The One In My Heart

I took a deep breath. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was the reason the house was sliding off its foundation?”


He studied the couple in the image above us, standing on a balcony of the hotel, the man in a suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Beatle, the woman sleek and mod in her miniskirt. “Moira was a true rebel, but I was just a punk. And once I got the teenage rebellion out of my system, it turned out that I had a lot more in common with my parents than I could have guessed.”

“Your parents are responsible, productive members of society. Hardly a demerit to be like them.”

He shrugged. “Moira felt differently. And feelings are what they are.”

I blinked. “Do you mean to tell me that she dumped you?”

“It was a mutual parting, but more mutual on her part than on mine.”

I needed a moment to understand what he was saying. “You would have stayed and worked on the relationship?”

He was still looking up at the young couple from half a century ago. Was he remembering the heyday of his own romance? Was he seeing it through lenses tinted with just as much nostalgia? “Yes, I would.”

The magnetic closure on the chocolate box snapped to with a click that reverberated in the stillness of the room. “And not just to prove your parents wrong?”

He looked at me, his gaze unwavering. “No.”

Each sentence he spoke about Moira emerged as a straightforward, unequivocal declarative. Every word he had ever said about us, on the other hand, was like the fog that still lingered thickly outside: something that couldn’t be pinned down.

Something without substance.

I opened the chocolate box again and took out a piece. “Okay, good night.”

As I passed him, he caught my wrist. My heartbeat accelerated at once. But he only said, “Are you all right?”

I put on my most guileless expression. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

His thumb slid down, drawing a line of warmth into the center of my palm. Then he let go of me. “Good night, then. And sweet dreams.”


AS SOON AS I WAS alone in my room I Googled Moira McAllister, starting with her pages on IMDB and Wikipedia, then clicking through to the reference articles one by one. Some of the articles were from the archives of major outlets like the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, others scans from magazines that had folded decades ago.

One thing was clear: Moira McAllister had indeed been hot. Not a classic beauty, but an unforgettable one, reminiscent of a young Anjelica Huston, all dark, brooding eyes and granitelike cheekbones.

And despite a sometimes uneven career, she had been an enormously accomplished woman, winning awards for her photography since she was a teenager, and racking up accolades for her short films even after her death.

Bennett’s cradle-robbing ex had been a bit of a caricature in my mind, but now she was all too real, a woman who had lived and died, who had laughed in front of the camera and commanded a crew behind.

A woman who was in every way my antithesis. I had but to sit down at a table with his parents for them to understand that he had brought the un-Moira: No need to worry about Bohemian passions that flouted conventions, no worldview dramatically different from their own. I was safe and familiar; I was Bennett saying, without ever having to use those words, that he was ready to return to the fold.

I was, in fact, the very girl they had chosen for him almost a decade and a half ago, when they still hoped he wouldn’t desert the fold in the first place.

All this I’d known the moment Zelda first told me about the Somersets’ role in securing my invitation to the Bal des Debutantes. But now I understood in my marrow that I wasn’t merely a facilitator in Bennett’s quest; I was the very symbol of it.

I wished he were using me for my body instead. At least lust was visceral and sometimes specific. This, the reduction of all that I was into a quick shorthand for conventional respectability, lay upon me, a welt across my heart.





Chapter 8





I WOKE UP WHEN IT was still dark outside. As soon as I’d texted Zelda—she’d see my hello when she woke up—I Googled Moira McAllister again, this time searching for anything that included both her and Bennett. Google didn’t autocomplete my search, but it did unearth an image of an outdoor meal on a picnic table, some dozen or so people on two benches, with Moira near one end of the table, Rob and Darren at the other end, Bennett standing next to them, everyone smiling at the camera.