Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,
You will forgive my intrusion on your notice at such a busy time, but I have reason to believe that you may be the surviving relic of Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam, late of the city of Cocoa, Florida, who I regret to inform you passed away in a fire at his home in Cocoa Beach, in the early hours of February 19 of this year.
I must beg you to confirm your receipt of this letter, and your identity as the former Miss Virginia Fortescue of New York, married to Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam of Penderleath, England [Cornwall, I thought automatically] in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the 31st of March, 1919, at your earliest convenience, so that we may proceed with the proper settlement of Mr. Fitzwilliam’s estate.
Yours respectfully,
Mr. Cornelius S. Burnside, Jr., Esq.
On the first reading, I didn’t understand at all. Something about the sight of my husband’s name—Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam—all typewritten and impersonal, as if I were reading about him in a newspaper, simply froze my thoughts in place. My eyes skimmed over the rest of the words without absorbing a single one.
Only upon a second reading did I realize that something had happened to Simon, and only after the third did I perceive that Simon was dead. That he had burned to death in a house in Florida, a terrible accident, and left to me—Virginia Fitzwilliam, his legal wife—the entirety of his estate. His estate, whatever that was.
Because while houses burned down regularly, and people died all the time, I had never imagined that Simon could meet his end like that. You could not extinguish my husband in mere flame. It simply wasn’t possible.
And while I had never tried to forget Simon—how could I, when his daughter gazed up at me every morning, an incarnate reminder of our brief life together?—I had, over the course of the previous three years, sequestered his image into its own tidy corner of my head, rigid and unchanged, a two-dimensional portrait covered by a sheet against the dust. I had refused to allow any memories out of that corner, because those might bring him back to life, and where would I be if Simon became human to me again?
But the shock of seeing his name, understanding the bare facts of his death, had a catastrophic effect on that mental frame I had erected around Simon, confining him in two dimensions. Simon: dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. It simply didn’t make sense. I stared and stared at that letter, and I put it away in the desk, and then I woke up at midnight and pulled it out and read it again while my sister, Sophie, slept in her nearby bed.
A week passed before I found the composure to answer that letter, and when I did, my reply was just as slim and factual as the original, though I wrote it in pen on Pickwick Arms notepaper. I simply confirmed my identity as Simon’s widow, indicated that I would not be at liberty to attend Mr. Burnside in person for some weeks, but that I would be happy to answer any inquiries by letter in the meantime.
At the time, however, I made no mention of Evelyn. For one thing, I doubted Mr. Burnside—or Samuel Fitzwilliam, for that matter—would have any idea of her existence.
I’m carrying Evelyn in my arms this minute, as we cross the street to the Phantom Hotel and Simon’s private apartment on the fifth floor, overlooking the docks. I haven’t seen it yet. We spent a few brief moments in the hotel lobby this morning, Evelyn and I, depositing our luggage and waiting for Mr. Burnside to appear. I’m afraid I didn’t notice any details, other than a clean-lined, simple décor and the impression of light and mirrors.
Samuel offers to carry Evelyn, but I decline politely, even though my arms ache under her weight. Instead, he puts his hand on my elbow and makes sure there’s no traffic as we start across the pitted street. It’s the first time he’s touched me since we shook hands in the office, and his fingers are unexpectedly light against the sharp point of my humerus. As we reach the safety of the paved sidewalk, the hand drops away.
This time the hotel staff recognizes me, and the manager hurries over the instant I pass through the doorway and hoist Evelyn—already half-asleep—further up my hip. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” he cries in dismay. He turns and snaps his fingers to the lobby boy, who hurries to press the call button on the elevator at the other end of the room. By the time we reach the apartment and I’ve tucked Evelyn into her bed, a tray’s arrived, bearing sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. Samuel, who stands by the window looking at the river, offers to pour me a glass.
The humble question brings me up short in the middle of an enormous silk rug.
“Yes, thank you.”
He strikes out across the floor while I settle myself on the edge of a sleek leather armchair. The drawing room yawns around us, vast and spare, containing only a few necessary pieces of clean-edged furniture and no sentiment whatsoever. Even the curtains are pale and plain, a uniform gray-green that merges immaculately with the paint on the high, long walls. I can just glimpse the river over the edge of the nearest windowsill, and the dark mass of the mangrove on the opposite shore—the barrier that separates us from the Atlantic. A convenient, protected harbor. No wonder Cocoa’s a boomtown.
Samuel hands me a damp glass of lemonade. Our fingertips brush, and he doesn’t move away.
“I didn’t realize Simon’s taste was so modern,” I say.
“I didn’t either, when I first arrived. I suppose neither of us had the opportunity to know him particularly well.”
“I knew him well enough.”
“In hospitals and hotels. But you never set up a home together, did you?”
The question is rhetorical. Samuel knows the solution to this hypothesis as well as I do. Wasn’t he the very man who drove me away from Cornwall, in an ancient Daimler whose cracked leather seats released a particular smell that still hangs in my nostrils? Still: “That’s true,” I say, and I settle in my chair, back still rigid, away from his looming figure.
Samuel tilts his head and returns to his station by the window. “I am sorry about all this. It must have been the devil of a shock.”
“Yes, it was. I still can’t imagine him dead.”
“Neither can I. Of all of us, he was the one most alive.”
“But you saw him dead. You identified the body.”
“Only by the ring.” Samuel taps his finger on the window frame, and the action reminds me so much of Simon, I turn away to drink my lemonade. “The body itself was burned beyond recognition. Poor chap.”
“Poor chap? You can still say that, after everything?”
“Yes, I can. He was my brother, after all.”
I think of Sophie, and the invisible thread that connects my heart to hers, even when an ocean opens between us. How my sister could commit no possible evil—even if she were capable of evil, and Sophie is as pure as a child—that would snap that thread.