Archie stood and walked to the buffet. He poured a bourbon and offered it to me. I shook my head; I wanted to keep my wits about me. He took his drink and walked outside and stood at the firepit for a good ten minutes. It felt like an eternity. I wanted to follow him outside, ask him if he could ever forgive me for lying, for hurting him. I wanted to ask what he thought of me now, but I forced myself to stay seated.
I had said what I came to say. I had been honest at last, but if he wanted me to leave now, I didn’t know what I would do.
“Do you want to be a mother?” he asked, walking back inside.
“More than anything in the world.”
“Then you must be her mother. No matter what. And you can’t wait. She’s your daughter. Olive, when I said I wanted a family…” He shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “When I suggested that we have children of our own, it was because I was so damned in lovewith you. I’d never felt love quite like that before. I wanted to share it, I wanted everyone to see it, I wanted it to grow. Being with you made me feel like I could do anything. I could imagine us having a family, but that didn’t mean it was the only thing I wanted. I wanted you, and I wanted whatever came next in our life together.”
How could I have underestimated his kindness, his capacity for love?
“You should have told me the truth,” he said.
“I know.” I looked up at him. He was right, of course, but there was something I wanted the truth about, too. “What happened with Louise?”
He shook his head. “I went back home to Cincinnati and, I don’t know, I was so lost, so confused. The whole idea of her was thrust upon me all over again, especially by my mother. She didn’t care about my grief, she just wanted to keep up appearances.”
“Why did you agree to it?”
“I was ashamed, I was spinning. The things you said to me came out of nowhere. I was broken. I wouldn’t have married her once I came to my senses, I would have told her, but she got there first as soon as she heard the news about the stock market.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No, please, it was a relief. I should have had my head on straight. I was just so devastated about you, about us. But Olive, I have nothing now. I’ve lost a lot of money in the market, maybe all of it. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if I’ll get any of it back, or if I’ll be able to rebuild what I built before. The fact is, my fortune is gone. I’ve been knocked sideways this past week, hell, this past year. I don’t know what’s up and what’s down. But what I do knowis that I love you, I never stopped loving you, and I know you’d make a damned good mother.”
I stood up, overcome with emotion. He walked toward me, took my hands and held them in his. I felt weak at his touch, the familiarity, the comfort.
“We could be a family, Olive,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
My heart was beating so fast I could barely get my words out. “But I can’t give you children of your own, Archie, you need to understand that.”
“That doesn’t matter. We’ll go and get your daughter, and we’ll be together. No one, certainly not your parents, can tell you otherwise.”
Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing. I threw myself into his arms.
“And I should never have asked you to give up performing. That was a mistake. You were born to perform, your voice is meant to sing. We’ll go and get Addie, and we’ll go to Europe as a family,” he said. “We’ll be together as we always should have been.”
I looked up at him and I kissed him. Archie loved me, I knew that now. But more than that, he understood me in a way that no one ever had.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We didn’t call, didn’t send a telegram, we just packed up Archie’s trunk and scrambled to get to Brooklyn as fast as we could. We took his private railcar—its final run, he predicted—then went directly to my parents’ house in Flatbush. If we were to board the ship to Southampton, we were going to have to move fast.
We arrived around tenA.M.after traveling all night, and we must have been a sorry sight. I was wearing the same clothes I’d worn for the past three days, but that was the furthest thing from my mind.
Archie held my hand as we walked to the front door.
“Olive!” my brother Junior cried, and threw his arms around me.
“I’ve missed you,” I said. I hadn’t seen him since summer, over five months ago, and he seemed taller somehow. His eyes flashed to Archie.
“How are you?” Archie said, shaking his hand.
“It’s swell to see you both.” He looked genuinely happy. “They’rein the back,” he said with a slight roll of his eyes. “Pop’s on the horn. He’s having a tough time of things,” he added in a whisper.
My mother was bent over the dining room table wearing a thin flannel robe, writing feverishly in a notebook, and I could hear my father on the telephone in the next room.
She looked up, shocked to see us standing together. “Archie,” she said, rising to her feet, holding the table. “What an unexpected surprise.”
