Even the Lees were coming. Jack had announced his plan to show Mr. Lee around the farm and greenhouses right from the start, which put Anna in a difficult spot. She tried to explain the problem: “Mr. Lee never leaves Waverly Place except to visit their son and his family, and he’s just four blocks away. He always has the same excuse, that somebody has to stay to look after the property. Properties, now.”
But Jack had gotten a particular look, one she had learned to recognize as unvoiced disagreement. The next day he introduced a young patrol officer he liked and trusted to the Lees. With their approval Jack hired him to stand watch while they were gone. Mrs. Lee was so touched that for once she couldn’t find a single thing to say, but Aunt Quinlan didn’t hesitate; she pulled him down to kiss one cheek while she patted the other. Anna wondered why they had never thought to do something similar in the past.
So they were going to Greenwood. Anna knew they had put the visit off too long already and that nothing short of an earthquake would be an acceptable excuse for staying away. What she couldn’t explain to herself was how nervous the whole thing made her until Aunt Quinlan pointed out that a big party with a lot of people would be easier than a small supper where she had everyone’s attention.
“We need to get an anniversary gift,” Aunt Quinlan said now. “How many years have your parents been married, Jack?”
He stared at the ceiling while he subtracted. “Massimo was born on the twenty-fourth of June in . . .” He looked at his niece, who was waiting for this question.
“Eighteen forty-four.”
“So they were married on the same day in eighteen forty-three; that would be forty years ago.”
“They don’t want presents,” Chiara added. “We don’t give a lot of presents.” She said this a little wistfully.
Anna was thinking about forty years of marriage, what that might be like in the year 1933. If there would be children and grandchildren and a party. She thought sometimes about children, a subject Jack hadn’t yet raised in any serious way. Why that might be was unclear, and not something she wanted to contemplate just now.
“What are you thinking about?” Rosa asked her. “Your face is all scrunched together.”
Anna started out of her thoughts. “I was thinking that I’d like more of that apple cobbler, unless somebody else has beaten me to it.”
“Your appetite is restored,” her aunt Quinlan said.
“After days of toast and tea and clear broth, I could eat the tablecloth.”
The girls found this very funny, as if they hadn’t had the same diet for days.
Margaret said, “What time are you leaving on Sunday?”
The discussion shifted to the logistic challenge of getting them all to the Hoboken ferry in time. They were a party of—the girls counted on their fingers, noisily, and came up with the astonishing number of ten, counting Bambina and Celestina. Eleven, if Ned came too, as the little girls were hoping. The plan was to leave Sunday morning and return to Manhattan late on Monday.
“Are there beds for all of us?” Aunt Quinlan asked again.
“Yes,” Chiara said, smiling broadly. “Room enough.”
Rosa was asking Chiara about the Mezzanotte grandchildren; she wanted names and ages and maybe even a chart that would tell her who got along and who didn’t. It seemed now that Rosa had survived the trip to Mount Loretto and the shock of losing Vittorio. She had always been a serious child, and now just enough of that had lifted to see what might become of her if she could learn to let her brothers go.
She wasn’t healing, that was the wrong word. She was coming to terms with loss. As Anna had never been able to do.
? ? ?
SLEEPLESS, RESTLESS, IMAGES and snatches of conversation tumbling through her head, Anna decided that she would go read in the parlor. In the day the room was sunny, but there were gaslights, and a good chair, and a rug to put over her legs if the room was chilly.
Though Jack was a deep sleeper she moved very quietly, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat up.
“Savard.”
She lay back down again. He rolled to his side and yawned at her. The curtains weren’t closed all the way, so that she could just make out his features by the faint light from the streetlamp.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you need your sleep.”
“So do you.” He ran a hand down her arm. “The tension is rising off you in waves.”
“I’m going to go read until I’m too tired to stay awake.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Just rest next to me.”
His hand traveled up and down her arm, the lightest of touches.
She said, “I don’t want to talk about that dream.”
He hummed at her, his broad fingertips barely brushing along her skin. When she was about to say that it was no use, she would go read in the parlor, he made a soft shushing sound.
“I have a question that isn’t about your brother, and I want you to think about it before you answer.”
She drew in a deep breath. “All right.”