“More or less,” I said.
He needed to concentrate on the slick street as we made our way back across the bridge into Pennsylvania, and the easy camaraderie that we had on the way to Camden was gone. The silence as he drove seemed to emphasize the fact that we were alone in his car.
We pulled into the gravel driveway of the hospital some minutes later, just as a break in the clouds appeared.
“Thank you for taking me,” I said as Conrad set the Buick’s brake. “I so appreciate it.”
“I’m the grateful one. You’re the only person who has shown any real interest in helping Sybil.”
“I wish I could do more. I truly do.”
He had held my gaze from across the seat. “I know you do.”
I stayed for only a second more. Then I went into the hospital ahead of him, my face warm despite the chill.
And now, several hours later, I sit with Ursula’s secret possessions lined up on my bureau and the memory of that look Conrad gave me.
I don’t know what to make of any of it.
A knock at my door pulls me from these thoughts.
“It’s Maggie. Can I come in?”
She opens the door and her face is flushed. I can’t tell if she’s happy or terrified. I haven’t seen much of her since Jamie’s sudden return.
“Everything all right?” I ask.
She extends her hand toward me. On the ring finger of her left hand is a shining sapphire rimmed with little diamonds.
“You said yes.”
“I did.” Tears glisten in my sister’s eyes. “Two nights ago. But he gave me the ring tonight.”
“It’s official, then?”
Maggie exhales nervously. “I suppose it is,” she says.
“And Papa?”
“I was there when Palmer asked him. He couldn’t be happier for us. And he understands about Alex. Hewantsus to take him.” She shudders a bit, as if a frosty gust has just swirled about her. She reaches up with the hand that wears Palmer’s ring to catch a tear that has started to fall. “This is the best thing for Alex, isn’t it? Taking him?”
“It’s not always easy to identify the very best thing to do until you do what you think is best,” I tell her, with Ursula’s pencil box in my peripheral vision. “I do know Alex loves you like a son loves his mother. And he is obviously very fond of Palmer.”
“Then it’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?”
I’m instantly whisked back in time to the day Mama lay dying and I stood at her door listening as she told Maggie she did the right thing by bringing Alex home. And I wonder, not for the first time, if the right thing to do is always the best thing. When I don’t answer right away, Maggie continues.
“You’re so busy with your work and studies, and Willa is only fourteen and still in school. Papa can’t take care of Alex by himself. He’ll be having to ask Dora to take Alex during the day, and now that... that Jamie is home, she may not want to.”
I hear the way Maggie says Jamie’s name. I hear the buried wound there. The long-ago yearning for his affections.
“Please tell me this is the right choice to make, Evie.”
“Which choice are we talking about?” I ask her. I know my sister well enough to see she is conflicted about other decisions she has made besides the one regarding Alex’s future.
Maggie holds my gaze for a moment, relieved, I think, that I have seen through her questions.
“Jamie kept all my letters,” she finally says. “Every one for the last seven years. I saw them in his rucksack. He had hardly anything in it, after all these years away, but he had my letters. He kept them. Why would he do that?”
The answer is obvious to me. Surely it is to her as well. “You need to ask him, Maggie, if it matters to you that he kept them. You can’t guess or wonder.”
I can see in her eyes that she knows I am right.
And now I know, too, what I need to do.
