—
The Chicago Railway didn’t even stop in Kalamazoo, but the Michigan Central did, after a transfer in Toledo. Kalamazoo wasn’t a place someone went to be noticed; it was a place someone went to escape.
Paul arrived on a bright winter day. His hired carriage took him to a two-story wooden house at the center of the snowy town. It hadn’t been hard to find the address. Property was not bought and sold too frequently, so just a few conversations with locals gave him the information he needed.
Fannie was at the door when he arrived at the brown-slatted house. She clearly wasn’t happy to see Paul ascending the steps of her new home. But she allowed him a cup of tea and the few minutes he required to deliver some news. As for the request that accompanied his explanation, she admitted it wasn’t hers to grant.
When Agnes came downstairs, she gave little reaction at the sight of Paul.
“What stubborn need for abuse brought you here?”
“Now, now,” interrupted Fannie. “He’s not quite as foolish as I used to think.”
And with that, Fannie took her leave.
Agnes leaned against the kitchen cabinets, wrapping her orange cotton dress tightly around herself.
“This is the most chipper I’ve seen my mother since we left New York.”
“I read about you and Henry Jayne.”
“Did you travel here to file a report for the society page?”
“Miss Huntington,” said Paul, “I’ve spent most of the time since I met you making a lot of pretty terrible decisions, and I’d like to make a good one for a change. So here it is: I’ve come here to tell you that I’m in love with you.”
She didn’t even blink.
“I’m sorry for taking advantage of Tesla. I betrayed his trust.”
“Then I don’t think that I’m the one who needs your apology.”
“But I’m going to make it up to you. Listen: These giants in whose shadows we’ve played our games? They’re terrible. Those great men and their great obsessions. I want no more of them. What I want is you.”
Agnes scoffed.
“I thought that winning was enough,” said Paul. “It wasn’t. I thought that success…well, I thought that success would mean something. It doesn’t. Because success is in the eye of the beholder. And the only eyes I care to be witnessed by belong to you.”
“You were always good at speeches.”
Paul took in the humble kitchen. “You’ve gone into hiding.”
“I’ve gone into reality.”
“You couldn’t do it in the end. The pretend name. The pretend life. The pretend you for the whole rest of your years. You thought you could. But it wasn’t worth it.”
She looked to the floor. It was hard to tell if she was more upset with Paul in that moment or herself. “Nikola described something to me once. Refraction, he called it. The way light is broken up into component colors when it passes through a prism. I felt like a refraction of a person. So many different shades that layer to create the illusion of a solid thing. I was only what was reflected back in others. A demure princess for my mother. A full-throated mimic on the stage. A smiling wit for my fiancé. All parts to be played. I thought it was worth it, until I saw…”
“Until you saw what it did to me.”
She looked up at him. “If I stayed, I would have been no better than you.”
The remark stung.
“So you came back here. You’ll sing at a local theater somewhere. If anyone recognizes Agnes Gouge, no one will care. If anyone recognizes Agnes Huntington, no one will believe it.” Her plan was sound. But Paul had done everything he could to see that it might be rendered unnecessary. “What if you can keep New York, without pretending?”
“With you as my new Jayne?” she asked incredulously. “I read that you won your war. But that doesn’t give you as much power as you think.”
“It doesn’t give me much at all. But I’m not the one who’s going to give you New York.”
Her brow furrowed.
“Thomas Edison is.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, he had surprised her.
“What I have here is a letter,” he said, removing it from his coat pocket. “It’s from a Sergeant Kroes, of the Boston police.”
Her expression made clear that she could not possibly guess where this was going.
“In it,” continued Paul, “the good sergeant informs my friend Charles Batchelor that there are no records of a theft occurring at the Endicott house in 1881. That the police do not have—nor have they ever had—such a record. And that he spoke to the Endicott family, who have assured him that no such theft ever occurred.”
Paul watched as she struggled to process what he was telling her. So massive were the implications of his words that she could not immediately wrap her mind around them.
“But that’s impossible,” she said.
Paul smiled. “Your mother is safe. So are you.”
“How did you—”
“It is my understanding that Charles Batchelor—trusted employee of Thomas Edison and J. P. Morgan—made very clear to the Endicott family, and to the Boston police, that his employers had taken an interest in the crime. And that it would be in everyone’s interest, for reasons left unspoken, if the incident had never occurred.”
“The family agreed to forget about it because Charles Batchelor told them to?”
“The names ‘Edison’ and ‘Morgan’ are quite powerful ones, even in Boston.”
She appeared as if a decade of tension was being released from her body. Paul could almost see her shoulders start to relax.
“You’re free now,” he said. “You can be Agnes Gouge. You can be Agnes Huntington. Or you can even go become Agnes Jayne if you want. But you don’t need his name to protect you. You have your own. And your mother has hers.”
Agnes said nothing. She held herself still against the cabinets.
“What was required of me to do all this was an act of dishonesty. But look at what it has allowed. The lives of everyone involved are better off for it. I sinned in the service of a better America. If you return with me to New York, we can spend the rest of our lives making up for it.”
“Not everyone involved is better off, Paul.”
“Tesla is not so hard up as you might think. Not only does he have a new laboratory, but he has a new company as well.”
“How can he afford to found a new company?”
“Because believe it or not, he has acquired his first investor. And the man has awfully deep pockets…J. P. Morgan. I’m negotiating the deal myself.”
She gave a start. It couldn’t be denied that whatever else he was, Paul was a very good lawyer.
“We can do anything now,” he said. “We can be anyone. We can give a fortune to charity. We can found civic institutions to outlast us both. We can make New York a place where the next boy from Nashville and the next girl from Kalamazoo are welcomed with open arms. We can look after Tesla and make sure that he’s always cared for. We can do all of this and so much more. But if I cannot do this at your side, then there’s no point.
“If you would consider returning to New York,” he continued, “I have a humble request: Don’t marry Henry Jayne. Marry me instead.”
He took a step closer. “Do you know that in our adventures we came to know three men who in their own ways each changed the world? And do you know what I can’t stop thinking about? Why did they do it? What made them fight, strive, connive so hard for so long?”