“Caroline, I’m so sorry,” Sullivan said.
They continued talking, and Nathaniel was soon able to put the pieces together.Caroline had been fired!He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to vault out of his chair and find her. She didn’t deserve this, and it cut through the veil of his despondency like a bolt of lightning.
He forced the anger down to focus on what she was saying. Something about the other women in her dormitory. She asked that the work schedule permit Ludmila to keep attending classes and that Mrs. Fitzpatrick get a raise for all the extra work she’d been doing.
“And tell Nathaniel that I’m thinking of him,” she said. “I’ll think of him every hour of every day, even though I’m not in the White House anymore. Walls and guards and circumstancescan’t separate us. Tell him I’ll wait for him, no matter how long it takes.”
Now other operators in the room were cocking their heads to listen. Caroline continued peeling back the layers of her soul.
“Tell him that I finally understand what he was trying to say about the boring Vermeer in the Corcoran,” she said, and he lifted his head, all senses on alert. “The woman holding the letter isn’t boring, she is the personification ofloyalty.” Her voice was rough with emotion. “She is missing her man and will wait faithfully for him, no matter how long it takes. Even though the picture is mostly darkened with gloom, Vermeer captured tenderness and love in the way she holds that letter. She will never give up on the man who wrote that letter, even in the bleak, dark world Vermeer painted for her. The light coming through the window is hope, and no matter how grim, I will always cling to that hope and use it to light my days. That portrait in the Corcoran may be the most beautiful painting on this earth. Tell Nathaniel that.”
“I hear you,” Sullivan said. “He does too.”
“Good.”
The line disconnected.
Nathaniel sat motionless as Caroline’s words sank in. They were an avalanche of love and acceptance despite the dark shadows of his world. Caroline knew all his failings and shame, but she was standing by him and had just announced it in front of a dozen White House employees.
And she was right. Walls and guards and circumstances wouldn’t separate them. For a while he had let his grief do so, but now it was Caroline who was hurting and needed someone to stand by her, and he would do so.
Thirty-Three
Caroline’s heart was still thudding as she paid the pharmacy owner for use of his telephone. The pharmacist and probably every operator in the White House had just heard her declaration of undying love, but she didn’t care. Nathaniel had heard it, and that was the only thing that mattered. He needed to know he wasn’t alone and that she would wait for him no matter how long it took for him to emerge from this debilitating melancholy.
It was dark by the time she stepped off the streetcar in her Alexandria neighborhood. It had been eighteen months since she’d slept in her own bed. She was eager to get home, but guilt ate at her over the way things had ended with Ida and how she’d been forced to walk out on Nathaniel.
She’d have the townhouse to herself, since Gray and Annabelle were still in Kansas. They’d given Mr. and Mrs. Holder, the two live-in servants, leave to visit their grown children in Baltimore. Caroline probably ought to stop for something to eat, for the house had been vacant all week and probably lacked food, but she had no appetite.
The streetlamps were on, but her spirit still felt gloomy as she turned the corner onto her street. At the end of the block she could finally see the stately, three-story townhousewhere she’d grown up, and she quickened her steps, eager to get home.
Except there was a light on in the house. It was in the back near the kitchen. Could the Holders have accidentally left a lightbulb burning before they went to Baltimore? If so, Gray would have a fit. He mistrusted electricity, thinking it a fire hazard and an expensive one, at that.
A hint of misgiving rose within her. It wasn’t like the Holders to leave lights burning, and something didn’t feel safe.
Then she chided herself. It had been a long day and her feet hurt, and she wasn’t going to wander in search of a hotel because the Holders had left a light on. For all she knew, the Holders had already returned from their trip.
She mounted the steps, inserted her key in the knob, and twisted it open.
“Mr. Holder?” she asked as she stepped inside. The front rooms were dark, but the skinny hallway running to the back of the house was dimly illuminated by the kitchen light.
She froze. A man’s heavy coat was draped over the parlor sofa. It didn’t belong to Gray or Mr. Holder, for it was tattered and filthy.
Footsteps sounded from the kitchen, and a man’s silhouette was framed in the hallway.
“Caroline?”
The voice was familiar, but it couldn’t be. He was so gaunt, like a skeleton. He moved farther down the hall, the light from the streetlamp finally shining on his face.
“Luke?” But it couldn’t be. He looked so different. “Luke!”
He said nothing but smiled and held his arms open wide. She wanted to race into them, but she couldn’t move. She could only stare. The room swayed, and she started to topple just as Luke’s arms clamped around her.
“Whoa, there. Have a seat,” he said, guiding her into a chair,which was good, because for the life of her she wouldn’t have been able to keep standing.
She landed on the chair with a thump, keeping both hands braced on his shoulders. How bony he felt, his shoulder blades prominent beneath her palms. It was Luke, but he was pale and gaunt. She tried to stammer out a question but was breathing too fast to form anything but gulping noises of disbelief.
“Are you laughing or crying?” he asked.
