CHAPTER 61
Maggie
Samples of engraved wedding stationery are splayed across the dining room table, each piece of paper bearing names and details of people who do not exist. Palmer’s mother wants us to decide on a style so that the invitations can be printed next week. November is just around the corner and then it will be December in a blink, so Imogene Towlerton says. My future mother-in-law has stepped in where my mother would have, had she lived to see me marry, securing the wedding chapel at the church for the day after Christmas, ordering a cake, and supplying Palmer with the samples so that we can select the paper and ink for the invitations before he leaves.
I have been numbly agreeing to everything, including Imogene’s offer to take me shopping for a dress. When Palmer asks me which invitation I like best, I say, “How can I choose? They are all beautiful.”
I feel like I am planning someone else’s wedding, not mine. Palmer thinks I am a nervous bride, that’s all. Perfectly understandable. But it’s not nervousness I feel; it’s the sense that I’m being torn in two. Half of me wants to marry Palmer, take Alex to New York, and build a life,the three of us, far away from old heartaches. The other half wants to believe Jamie was leaning forward to kiss me when his father opened the door to the accounting office, wants to believe it wouldn’t have been any ordinary kiss. Wants to believe it would have been the sealing of a truth I have long known and that Jamie had finally realized and come home for, that we were destined to love each other.
Just thinking of that almost kiss now makes me blush.
“Mother and I will take care of it,” Palmer says, kissing my forehead. He scoops up the papers and slides them back inside the leather portfolio in which he brought them. “All right, then. I think that’s all we need to attend to for now.” He stands, almost triumphantly. He’s heading up to Manhattan in the morning, a day before he starts his new job, to scout out an apartment for us. I stand, too. “Hopefully the next few weeks will fly by and I can come home with good news about where we will be living,” he says as I walk him to the door.
“I hope so,” I say absently.
In the sitting room just a few yards from us, Willa, who has just gotten home from school, begins to pound out a tune on the piano, loud enough to wake the cadavers down the hall. Palmer nods toward the sound.
“She still angry with us for taking Alex?” he asks.
I haven’t given the situation with Willa much thought even though she was rather upset to learn that Alex is coming to New York with Palmer and me. Willa’s ire is understandable this time, but I have had more pressing matters to ponder than how to ease her displeasure. “I suppose she is,” I answer.
“Well, try not to let it bother you too much, hmm?” He kisses me and then opens the door, letting in a chilly blast of cold air. Evie is just coming up the stoop from her workday at the asylum. It’s early, though. Not yet even four o’clock. Her cheeks are crimson from the cold.
“Good afternoon, Evelyn,” Palmer says genially, tipping his hat.
“Yes. Good afternoon, Palmer,” she says quickly, walking past him and coming straight for me. “I need to talk to you, Maggie.”
“She’s all yours,” Palmer says cheerfully. “I’m off.”
I wave good-bye, watch Palmer walk away, and then close the door. In the foyer, Evie has taken off her coat and is now unwrapping her muffler. Her hands are shaking.
“Is it that cold outside?” I ask.
She turns to me. Her eyes are alight with what I can only describe as fear. “I need to talk to you alone.”
“Evie, what is it?”
“Where’s Alex?”
“He and Papa went to the hardware store. Why?”
She pulls a small wooden box out of her handbag and then grabs my arm. We pass Willa, whose fingers are attacking the keyboard like hammer strokes, and head for the stairs. Seconds later we are in Evie’s room on the second floor and she has closed the door, bracing her back against it.
“Evie! What in God’s name has happened?”
My sister closes her eyes for a moment, as if she can’t find the words to tell me her terrible news. I feel my heart thrumming in my chest. I’m afraid and I don’t know why.
“Evie?” I murmur as I sit on her bed, afraid that I may topple.
She opens her eyes and they are rimmed in silver. “I know who Alex belongs to.”
Heat immediately fills my head, and a roaring starts in my ears. “What?”
“I know your secret. I know why you pretended not to know in which house you found him. Because there wasn’t just a dead mother inside it. There was a girl inside, too. A sick girl. His sister.”
I am at once nauseated and hot and cold and flattened. I must be dreaming. Must be. This nightmare where what I did is exposed is one I’ve had before, many times, but it has been a number of years since the last occasion.
I am dreaming, so I close my eyes that I might wake.
