I sit down at the desk in the corner of the drawing room and open the anonymous note first. I’m not surprised to learn that Agent Marshall—in his brief, efficient manner—inquires after my health and well-being, and any information I may have discovered in the weeks since my injury in Cocoa Beach. How kind. I fold the note back into its original creases and then rip it into small, fastidious pieces, an action that requires just about all the strength I’ve got left in my fingers.
The second letter, on the other hand. That’s the one I really want, and yet I find, as I gather the scraps of Agent Marshall into a neat pile, which I then brush over the side of the table into the small metal wastebasket I’ve fetched from the corner for that purpose, that I’m delaying the moment of discovery. That I really don’t want to know the details. That I’m afraid. Of course. I’m always afraid, aren’t I? Fear and dread, my old companions. I set down the wastebasket and pick up the remaining letter. My name is typed on the outside of the envelope, rather than written, and it’s a solid new type, black and unscarred, punched in by ten expert fingers that make no mistakes. The kind of professionalism you expect from your New York City bank.
Except it isn’t my bank, exactly. I’ve never had an account at the National City Bank. That was, more or less, the substance of the inquiry I wrote and mailed to their offices a month ago, in between my visit to the First National Bank of Miami and my excursion to the Miami Beach casino, along with a cheerful postcard sent to my sister. This, I presume, is the bank’s answer. A vital piece of the puzzle, you might say, and yet I think I already know what it says. The gist of what’s happening here. And I find, as I slide a slim silver letter opener along the edge of the envelope and pull the contents free—two pieces of ecru paper, folded together into precise crosswise thirds—that I’m right. Of course I’m right. Didn’t I expect all this from the beginning?
Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,
In response to your inquiry of the 21st of June, I regret to inform you that, since the account holder is now deceased, the Bank cannot divulge any such information without proof of your identity as his legal agent. We can, however, confirm the details to which you referred in your inquiry: namely, that the account holder instructed payment in the amount of $100,000.00 to be made on the account of Mr. Fitzwilliam at the First National Bank of Miami. Any further details must be applied for in person . . .
The usual compliments follow, but I don’t read them. Instead I fold the letter and slide it back into its envelope, and I tread carefully across the enormous drawing room to the master bedroom, where my valise lies under the bed. My valise of important papers. I open the valise and find my father’s cracked leather portfolio, the one marked fitzwilliam, and I slide the bank correspondence inside, next to the thirty-odd envelopes postmarked from Florida, with nothing inside them.
My hand pauses. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the muddle in my head, the uncertainty that roils between the folds of my brain. Outside the window, a steamship lets out a distant, prolonged belch. A Phantom steamship, possibly? I pull the stack of empty envelopes from the portfolio and untie the string that holds them together.
Again, that handwriting. Strikes me in the stomach, where I need it least. I touch my finger to the word Virginia and think how I once used to welcome the sight of this word, in that particular pen stroke, how it used to send a current of joy into that selfsame stomach that troubles me now. As the tip of my finger glides across the ink, wondering what kind of letter ought to have been contained inside, and what information it should have contained, so does my eye wander across the paper, until it lands on the round, black, innocuous postmark in the corner. Just to be sure. Just to make certain I wasn’t dreaming, or hallucinating, or merely mistaken.
And while I’m sitting there, reabsorbing the meaning of this information, a sound drifts through the open bedroom door and interrupts the rhythm of my thoughts, such as they are.
The distant, unmistakable voice of a metal doorknob, when it’s rattled by a hand without a key.
The funny thing about courage—at least in my observation—is that it tends to rise and fall in proportion to what’s at stake. I now shudder to remember the way I drove that damned Hunka Tin through mud and shellfire, without regard for my own safety. But why wouldn’t I? I had only my own paltry life to lose, and who gave a damn if I lost that? Certainly not me. Simon, maybe, but not for the reasons I then imagined.
Now it’s different. Now I have Evelyn, and while I still don’t particularly value my life for its own sake, I value it for hers. I know what it’s like to grow up without a mother.
And, of course, there’s Evelyn’s life. My daughter’s precious, irreplaceable life. I could die this moment, and Evelyn would grieve, but she would go on. Like Sophie, who was three when Father killed Mama, she wouldn’t even really remember me. Though the loss of me would open a giant chasm in her life, she would survive it. But if my daughter died, and I lived? I couldn’t survive that. I could not survive the loss of Evelyn.
As I stand in the doorway of the bedroom and listen to the rattling knob—carrying across the drawing room, from the direction of the entry hall—the sound changes entirely, replaced by jolts, as if someone’s given up on the lock and has now resorted to brute force. I realize I have two choices, if I want to live, and I want Evelyn to live. I can hide us both, or I can fight. Which is really no choice at all, because where could we possibly hide where a determined intruder won’t find us? We’re on the eighth floor of a hotel in a strange, hostile town. There’s nowhere to go.
So it’s not really courage that propels me from the bedroom’s threshold, closing the door behind me, but fear. I have no choice. There’s nowhere else to go. Nothing else to be done.
Outside, in the drawing room, the air’s gone quiet. Maybe he’s given up; maybe he’s left. Maybe it’s just Samuel, returning for a forgotten object. My nightgown is damp, sticking to my skin, and my vision swims. I walk across the room and gaze about in search of a weapon of some kind, a thing that could be used as a weapon, anything. A painting? Too heavy, even if I could operate both hands.
The knob rattles again, more softly. As if there’s a key this time, a key trying to loosen a stiff lock. Someone who lives here, or used to live here.
Knives. The kitchen. But the kitchen’s all the way on the other side of the apartment. I cast about, frantic now, and with my uninjured left hand I snatch a ceramic vase from a sleek modern sideboard and secure it with my right thumb. I turn toward the entry foyer just as the door cracks open and a hand wraps around the edge.
There’s nowhere to hide. I turn and flatten myself against the wall, just around the corner from the foyer, and listen to the creak of the door. The careful footsteps on the rug. The clink of something landing in the china bowl on the entry table.
Footsteps again.