“I’m sorry. This information is for family only,” Grace said, turning her back on her aunt. She called over her shoulder as she sailed out the door, “And you’ve made it very clear that we are not that.”
Nell’s ire had cooled a little by the time they’d walked several blocks and the revolving silhouette of the Ferris wheel came into view.
“You have to at least see it,” Grace said, wheedling. “Since you’re here.”
“Fine,” Nell said, fixing Grace with a steely gaze. “But you’re telling me everything while we do.”
They entered the fair’s turnstiles and, seeing it through Nell’s eyes, Grace was hit anew by the wonder of it all. It washed over her in a wave of elation, flooding her with the feeling of possibility. The energy was electric. It felt like watching thousands of flowers suddenly erupting into bloom at once.
“How many buildings?” Nell asked faintly, glancing up at the towering Tyrolean Alps.
“More than a thousand.”
“And how many countries are here?”
“Sixty-two.”
“It would take weeks to see it all.”
“A month, at least,” Grace countered. She breathed in the sugar-scented air and thrust the program into her mother’s hand. It was astonishing what human beings could collectively do when they put their minds to it. Fossils of dinosaurs! A blue whale’s skeleton! Live reenactments of military battles and firefighters putting out blazes! Premature infants in incubators! Elephants that went down slides! Morocco’s twenty-five rare Arab stallions!
It hit Grace’s veins like a drug. She wanted to see it all. Take it inside of herself to carry around like a cupboard of secret, hidden treasures that she could take out and look at until the day she died.
She felt something that was almost like pride as Nell admired the fair’s architecture, the pottery and looms, the women they passed in traditional Irish and Japanese dress. They found a restaurant modeled after a coal mine and examined the menu, commenting on the way Grace’s father would have liked the ham and fried egg sandwiches. As the heaping plates appeared in front of them and grease dripped from her fingers, Grace told her mother everything that had happened.
For the first time, it tumbled out of her. The way Oliver had gotten her into the party. How it had felt to watch Harriet die in front of her. Being thrown out of the Carter home, and all the reasons she believed Oliver was innocent. How Theodore had provided the use of his apartment.
“Time to come home,” Nell insisted. “I’m grateful that this gentleman helped you, but the arrangement is unseemly. You’re a smart girl, you must know what this looks like.”
“He’s Oliver’s friend. And since when have you cared what others think?” Grace asked.
“I always care more for my children than I ever have for myself,” Nell said crisply. “Now, there’s a train home tonight and I expect you to be on it with me.”
Grace was quiet. She suddenly felt guilty that she’d forced her mother to come looking for her. It had been irresponsible and unkind, and the train ticket, the restaurant meals, were all things her parents couldn’t really afford.
And yet something hidden deep within her healed at the knowledge that her mother had dropped everything to come for her. Nell had been a shadow of herself ever since Walt left. But this had brought her flickering back to life, into something solid Grace could hold again.
She stole glances at her mother as they paid the bill and walked out to the Music Pavilion. For a moment, she looked a little more like the woman in Grace’s memory.
“Your father would love this,” Nell said wistfully, taking in the thousands of incandescent bulbs that lit up the Palaces. They dimmed and changed in colors of red, white, and green, electrifying the sky. Grace fixed her gaze on them, knowing better than to tell her mother about theFarearticle she had written; that she was perhaps going to provoke a murderer. And that at that very moment, Walt was likely wandering in the Tunnels nearby.
Grace felt the guilt of that settle in deep and squeeze her chest, making it hard to breathe. But she suddenly couldn’t bear to bring him up, to reveal that nothing had changed, and see the way her mother’s heart would crack just a little more all the while pretending it wasn’t. Perhaps it was selfish, but she had relished the way her mother had listened with full attention, reaching out to stroke Grace’s hair when she told her how it had felt to see Harriet die. She hadn’t known how much she needed it until she felt herself soaking up her mother’s attention like a sponge.
And she wanted to hold on to that for just a little longer.
“We should go,” Nell said, checking the time. “Let’s get your things. The last train is leaving soon.”
They walked beneath the city’s leafy trees and misty streetlamps, Grace leading the way through the streets until the train station appeared, glowing in the night. A light rain had begun to fall.
“But this is the station,” Nell said, frowning as the realization dawned. “I thought we were going to the apartment to collect your bags.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Grace—”
“I can’t go with you tonight,” Grace said. “They’re burying Harriet tomorrow. And as much as I want to make you happy, there are things I need to do here first.” Grace wrapped her arm around her mother’s waist, smelling the rosewater of her hair. “I’m an adult now, may I remind you,” she said, already feeling Nell beginning to argue. “But I’ll be better about being in touch, so that you won’t worry.”
“Of course I’ll worry,” Nell snapped.
