They called the realtor in New York the next morning and put it on the market at a hefty price, but it was worth it. Blake just hoped it would sell quickly. He wanted to get out of the business now while he still could.
The New York realtor was delighted to list their Tribeca apartment, and by sheer miracle, it sold in five weeks for a good price. Blake managed to keep a lid on things at work, and Bert helped him almost daily. Blake knew that Bert’s own downfall had come due to a national disaster, not through errors of his own. And with his advice, Sybil’s support, and the sale of their New York apartment, within two months Blake had managed to extricate himself from a potentially disastrous situation and leave the firm. He had lost a considerable amount of money, but he hadn’t lost everything, and they still had the house. And after some careful thought, he decided he wanted to start a business of his own. The damage he had escaped could have been infinitely worse. By Thanksgiving Blake knew he had much to be thankful for, and was enormously relieved. He and Sybil were closer than ever, and he and Bert were almost like brothers.
Blake told Bert again how grateful he was to him. He was going to let things cool off for a while, and then try something of his own, based on sound principles. He might not make as much as he could have with the geeks, but he wouldn’t lose as much either.
The apartment in New York was gone, so this really was their home now. Sybil had flown to New York and packed everything at the height of his crisis, and had shipped it all to San Francisco. She had never complained once about the mess Blake had gotten them into, and he was deeply grateful to her too. It had been a harrowing time for both of them. Spending Thanksgiving with the Butterfields was even more meaningful this year. Andy hadn’t been able to get home from Edinburgh since it wasn’t a holiday for them, but Caroline was home with Max, and Andy and Quinne were coming home for Christmas. And Blake was thankful they still had a home to come to. He had escaped total ruin by the skin of his teeth, with Bert’s advice.
Chapter 16
After Thanksgiving, Sybil was organizing papers in her office, as she was in the home stretch of her book, and she noticed the box the bank had given her about the Butterfields, with the photographs and Bettina’s book in it. She smiled when she saw it. Nearly three years after they’d bought the house, she knew so much about them, probably even more than Bettina had known when she wrote it. Sybil had the benefit of the present to add to the past, while Bettina could only guess at the future. And she was blissfully happy in Paris with Louis.
She glanced through the photographs and saw pictures of Lili as a baby, and with Bettina shortly after she was born. Bettina looked so serious and unhappy. She had been so worried about the responsibilities of being a mother, and now she was in love with a wonderful man and protected by him. Her letters from Paris were only happy, after three months of marriage. She felt totally separate now from her life in the States, and believed she would never live there again.
Sybil found other photographs too, of Magnus and Josiah, Bert and Gwyneth. They’d looked so young when they were married. There was one of Bettina after she bought the house back, after Louis died, in 1950. It was jarring to see it, knowing that they had just gotten married that summer. But in real time, she had married him in the summer of 1919. Sometimes Sybil forgot that she was reliving history with them because the present times she lived with them were so vivid. They existed in another dimension together in addition to the one each family was in, a hundred years apart.
There was a picture of Gwyneth too, after Bert died in 1930, when Bettina took her to Paris to live with her after they sold the house in San Francisco. Gwyneth looked so ravaged, so lost without him, that it pained Sybil to see it. And when she looked at the date on the back of another photograph, she knew that Gwyneth had died a few months later in 1932. After that, the only ones still alive were Bettina and Lili, and there were no more pictures. And then Sybil thought of something. Bettina had written that Lili got married in France to Raphael Saint Martin, a doctor, after the Second World War. She had a son named Samuel, born in 1946. As far as Sybil knew, Samuel Saint Martin was the last descendant of Gwyneth and Bert. There were no other heirs, as Bettina had been their only surviving child, Lili Bettina’s only issue, and Samuel Lili’s. He was the end of the line. Sybil wondered what had happened to him, and if he’d had any interest in the house or knew anything about it. His mother had sold it after his grandmother’s death in 1980. Sybil wondered what had happened to him since.