Chapter Twenty-one, part one

Violet watched from her window as a strange car drove up with a chauffeur who greeted Charlie as “Mister Charles.” Charlie’s bag went into the back, then the man himself—his warmth, his voice, his hand around hers—climbed into the back seat and closed the door. The sound of it latching reached her even one story up and through the window glass, it was that final.

“Goodbye,” she whispered as the car pulled away, a dark blur disappearing behind bright green branches. Violet let the two curtains drop, but she stood there a long while, staring at the shadows in the folds of fabric. It had been the right decision. It was right to let him go, to not drag him down into their money problems.

Still, the instinct to confess everything to him—and get his reassurance—was incredibly strong. It was strong even now that he’d driven away. She’d almost blurted it all out earlier when they’d stood side by side in the loggia, and now she was glad she hadn’t. Imagine. What if the Boston doctor was able to salvage his sight and he was saddled with a penniless girl from upstate New York?

She couldn’t reasonably ask him to wait a year for her money problems to sort themselves out. What if they wound up in debt even after the sale of the apartment? What if the market took a turn? What if, what if—and Charlie should be moving on, building his home for the blind, meeting other women.

Marrying one of them.

Violet turned away, back to the problem at hand. When Sadie finished her bath, she crawled into bed, and Violet repaired to the loggia with a notebook. She started jotting down figures—the approximate amount in their bank account, her best guess at the value of the New York apartment. Then she stopped, her ball point pen hovering in the air.

Sadie should be here, she thought. Goodness, Sadie should be the one doing all this. If I hadn’t shielded her from the money and taxes and bills, we might not be in this mess. At least she would have gone to the card table with her eyes wide open.

Violet turned the page in her notebook. She’d let herself be staggered by Sadie’s confession and Charlie’s departure, but she needed to focus. The National Woman’s Party vote was tomorrow. She should check in with Alva, go over her role for the day, and offer to help settle the guests who were coming down just for the meeting. Alice Paul! Lucy Burns! Besides, being busy would help take her mind off Charlie.

She scribbled a quick note to Sadie, slipped into their dark room, placed it on the vanity table, and grabbed her hat. She’d let a huge portion of her mind drift toward Charlie in the past week. It was time to get it back where it belonged, on work.

–

Violet was on her feet most of the afternoon and she was glad to be weary in both body and mind when she returned to the Breakers. Up in their room, ready for dress for supper, she found Sadie in bed reading through Mother’s letters. Her sister looked pale and strangely older, her heart-shaped little face engulfed by the hair hanging loose on her shoulders.

When she saw Violet, Sadie gave a rueful laugh and set the letters aside. “I thought Mother might have some advice for me. Which is wild. Considering that—as you keep pointing out—she and Papa had no sense about how to manage money. Guess I’m the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.”

Violet sat on the side of the bed and set her hand on her sister’s knee. “You are seventeen years old, and you got into money trouble trying to keep up with people of a different set. Honestly, trying to keep up with the wealthiest people in the country.” She leaned forward and softened her voice. “Our parents were in their forties. They’d had plenty of time to learn from their mistakes. Only they never did.”

Sadie sighed and sank back against her pillow. “I do like the way this set lives, though!”

“They do pull things off with style. And who knows where your life will head—you may be back at the Breakers yet. But as long as we each have fifteen hundred a year, we have to live at the fifteen hundred level. Not the hundred and fifty thousand level.” Violet took up her notebook and turned to the page she’d started that morning. “Let’s come up here after supper and make a plan. Tomorrow you can speak with Reggie.”

“Speak with Reggie! Me?”

“Yes, you.” It went against the grain for Violet to resist helping, but she was determined that Sadie clean this mess up on her own. “You’ll need to ask him to accept payments. We don’t have enough to pay it all off at once.
Grandfather co-signed so I could open an account after Papa and Mother died, but there isn’t nearly enough in it. We’ll have to sell the New York apartment—or have Grandfather do it. He told me many times that women get shorted when they sell real estate. Then you and I can wait it out in Cold Lake as our dividends arrive. When you talk with Reggie, you can set the amount we pay every month. Otherwise, we just don’t have it.”

Sadie buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “I can’t do that! I can’t face him. Ask for his pity—I’d be humiliated! Can’t you talk to him?” She grabbed Violet’s wrist. “You know me—I’ll mess it all up. Can’t you please do it? You’ll do it perfectly. Please?”

A piece of Violet’s core wobbled. She pinched a fold of the duvet and squeezed it until the discomfort eased. “No,” she said softly. “Not this time. You’ll do it beautifully, I know you will.”

The stark look on Sadie’s face was too painful to bear. Violet went to the armoire, wiping her eyes as she picked out her cream-colored skirt. She and Sadie had been slapped in the face by their own failures that day, and the force was enough to rattle her teeth. She would need two aspirin before they went down.

Violet’s gaze strayed to the window. Charlie was out there somewhere, pushing forward with his life, moving on without her. She sighed. “Come on,” she said. “We’d better get ready.”

Sadie’s eyes were ringed with self-pity. “I don’t think I can.”

“Oh, sure you can. If I can do it, you can, too.”

–

The Tremblay house smelled like stillness. Charlie was all too aware that his presence disrupted its usual rhythms of calm and quiet. His parents met the car when it pulled up—his father shook his hand, and his mother pecked him on the cheek. Then they moved away, and he shuffled his feet until they remembered, with embarrassed murmurs, that they needed to help him. His mother apologized, but Charlie shrugged it off. They each had their own lives, he understood that. Violet was the only one who’d never forgotten about him. Heck, she made it seem like an honor to take his arm.

That night, Charlie asked the maid to bring him two gimlets of gin. He downed one and lay on his bed, waiting for the darkness to spin. Violet felt so far away. He rolled onto one side, then another, thinking about the second gin.

He’d rolled up to sitting and was reaching out for it when a tap came at the door.

“Yes, come in.”

“Charlie.” It was his mother. His heart retracted, the way it had ever since the day he came off the Campania and felt how wet her cheeks were when she kissed him. The thought that he’d made her cry sat in his chest like a block of cement. Now that same cement clogged his faculties every time she was nearby.

The door creaked as she entered. “I wanted to check and see if you need anything.”

“Thank you, but I’m okay.”

The feet of a chair slid across the floor. She was sitting. “How was your time at the Breakers?”

What should he say? It was incredible, but I’ve come away with a shredded heart? For times I actually forgot about being blind, that’s how wrapped up I was in Violet?

“It was fine.”

“Well.” A pause. Her feet shifted. “That’s good. I’m glad you had a chance to be with young people. I know your father and I aren’t much company.”

Suddenly, a thought seized him. “Mother, when you were young, did girls ever marry men…with problems like mine?”

“Like blindness?” She sounded startled. Maybe even horrified. “Not that I remember. But girls in my day were very ambitious. Mothers did a lot of scheming to help their daughters move into a better set, an older family. Both your father’s family and mine were old Baltimore. It was almost preordained that we would marry.” The creak of a chair meant she was standing. Her cool hand settled on his shoulder. “I’ll let you get your sleep. As long as you have everything you need?”

“I’m okay,” he said once again. Was he reading the sadness into her voice? The door clicked closed behind her.

I’ve done this to her. He slid his hand across his desk, hunting up the gin glass. I would kill anyone who hurt my mother like this—and now I’ve gone and done it.

He found the glass and downed the gin, then sank back into his bed, wishing he could dissolve into the earth.