As for his suggestions regarding our plans, he is as cheeky as ever, but he is also absolutely right. It is a life sentence for both of us.
I was quite surprised by the Comstock business. This is something you haven’t told me much about, and I think it is a conversation we need to have as soon as I am home. In the meantime, I think you won’t have to worry about him now that you’ve handed the matter over to Conrad Belmont. Belmont’s reputation should be enough to scare off the self-proclaimed Weeder in the Garden of the Lord for good. A rich, well-connected man who cannot be won over to Comstock’s cause is one he avoids at all costs.
Finally, I am wondering if you paid Bambina a visit and are keeping that to yourself, or if you are still trying to work up the courage.
I fall asleep every night thinking of that last evening we spent together. I once believed that smells could not be recalled in isolation, but the scent of your skin at the nape of your neck is as real to me as the texture of your hair and the shape of your hands. Your beautiful, clever hands. I feel them on my face.
Evermore
Jack
18
ANNA SAT WITH Jack’s letter open in front of her, calculating times and distances yet again, just to be sure of her conclusion: he would be home sometime in the late afternoon or evening of the next day. This was very good news, and at the same time, difficult; she really had been putting off the visit to his sisters. Something she would have to do this evening.
The day had been particularly long: two surgeries of her own, assisting at another, a particularly difficult patient who showed up every week because she would not follow instructions on how to care for an ulcerated cheek and would only accept Anna as a doctor, a committee meeting about the usual budget shortfall and plans for raising funds—of all the duties that came with a position on the hospital staff, fund-raising was the worst, without competition.
And at the end of the workday, there was the bimonthly meeting of the Rational Dress Society. It was a commitment she had made long ago but one that she might have let go, if not for the ongoing debate about corsets around the breakfast table, which had renewed her interest and resolve.
All that she had survived, to find herself in the Mezzanotte parlor, watching Celestina fuss with bone china coffee cups as transparent as paper held up to the sun. The rims and handles were decorated with green and gold tracery, the kind of detail that would normally escape Anna, but the china was so delicate and beautiful, it drew attention to itself as surely as a single painting on a stark white wall.
That thought was still in her head when Bambina came in with a plate of long, narrow biscuits dusted with sugar crystals. They were also as hard as rock, as Anna soon discovered when she tried to bite down on one. She watched Bambina dipping a biscuit directly into her coffee cup and followed her example. It was almost magical, the way it crumbled on her tongue to a buttery mass of crumbs that tasted of sweet coffee and vanilla and anise.
“These are very good,” she said, quite sincerely. “The little experience I’ve had with Italian cooking gives me the sense that I will like it all.”
“Experience?” Celestine smiled at her, inviting but not demanding more information.
“Jack once shared a sandwich of roasted pork; it may have been the best thing I have ever eaten. I still think of it sometimes, but I always forget to ask him where it came from.”
Both sisters were smiling. “That must have been Aunt Philomena,” said Celestina. “She’s a wonderful cook. Jack eats with them once or twice a week when we are away at home. Though I suppose—” She broke off, embarrassed.
Anna did not consider herself insensitive, but she saw now that she had been oblivious to one crucially important aspect of their plans, one that would explain much of the nervous agitation in the room. When their brother married, the sisters would find themselves without a male protector. These two were raised to run a household, to care for others and to make beautiful things with their hands; they would never see themselves as independent, even if their needlework brought them sufficient income to make that claim. Unless Anna were to come here to live with all three of the Mezzanottes, Celestina and Bambina faced an uncertain future.
But she could make them no promises, not at this moment. Maybe never. Someone would have to move, and any move would disrupt this household in ways that could only be imagined.
“Um,” she said, tongue-tied for once in her life. “I think I’ll need a map of some kind to sort through all the Mezzanotte relatives. I haven’t even met your uncle Massimo yet.”
Celestina smiled as though she had been handed a gift and shot up from her seat. “What was I thinking? I’ll go get him now, he’s still in the shop. And you haven’t met the cousins—”