His sisters would look around this room, at the clothing and draperies and tablecloth, and tell him what it all meant. They might be affronted or charmed.
On a side table in a prominent spot, a dozen framed photos were grouped together. He counted eight men in uniform, the youngest no more than eighteen. On a cabinet card, elaborately framed, was a man of at least seventy.
“That is my father,” Margaret Cooper said, coming up behind him. Jack realized just then that she stood out from the others primarily because of her clothing, quite fashionable and conservative, which meant that she was trussed like a leg of lamb bound for the oven.
“Did he return to active duty for the war?”
She smiled, happy to have him open the conversation.
“He was an army surgeon, retired. The next photograph is my brother James. Aunt Quinlan—as Sophie and Anna call her—is my stepmother.”
“The other men?” he asked.
She pointed to each face in turn, her finger hovering but not touching. “This is Andrew—my husband—he fell at Chickamauga. This is Nathaniel Ballentyne, Aunt Quinlan’s son by her first husband. He died at Shiloh, fighting beside my brother. Nathaniel and James went to school together; they were the best of friends. These five”—her finger skimmed—“are some of my stepmother’s nephews. None of these men came home. Not one.”
Oscar had been standing aside but paying attention. Now he made a soft sound in his throat. “I’m sorry to hear it. My sincere condolences.”
Jack glanced at Mrs. Quinlan, still deep in conversation with the little girls, and then returned to the collection of cabinet cards. A wedding party, a fat little boy standing with one hand wound in the coat of a huge dog, two young blond women so much alike that they had to be twins. A small painting on an easel showed an Indian woman with high cheekbones, her hair threaded with white. She was laughing, her arms wrapped around herself.
Oscar touched his shoulder and inclined his head to a portrait that hung on the opposite wall. There were dozens of photographs and paintings of President Lincoln that appeared every so often in newspapers and magazines, but Jack couldn’t remember ever seeing an oil portrait, one in which the man came to life.
“That is my stepmother’s work,” Margaret Cooper said. “Mrs. Quinlan is well regarded as an artist. Or was, before arthritis put an end to it all.”
It was hard to fathom, at that moment. The old lady who spoke so kindly to the little girls had been beautiful as a younger woman, that was still clear. But she had also been capable of painting like this, President Lincoln as Jack liked to think of him, alive, sharp energy in the dark eyes. Everyone had their own memories of the day of the assassination, stories that had been told again and again and would be told today and tomorrow and all the days of their lives. The conversation could start up among strangers in a train car or at Sunday dinner.
Jack’s attention moved to a photograph of two young girls and a boy of ten or eleven. After a moment’s study he realized one of the girls was Sophie Savard, and the other was Anna. He supposed the boy might be Cap Verhoeven, with a mop of blond hair and a grin of the kind so rare in photographs.
Oscar said, “It looks as though they grew up together like brother and sisters.”
“Not quite.” Sophie had come to help the housekeeper with a tea cart. “I was ten when Aunt Quinlan sent for me, as soon as it was safe to travel after the war. Listen,” she said, turning. “She’s so pleased to have the chance to speak Italian; see how her face lights up.”
The old lady’s language was quite formal, and by listening to it Jack knew that she had traveled or lived in Italy long ago and learned from tutors who placed more value on formal grammar than conversation, but still she had an ear for the language.
She must have felt him looking, because she raised her head and smiled at him. And took his breath away. Beautiful as a young woman, yes. The beauty had gone with the years but left something just as powerful behind.
And just then Jack heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, and then she was there. Liliane-called-Anna. Her color was high, but Jack had the idea that it was agitation rather than the weather at fault. Standing in the doorway she pulled her hat off and her scarf away to reveal the tripling pulse at the base of her throat.
She had caught sight of the Russo girls and moved forward without pausing, dropping her things as she went. The others were talking to her all at once, but Anna seemed not to hear them. She made a visible effort to straighten her back and steady her expression, but it was clear that she was shaken.
“I see we have company,” she said, her voice a little rough.
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Quinlan. “You’ve met Rosa and Lia, I believe.”