“Wait,” her friend interrupted her, “what was the first point?”
Rose considered a moment but couldn’t recall.
“Never mind that, secondly, both of these men knew how much I loved them, and each ... and each was able to leave me. What does that tell you?”
Rose began to cry again, hiccupping while she did so.
A knock at her door made no difference to her emotional state, and she didn’t care when Claire answered for her.
“Come in.”
Evelyn entered holding a tin container that could only be one thing.
“Ice cream,” Rose’s mother announced. “Strawberry, as requested.”
Behind her, the housekeeper carried a tray with bowls, spoons, and napkins.
“Set it on the bed, thank you,” Evelyn said. “We have everything we need.”
Rose sat up again, plumping her pillows behind her and resting against her headboard.
“I don’t feel well at all.” She used the edge of her bed cover to dry her face.
Her mother, wielding a large silver spoon, started to scoop the frozen concoction into the three bowls. She divvied up the entire quart and then placed the spoon in the empty container, and the container, on the floor.
“I can understand why you don’t feel well,” she gestured toward the whiskey decanter on the bedside table before handing Claire and Rose each a bowl and spoon. She picked up the last one for herself. “Though ice cream cannot solve problems, it can certainly make them easier to bear. Good thinking, Claire.”
Rose didn’t think she could eat anything. However, she touched the tip of her tongue to the first spoonful, and before she knew it, she’d polished off half her portion. It settled her stomach, though her head still seemed stuffed with wool.
“I have something else for you,” Evelyn said. She reached into the watch pocket in the seam of her bodice and withdrew tickets that had been carefully folded in a piece of cream-colored paper. “You may have forgotten, but Miss Barton’s lecture is tonight.”
Rose groaned.
“Dearest, this will take your mind off of everything. I promise. She is an excellent speaker, though the topic is grim to say the least.” Her mother shook her head. “I’m sure she’ll discuss the war for a little while, but I believe she will speak mostly of her work at Johnstown after the flood. It will be fascinating.”
Evelyn held her spoon as if she were about to conduct an orchestra and read from the printed sheet: “Clara Barton was the first of the relief workers to arrive, a mere three days after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam in Pennsylvania. As it turned out, over 2,000 people had perished, and many more were still in peril, causing Clara and her Red Cross to remain for five months.”
Rose suppressed a second groan. Her own troubles were slight in comparison to a wall of water and debris 60 feet high bearing down on an entire town at the speed of a fast-moving locomotive. Would hearing about death and destruction change her perception of how hopeless her own life seemed at present? She doubted it.
Finishing her ice cream, she let Claire take her bowl from her.
“Do you want to go?” Rose asked her friend.
Claire looked torn between enjoying the lecture with its no doubt gruesome details, supporting sketches, and mesmerizing photographs and supporting Rose’s desire to stay home and wallow in her misery.
“Yes,” the petite blond said, “I rather do.”
Thus Rose found herself out in the world when she felt she should be home mourning. The decent thing to do was put a black shroud over her head, cover the mirrors, and stay indoors for the next decade. Instead, wearing a plum-colored dress with a small lightweight cape, she entered the main lecture hall of Harvard University, fighting past the throng of those still hoping to secure a ticket.
They had picked up Elise on the way over, and the four of them located seats halfway back in the center section.
“Perfect,” Evelyn said. “I’m so pleased you came, Rose, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mama,” she said to humor her mother. Though in truth, nothing could banish the heaviness she felt, the near-crushing knowledge that she and William would not marry. The ever-present feeling of loss was a familiar one, a terrible overarching sensation that she had hoped never to experience again.
Still, her brain could entertain other thoughts while her body remained listless and her heart torn and battered. “I’m sure it will be enlightening to listen to Miss Barton.”
It occurred to her that, as with the cooking school’s Miss Farmer, Miss Barton was another spinster who enjoyed a full life without the benefit of a husband. Rose nodded quietly to herself. She could do the same.
