“What I think,” Charles ventured, “is that you are afraid because you don’t know what happened to your husband after he died. You are afraid he had nowhere to go.” He looked down, at the sand. “I know because for a very long time I felt that way, after my mother died, when I was still a boy. And I couldn’t bear the thought of her becoming . . . nothing.”
Late in Harry’s career they had found themselves staying in the same hotel as Sarah Bernhardt, in downtown Boston. The great actress had had her right leg amputated a few months before and had sunk into a deep depression, and she came to watch Harry perform. Afterward, they’d shared an automobile back to the hotel. Bess recalled Sarah’s heavy black coat, long to her ankles to hide her wooden leg, and her bursting confection of a hat, red and feathered.
“Mr. Houdini,” she had said to Harry. “You must possess some extraordinary powers to perform such marvels.”
Harry had laughed. But Sarah had gripped his hand in hers. “Won’t you use it to restore my limb for me?”
Bess had realized, at the same time as Harry, that the question was not in jest. Sarah was looking at him eagerly, her eyes filling with tears.
“Good heavens,” Harry had said, aghast. “You are asking me to do the impossible.”
“But you do the impossible.”
“I’m afraid you exaggerate my abilities,” he’d said, and Sarah had studied him for a long moment, as if she were hoping he was testing her, before releasing her grip on his hand.
Bess recognized a glimpse of this desperation in herself now. She remembered Harry’s own tears as he got out of the car at the hotel, leaving Sarah inside. He had never meant to deceive anyone. But what if he was deceiving her now, without even realizing it?
Still, a chill ran through her. “There’s something about you . . .” she said to Charles. “Something very powerful. I’m not sure what it is.” She thought of her initial attraction to Ford, her certainty in his goodness. But those feelings, she realized now, had been tinged with lust, while what she felt toward Charles was more like a friendship.
Charles put his hand on her arm. “You know, nothing may come of your search.”
“I know.”
“So why did you still want to meet me today? When you found out last night that I didn’t know Harry after all?”
“Well,” Bess said. “I suppose I was hoping I could see some more of your pictures. That maybe I would find something else.”
“You’re welcome to see what I have. But”—he held his palms to the air—“I’ve been a photographer professionally since I was eighteen years old. There are thousands. I’m not sure I even have copies or negatives of all of them.”
“My sister is here with me. She thinks we’re here for a vacation. But she’s going back to New York tomorrow. I could tell her I want to stay on. Do you think we could meet then?”
“Of course.” Charles looked out at the ocean.
Bess bent down and slid a handful of sand through her fingers. Despite the heat, it was cool to the touch. “When I was younger, I dreamed of growing old in California, in a house with palm trees and lemon trees in the yard. But now there is too much holding me to New York.”
“People probably ask you this all the time. But do you really think your husband had a spiritual connection to something when he did his magic? That, while he was alive, he had some kind of foothold in the other world?”
Bess pursed her lips together. She thought of the eerie incidents that had befallen them over the course of their marriage, the indications that they may have had some kind of reciprocity with the other side that had never quite materialized. “If those kinds of powers could be accessed so easily,” she said sadly, “I wouldn’t have spent all these years looking for him.”
At one she went to find Stella at the bathing house, but she wasn’t there. Bess only then realized how long she’d talked with Charles. She was an hour late, and Stella had likely gotten hungry and gone off in search of lunch.
It was so hot that her dress stuck to her. She trudged up the sand back to the hotel and went to the room to change into her swimming costume. Even before she went inside she knew something was wrong. The door was ajar. When she pushed it open she saw clothes everywhere.
“Stella? Stella?”
Stella came out of the bedroom, her hair wet and pulled back into a bun. Her suitcase was in her hand.
“I thought something happened! I thought someone had broken in!” Only then did Bess realize Stella was crying. She stepped back. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Abby,” Stella sobbed. “She’s in the hospital. Something’s wrong with the baby.”
“Oh, God.”
“I have to go back tonight. But I can’t find my train ticket. I’ve been looking everywhere.”
“Don’t worry about that. Buy a new one.”
“You can stay. I don’t want you to cut your weekend short.”
Bess thought of Charles. She would have to wire him immediately. She pulled Stella into a hug. “Of course I’ll go back with you.”
Chapter 9
YOUNG’S PIER
October 1906