wanting Alex and hug him for the same reason, even though I know what he truly wants is for Alex to be happy. I don’t know if he’s making the right choice or the easy choice. All I know is he wants Alex to come home. I wait to see what Papa says.
Papa rubs his chin for a second. “Alex will always be welcome here,” he finally replies. “This is his home for as long as he wants it to be. I’m sure we can work out the finer details.”
Cal exhales a breath of relief. “I’m so glad to hear that. I’d like to tell him and my parents today if that’s all right. Maybe bring him over tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Papa says.
Cal puts out his hand for Papa to shake it. “Thank you. You all did a fine job of raising my boy. Better than I was raised, I can tell you. I don’t mind that I’m having to call him Alex.”
Papa swallows a knot of emotion. “He’s a wonderful boy. I hope you know we love him like our own.”
“See?” Cal says. “That’s just the thing. You all love him. And he loves you.” Then he turns to me. “And I want to thank you for saving him back when you did. I used to be an angry man at what I’d lost over the years. I’d forgotten how to see anything good in my life. But I’m seeing the good more and more these days. I realize now that Alex surely would have died of that flu if it weren’t for you.”
“I’m sorry I was part of the reason you were so angry,” I carefully reply.
Cal shrugs. “I guess all of us are just doing the best we can with what life hands us.”
We walk Cal Dabney to the door. He tells us he’ll be back tomorrow around five o’clock if that’s all right. Papa asks him if he’d like to bring his new wife and baby to dinner the following weekend, and he says, “That sounds mighty nice.”
When the door closes, I turn to Papa. “Did that just happen?”
He smiles. Then laughs. Strokes his chin. Shakes off a silver line of tears glimmering at his eyes. “We’d better get back to getting the parlor ready. The family will be here any minute.”
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