“Neither can I, not really,” Cal says. “It all felt rather removed for me. I got the telegram the next day, came home to help settle what accounts we had remaining to us—not a whole lot—and to help Mama arrange the funeral. She insisted on Grace Church, despite the expense. Still thought she had standards back then, and you know what? Next to nobody came to that funeral. We hung those black silk drapes on the door and windows in mourning, but the only people who came to call were potential buyers, knowing we were ruined and would have to sell.”
“So you moved to Poughkeepsie,” Cora fills in, stitching Cal’s story to the threads of what Alice had previously shared with her.
“To that lovely claptrap house we shared with six other families,” Cal says dryly. “No more boarding school for me, one small consolation. I was thirteen, and this world of ours, it’s different for boys. At that age, I could start to work, get my foot into an industry, and so that foot of mine was out the door almost as soon as we moved in. I reckon Alice has never really forgiven me for it. As a girl, she was both too young to leave and too old not to bear the weight of responsibility for what remained of our family after I took off to work as a runner in a newsroom. Like these lads you see hanging around here.”
He tips his hat to a boisterous gaggle of newsies in flat caps gathered now outsideThe Heralddistribution window. They salute him back in familiar greeting.
Cora’s struck by something in his wording. “Whatdidremain of your family? Alice, your mother...”
“And Rose,” Cal says quietly. “The baby. We didn’t realize Mama was expecting. I don’t think Dad knew either, or maybe he wouldn’t have... Anyway, Rose only made it two months. Caught scarlet fever from another family in the house and was gone within days. Mama never really came back from that. Slept all the time. Alice went out as a sort of cut-rate governess when she was about sixteen, I believe, teaching merchants’ daughters penmanship and French and comportment and whatever else.”
Cora can imagine that “whatever else,” as she has been a beneficiary of those lessons herself.
“She came home night after night with whatever money she could scrape together for lodging and food, and she cared for Mama. Six years of that, until Mama finally gave up. Stopped eating. Died in her sleep.”
Cal looks at Cora, eyes redlined and haunted in the midday light.
“I came for the funeral, but Alice... she was dry-eyed. I didn’t understand why at the time, but now I know she was already starting to come up with her revenge. Didn’t know she’d moved until several letters I’d sent her were returned to me in a bundle. Landlady in Poughkeepsie had no idea where she’d gotten off to. I dug around here and there, using newsroom resources, seeing if I could find anybody matching her description. No luck. A total vanishing act. Then, last spring, she turned up in Manhattan. Right here, as a matter of fact, up in the office, just like you did. I’d recently been promoted to the international beat, chasing my colleagues to the telegram, first to the story, first to the paycheck, that kindof thing. Not exactly rolling in dough, but I had enough to offer to help her financially. She wouldn’t have it. Too proud, too angry at me for leaving.”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “I’ll admit, she looked like she was doing a far sight better than I was. Nicely dressed. This air of hauteur about her. You’ve seen it. You know exactly what I mean. She wouldn’t let me apologize, as I’d already tried to do in those returned letters. She did let me take her to lunch and told me she had a plan and a part for me to play in it. These false stories about Württemberg. I wanted to help her any way I could, so I said yes, of course I did. But I’d be lying, Cora, if I didn’t tell you that some nights Istillstay awake wondering if I made the wrong call. If I shouldn’t have taken her by the shoulders and said, ‘No. I’ll get you a job as a secretary, an apartment somewhere livable,’ instead of all this madness.”
Cora shakes her head. “I don’t suppose she’d have listened.”
Cal smiles sadly. “No. I don’t suppose she would have. As you know, she’s forged of steel, my sister. And now you know that it’s life that’s made her that way.”
Cora nods absently as Cal’s story washes over her in full, her mind drifting now to another corner of the world, her own farm, her own father. Another family with fragile, foolish hopes crushed by the tide of greed and deception.
She’s struck again by how similar she and Alice are... though while Alice made it her life’s mission to avenge her father, Cora has blamed hers, at least in part, for being an easy target, assuring herself she’d never be as foolish as he was. Cora has made it her own mission to be on the winning side of the con game, first with the troupe, then her petty thievery, and then with Alice herself. Now Cora wonders,though, if all this time she was really longing for something else. And if this game she’s been playing is all far more complicated than she has allowed herself to believe.
Where is the point, she wonders, where shrewd scheming crosses into cruelty? Or when bald, desperate hope tips into foolhardiness, for that matter? She’s suddenly struck by how unmoored, alone, she has felt these past eighteen months, ever since her home was taken from her. She assured herself that getting the farm back would fix everything... but the meaning of home, she realizes, might run deeper than just a place.
“She is lucky to have you, all the same,” Cora whispers.
“She is also lucky to have you,” Cal says, glancing at her. “Alice values you, Cora. Your earnestness. Quick thinking. Quick fingers. She was mighty impressed by the stunt you pulled at the opera. When I met up with her at the new embassy, she couldn’t stop talking about it—”
“And yet she’s said not a word of any of this to me.” Cora blushes.
“Doesn’t surprise me.” Cal laughs. “Best not let anyone think they can affect the Unflappable Alice Archer.”
“You managed to affect her, though, didn’t you? At least a bit,” Cora amends. “You convinced her to move up her plans, to expedite our timeline.”
“Well. Even at arm’s length, she has been known to acknowledge my insights from time to time. Especially when I refuse to leave until she does. And I can be convincing when I want to be.”
Of all things, Alice’s lesson from many moons ago floats to mind:“Pay as much mind to what people don’t say as what they do.”
She’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t try to press Cal further.
“And why did you? Want to be?” Cora swallows, heart thudding now. “I don’t see any real advantage that convincing her to move up the plan gave you, or any of us, if I’m honest. It puts more pressure on us, affords us no slack of time to correct potential mistakes. I see no benefit at all, really, other than... well, altruism. Saving me from a fraught marriage and a lifetime of... regret...” She trails off.
Cal has stopped walking, staring at her now with those deep blue eyes.
“And why isn’t that reason enough?” he whispers. “Though I’m not sure I’d call it altruism. Not when my own interests are involved.”
“Your own interests?” Cora’s voice comes out as barely a breath.
Cal reaches for the edge of her sleeve, pinching it between two fingers, the rest of his hand barely grazing hers. “I can think of few things more interesting than you, Coraline O’Malley.”
A heat burns through Cora’s abdomen, spreading like wildfire up her spine, down her limbs. Her real name. Onhislips.
