Theodore’s face was white. His blood was everywhere.
Theo reached for Grace’s wrist with his hand. His grip was growing weaker. She had to lean down to hear him.
“I need you to know,” he said, his voice faint and raspy, “that I’ve always wanted you. Since that very first night.”
“Shh,” she said. “Please.”
She couldn’t stand that the words he was saying to her might be draining what life he had left. They had used their words against each other so many times, to spar and to wound. But now he was speaking his life into her. Using his last bit of strength to tell her who she was and what she was worth.
“It’s done,” he said. “You did it.”
He was slipping away. She leaned down, bringing her ear to his mouth. He closed his eyes and then his fingers around hers and used his last breath to say the words she had always most wanted to hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MAY 20, 1904
Seventeen Days After the Murder
THEY FOUND THEstolen jewels in Copper’s possession.
He had lured his old schoolmate Sylvestor to the river and killed him to keep the truth from coming out, then had taken Lillie’s and Frannie’s jewels back. He had planned to sell them to help Earnest keep up the appearances of having money until he could marry Lillie.
By then it would be too late. The Carters would be forced to help their new son-in-law financially to keep up appearances. Their name couldn’t handle another scandal. Or, if that failed… Well, Earnest had killed before. He had come too far and done too much to be ruined now. If he had to, he would do it again.
The irony of it was not lost on Grace. That her aunt would banish her from the family but welcome a well-bred murderer right through the front door.
It had been a week since the president’s dinner, and the first time Grace had returned to the fair since that dark night. It looked so promising and innocent in the daylight, with the boughs of its trees skimming along the paths like a lace hem. She shivered a little. She stood outside the fence and heard the distant screams of the roller coaster, saw the Ferris wheel and the telegraph tower, the Alps and theglinting Festival Dome in the distance. Beyond it would be the Chinese summer palace, the Japanese gardens, the sprawling Philippine Village with its various tribes. The palaces, the massive pipe organ, the X-ray machine, the newest inventions in automobiles, trains, flying machines, appliances, and city planning. The art and animals and transplanted trees, the beauty of dancing and culture. The wonder and thejoy. The Pike, with its endless restaurants and performances and zoos and baby incubators.
Lillie said that some of the smallest babies in the incubators had died. Dr. May was outraged, claiming that the man running the exhibit was not a doctor but a charlatan moneymaker. The fair had passed over the doctor who had run previous exhibitions in favor of someone who was willing to give them a larger percentage of the profits. Grace could hardly think about it. The tiny babies with their rosebud mouths, dying alone in their cases while people paid money to look at them. She thought of the men who had fallen to their deaths attempting to build the Ferris wheel. The Philippine tribes, lined up to be ranked like animals.
Grace watched the people pour in through the front gates. The fair was so much like humanity itself, infinitely complex in its light and shadows. It drew the world, showing the heights and depths of what people were capable of in their ingenuity and cruelty. Was she allowed to love something that was so complicated? And even more importantly, was she allowed to love such complicated someones?
Or were the faultless the only ones worthy of being loved?
She clutched her final article in her hand, moving through the gate. She’d written the full story and tried to do it justice. She wanted to vindicate Oliver, first and foremost, and restore the Carter name for his sake and for Lillie’s. She’d wanted to capture how heroic Theodore had been that night.
And she’d done it to finally be the one holding the brush stroke in her hands. All her life, other people’s words had defined her like a painter using negative space. Filling up the places around her with vague shadows that actually didn’t capture her at all. She thought of Walt, smashing the window of the general store, and lifting her up to see the bird’s nest. Oliver, who always raised Grace’s social standings and also put her in the worst positions. Theo, saving and destroying her in the course of a single Chicago night.
And Frannie.
Grace could acknowledge their fault lines and their propensity for good, sometimes tangled frustratingly together. It was painstaking work, pulling weeds without uprooting the gentle flowers that grew beside them. It was always easier and lazier to simply raze a thing to the ground. But without nuance there would be nothing left to love—within herself, included.
Love, after all, required grace.
She spotted Frannie Allred, sitting alone at a table in the Beer Garden, beneath a parasol.
Frannie turned her face toward Grace as she approached.
“May I sit here?” Grace asked.
“I’m fairly certain you won’t have to fight anyone for it,” Frannie said dryly. Her lips were pursed. “My social card has been rather empty since my brother was arrested for murder.”
Grace resisted the temptation to make any snide comments about how Frannie had treated Lillie exactly the same way when their situations were reversed
Instead she bit her tongue and pulled up a chair. “You know I’ve never cared about any of that.”
Frannie chuffed a little. She examined the menu.
