“For God’s sake, Samuel, I was attacked! The doctor gave me pills for my headache!”
He turns his face toward me. “Attacked?”
“Didn’t you hear about it?”
“No.”
A funny little silence nestles in between us, right in the middle of all that soft, drunken morning air. Samuel stares at me, and his eyes turn a little wild, and his face turns a little tender. A little something else. I can’t tell what. He doesn’t move, though. Not a flinch. Until his lips move.
“What happened?”
“I was with Clara. We went to this—this place in Cocoa Beach, this restaurant a few miles south, after dinner.”
“A gin joint, you mean.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about places like that. Anyway, she was—well, she was flirting, I guess, or something like that, and I went for a walk on the beach.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes. I wanted to see if it was true.”
“If what was true? If what was true, Virginia?”
“That the rumrunners landed on moonless nights. And there was no moon out, so I thought, well, I’ll just take a look . . .”
“My God.” He steps forward, looms by the edge of the bed. Reaches out and touches my cheek. “That was you?”
“Me?”
“Are you all right? You weren’t badly hurt?”
“No. I don’t remember it, actually. I think I’d had too much to drink, and someone hit me on the head . . .”
“Oh, Christ. Oh, Virginia.” His hand travels along my jaw. Inspects my chin. The shape of his eyes softens and rounds, suggesting remorse. But then, it’s Samuel. You can’t read Samuel. Maybe it’s remorse, maybe it’s pity. Maybe it’s something else. He reminds me of a bear, all huge and brown and bristling, looming over me. Nudging me with his paw, to decide if I’m still alive. “And you don’t remember? You don’t know who did this?”
“No.”
“I’ll find him.”
“No!” I push his hand away. “Please, don’t. Please don’t have anything more to do with this, do you hear me? It’s done enough damage, this business.”
“What business?”
“You know what I mean.”
Well, his face goes hard again, just like that. His eyes squint. He steps back and sucks his lips into his mouth. He says, or rather growls, “And this happened just before Clara disappeared, was it?”
“Two nights before. We left for Maitland the next day . . .” And my voice trails away, because you see, I don’t think I really understood him until now. Understood what he meant, that is, by missing. Clara missing. Busy, energetic Clara. My head’s still fuzzy and restless, my thoughts swinging and swaying like those round-bottomed dolls you push with your finger. Revolving around my own needs, my own physical maladies. Now the dolls are going still, the light of reason is spreading and spreading, and I think to myself, for the first time, Nobody’s seen Clara in weeks. Not since she motored right back out of Maitland in Simon’s blue Packard, the morning after we arrived.
“And she left in the morning,” he finishes.
I say, in my mumbling, scratchy voice: “You haven’t heard a word from her?”
“Not a damned word. Not a note. Not a message.”
“Do you think something’s happened to her?”
There is a lamp balanced atop the sleek modern table, a few feet away from Samuel’s enormous body. He picks it up—a lovely, curving, elegant object, made of reflective mercury glass spun into symmetry by some expert hand, priceless—and hurls it against the wall.
“Of course something’s happened to her! What the bloody hell else could it be? Do you think this is all just an extraordinary coincidence?”
I’m shaking all over, shaking and sweating. Nerves shrieking. “Who, then?”
“You tell me! Simon’s dead, it can’t be him.”
I roll over. Turn my face into the mattress. Seize the pillow and squeeze it across the back of my head, around the cartilage of my ears. Samuel shouts something else, but I can’t hear it. Just beautiful, muffled silence.
But you can’t block out the world forever, can you? Especially when you need to breathe. You don’t want to breathe, maybe, but you need to. So you turn your head sideways to allow a little air into your starved lungs, and there’s your brother-in-law, standing by the edge of the bed, staring fiercely. Dark hair tousled like a ruffian’s. Jaw set. Hazel eyes burning straight through your skull.
“At least Evelyn’s safe,” I whisper.
“Well, that’s a damned clue in itself, isn’t it? The little heiress remains intact.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Miami Beach. Who’d you see there?”
“Lots of people. I don’t remember them all.”
“There must have been someone.”
“There wasn’t.”
“You hesitated.”
“I was trying to remember, all right? There wasn’t anyone in particular. Where’s Evelyn?”
“Still sleeping.”
“Where are you going?”
“Miami Beach. Call me at the Flamingo if you hear anything. There’s your breakfast tray. I suggest you start by eating something, if you still want to call yourself a mother.”
He slams the door behind him, and I stare for some time at the white-painted wood that replaces him. At the shattered lamp next to the wall. At the silver dome on the tray on the bedside table, keeping my breakfast warm.
Maybe it’s the scorn in Samuel’s eyes. The doctor’s eyes. Nobody’s ever looked at me that way before. Pity’s bad enough—I’ve had plenty of that, especially during Father’s trial. Oh, the pity in everyone’s eyes, as they gazed upon Sophie and me, the motherless girls, practically orphans, sitting quietly in that courtroom! But scorn. That’s another perspective altogether. And the tone of his voice! If you still want to call yourself a mother.
Nothing quite so vicious as that, is there? If you still want to call yourself a mother. You can bear anything but that. Anything but the accusation that you, Virginia Fitzwilliam, have failed your own daughter.
When you have lived the past three years in devotion to her. When your daughter is the temple at which you have worshipped, the single clean object left in your universe, the magnet, the gravitational force, the molecular glue that holds you together. Keeps your component pieces from cracking apart and falling in noisy shards to the floor, the way your own mother fell to pieces.
Like any really effective blow, the denunciation takes a moment or two to work its intended effect. First, there’s the instinctive No, but—! The angry Stupid bastard! The resistant He doesn’t understand. And then the truth, you know, the truth of it works its inevitable way into my gut. Fills my eyes. Sticks and chokes in my throat.
My Evelyn, my daughter. I’ve failed her.