“I went to see Tom Marshall yesterday and asked him to get in touch with your sister.”
“Ann?”
“I understand she’s caring for your children?”
He frowns. “What did he tell her?”
“I don’t know, but I assume he said that you’d been hurt and that she should come.”
“Poor Ann.”
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to do it,” says Sally, but now she worries they’ve done the wrong thing—summoning her to Richmond without his consent.
“She’s done so much for us already.”
“That reminds me,” she says, reaching into her pocket for thefausse montre. “This fell out of your pocket the night of the fire.”
She hands the false watch to him, and when he takes it from her, he immediately opens it to confirm that the miniature has survived. He lies there for several seconds, just staring at the woman’s face.
“It’s a portrait of my wife,” he says finally.
“I had wondered,” says Sally, “about theFS.”
“TheFis for Faith.”
“She’s lovely.”
“It’s a good likeness, but not perfect. She was even more beautiful in person.”
“Tom said she died a few years ago.”
“Yes,” he says and snaps the case shut, as if he suddenly regrets bringing her up.
“My husband died three years ago,” Sally offers. “I have no likeness of him, so I must trust my memory, which grows less reliable each year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For my loss or my bad memory?” she says with a smile.
“Both, I suppose.”
“I’ve been thinking about him a great deal these last several days. And in the theater, when I didn’t know whether I would live or die.”
“I thought of Faith then, too. It didn’t seem so terrible, the idea of dying. Because I knew she’d managed to do it with such grace.”
His words take the wind out of her. “Yes, exactly. Nothing ever feels quite so frightening again.”
“I don’t know,” he says, meeting her eyes with a steady gaze. “The thing that frightens me now is the starting over.”
JACK
It’s still dark out whenJack is shaken awake.
“What?” he says, startled, as he tries to make out the shape of a man looming over him.
“Get up.”
Anderson. Jack freezes in fear. Could word of his confession already have made its way back to Placide? Of course it could have. He was naive to believe otherwise.
