“You’re wel—wait. Where did this come from?” Loena lifted the sapphire on its chain. Bits of ash drifted from it to the rug beside the bed. Loena’s eyes went wide, and she gazed at the stone, openmouthed.
“It was—in the fire.” Margot saw again the empty stretcher where her brother should have been, and a wave of sadness surprised her. “You’ve seen that before?”
“Mr. Preston never took it off. Not even when . . .”
“Yes,” Margot said. She meant merely to imply that she understood, but Loena’s cheeks blazed with two sudden spots of red. She dropped the sapphire onto the bed as if it were still hot from the fire, and put her fingertips into her mouth.
“Loena, it’s just a stone. It’s a sapphire.”
The color staining Loena’s cheeks drained away abruptly, and her pupils expanded. “No! It ain’t just a jewel, miss. It has—when he was wearing it, he—”
Margot dropped her hand from the doorknob. “He what?” she snapped.
Loena took a step back, and Margot regretted her peremptory tone. She remembered her mother’s admonishment. “I’m sorry, Loena,” she said more gently. “It’s all been a shock.”
“I know, miss,” Loena faltered. “We’re awful sorry about your clinic.”
Margot took a breath. “Thank you. I am, too. Now, could you explain what you mean about the stone?”
Loena twisted her freckled hands in her apron, and stared at her shoes. “It’s just that—well, I knew better, but he—”
“I know my brother seduced you, Loena. That happens with girls and men.”
Loena’s eyes flashed up at her, then down again. “Everything he said—when I was with him, it seemed real, with that necklace shining at me. But when I was alone, I knew it couldn’t be. The likes of me don’t end up with men like Mr. Preston.”
“No. I’m afraid that’s true. But my brother often got his way.”
“Not before he had that necklace,” Loena said. This time she brought her gaze to Margot’s, and held it. Her voice firmed. “He tried his tricks on me and Leona before he went off to the war, miss, and we wasn’t having none of it. We knew Mrs. Edith would turn us out if we did! But when he came back—with that—” She gestured to it, but she didn’t touch it again.
Margot didn’t want to touch it, either. She put her hand on the door again. “Just leave it there, Loena. I’ll think what to do with it later.”
“Yes, miss.” Loena began to sort through the clothes in the valise, laying the clean ones aside, piling the soiled ones with the others. Margot watched her for a moment, thinking how practical the girl was. She wouldn’t have thought her the sort to suffer fancies.
But as she went to have her bath, she reflected that the sapphire seemed to have that effect on people. It was big, and it was obviously old. Maybe that made it mysterious.
Margot lay in the bath for a long time, letting the hot water soak the tension from her muscles. She washed her hair. When the bath water began to cool, she climbed out, and wrapped herself in a thick cotton dressing gown. As she left the bathroom, she tousled her hair with her fingers to dry it.
Her fingers still tangled in her wet hair, she pushed open the door to her bedroom with one bare foot, then stopped.
Her mother was standing by the bed, holding the sapphire in her fingers. The chain dangled past her wrists, glistening in the afternoon light. Edith was staring at the stone, white-faced and very still.
“Mother?”
Edith lifted her head, slowly, as if in a trance. Her gaze seemed to rest on Margot, or to go right through her. It was hard to tell. Her eyes were glazed, their lids red and swollen.
Alarmed, Margot took a careful step toward her. “Mother? Are you all right?”
Edith’s lips parted, but for a moment it seemed she wouldn’t speak. When she did, Margot could barely hear her. “What is this?”
“It was Preston’s.”
Edith caressed the stone with her hand. “I saw it once,” she said. “Preston showed it to me.”
Margot moved closer, frowning as she assessed her mother’s waxy complexion and contracted pupils. “Mother, how much laudanum are you taking? You seem a bit—”
“Preston died,” Edith breathed. Her eyes filled. “In a fire.”
“I know,” Margot said carefully. “I was there. You remember.”
Edith blinked, and her eyes seemed to sharpen behind their blue sheen of tears. “You were there,” she said, a little louder.
“Yes, I—”
“He tried to save your office,” Edith said. An edge came into her voice. “Your clinic was on fire, and Preston tried to stop it!”
Margot put out her hand. “Mother, no. That wasn’t—”
“I
told
you not to do that, Margot!” Edith’s voice rose, and she shrank from Margot’s hand. “Put Grandmother’s money into that awful place! You just wouldn’t listen. You
never
listen! And now—now Preston is
dead!”
Margot, hand still outstretched, wet hair dripping on her neck, gaped at her mother. “You can’t possibly—” she began, but her protest died unspoken. Her mother could, and no doubt did.
Blake should have spoken to Edith. She was the one he should have tried to warn. He would never have thought of it, of course. He naturally turned to Dickson, to the head of the household, the
pater familias
. That was only proper, and Blake had always been proper.
But it was Edith who had been the expert at creating excuses. Preston was sensitive, she had said. Highly strung. He hadn’t meant to spill a cup of steaming cocoa on Margot’s leg—something had startled him. He hadn’t intended to stab Margot with the scissors—he was trying to help her with her scrapbook. He would never have pushed her downstairs—or off the swing, or into the water—she was confused, or jealous, or selfish. Preston had been Edith’s beautiful, charming, affectionate boy. Her baby.
Margot gazed helplessly at her mother, standing there with the sapphire glowing in her hand. What could she say now that would make any difference? Preston was gone. Dead. If her mother took comfort in placing the blame on her, perhaps she shouldn’t care.
She said, bleakly, “Take the thing, Mother, if you want it.”
Edith stared at her as if trying to remember who she was. She opened her hand, letting the sapphire tumble to the floor. “I don’t like it,” she whispered, in a voice as thin as thread. Her eyelids fluttered, and she began to crumple. As her knees buckled and her head fell back, Margot took one long step, and caught her in her arms.
Her mother seemed to weigh nothing, as if grief had drained her substance. Margot lifted her without effort. Edith’s arms were nerveless, her lips slack. “Loena!” Margot called. She backed to the door, and turned toward her mother’s bedroom with the unconscious woman in her arms. “Loena! Tell Hattie to find the smelling salts. Mother’s fainted.”
“Don’t move out again, Margot. Not now.” Dickson’s mouth drooped, and though he puffed curls of gray smoke from his post-dinner cigar, the action lacked its usual relish. His eyelids were heavy, and his movements—one hand on his chest, the other flicking cigar ash in the vicinity of the cut-glass tray—were sluggish.
“She holds me responsible, Father. I see it in her face every time I pass her in the hall.”
“She’ll come to her senses. She’ll get back to normal.”
Margot turned the snifter in her hand, watching light glimmer in the amber depths of brandy. “Actually, Father,” she said, “I wonder if you blame me, too.”
“No. Of course not.” His voice was flat, heavy with grief, and with something else she couldn’t place.
“Have you changed your mind, then? About Preston?” Even now, speaking her brother’s name recalled that chilling shriek, spiraling out of the horror of the fire. Sometimes she heard it in her sleep. It startled her awake, and she would lie tense beneath her blankets, wondering if she could ever banish the memory.
Dickson sat still for a long moment, staring at the floor between his shoes, the cigar seemingly forgotten in his hand. Then, with a great sigh, he pushed the cigar into the ashtray and got to his feet. “I have to show you something, Margot.” She started to get up, but he waved her back. “Wait just a moment.”
He moved behind his chair, and she noted with concern how his heavy shoulders stooped, how his feet dragged. Her father had worked hard to keep up appearances, for her mother’s sake, no doubt. But he had aged a decade since Preston’s death. He had always seemed unchanging, eternal, like granite beneath a mountain. It unnerved her to think that her father could fail.
He bent to pick up something hidden behind his leather armchair. When he straightened, and she saw what he had in his hand, she forgot everything. She caught a breath, and pressed her hand to her mouth.
It had been propped against the wall of Blake’s apartment, half hidden by coats, for as long as she could remember. She and her brothers had asked Blake what it was for, but it was one thing he wouldn’t discuss. He never touched it, either, but left it in place, year after year.
“Father, where did you find it?”
Dickson lifted it in his hands like an offering. There were stains on it that hadn’t been there before, rust-colored stains.
“I wanted to—I should say, I
needed
to see where the accident happened.” He ran his hand over the cane, as if the old wood and the new stains could tell him something.
“Was Blake’s cane there?”
Dickson shook his head. “The car hit a tree at the bottom of a hill. Not much of a hill, really. Just a little slope overlooking the golf course.” He propped the cane against the arm of his chair, and stood looking down at it. “I left the taxicab and walked up to the top. I thought if I could see where the car went over, maybe I would know why. Maybe I could understand. . . .”
“You found the cane at the top?”
“Yes. Lying in some gravel.” He looked up at her, a level glance. “I’m afraid you were right. Something happened between Preston and Blake.” He pointed to the rusty stains. “I wish I knew what it was.”
“When did you find it?” Margot asked. She realized the snifter was still in her hand, tilting dangerously, and she set it down.
“It was the afternoon before the fire. I think I knew what it meant, but I—” He looked away from her face, staring blindly at the darkness beyond the window. “I argued with myself. I wasted time looking for another explanation. If I had just accepted what was obvious, perhaps it wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t have—”
“No.” Margot rose, and crossed to her father. She put her arm around his shoulders, as if she were the parent, and he were the child. “No, it wasn’t obvious. And there could be another explanation.” He shook his head, but she said, “In any case, it doesn’t matter now. It’s all done, and we can’t change it.”
She felt the uneven breath he drew, and heard the shame in his voice. “It’s your mother,” he said. “Perhaps if I tell her—if I explain. She would know then that you’re not to blame.”
“I think it would only hurt her further.” Margot released her father, and went back to pick up her glass. She had not expected to finish it, but now she swallowed what was left in one draught. “All she has left of Preston are her illusions. That’s some comfort to her. In truth, I don’t think she and I will ever have a close relationship, no matter what you tell her or don’t tell her.”
The armchair creaked as Dickson sat down again. He picked up the cigar and turned it in his fingers. It had gone out. “You know, Margot, when you were small—you were so smart, even then. You argued with me all the time, about anything you could think of. Whether horses were better than cars. Whether gaslight was better than electric lights. Even—” He chuckled. “Even whether corsets should be against the law.”
Margot had to laugh. “Corsets? I don’t remember that.”
“Oh, yes. You decided it was bad for women to have their spines held up by whalebone, and their stomachs squeezed in so they couldn’t breathe.”
“I was right, as it turns out.”
“I know.” He reached for a match, but he didn’t strike it. “What I’m getting at, daughter, is that your mother felt left out by all of that. She’s not that sort of woman.”
“I wasn’t the sort of daughter she hoped for.”
“And Preston, you know, was different. He was a little blond angel who looked just like her. He wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t like you and Dick. He liked clothes, and he liked trailing around after Edith when she went shopping. He liked to sit on her lap. You never did that.”
Margot watched in silence as her father struck the match to relight his cigar. He blew a gout of gray smoke, and squinted through it. “Having children is never what you think it will be,” he said.
“I suppose not.”
“And losing one—even one so troubled—is the worst thing a parent can experience.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, Father. I would never have wished it for you.”
He gestured with the cigar, and harrumphed, but she saw his eyes redden. She wanted to go to him, to embrace him, but she knew if his tears spilled over, he would hate it, so she stayed where she was.
“I just want to say, Margot,” he began, then stopped to clear his throat. “I just want to say that you are—you are more than—more than I ever expected in a child. In a daughter. I’m so damn—” His voice caught, and he looked away. “Proud,” he finished, in an undertone, then loudly cleared his throat again. “I’m proud of you.”
Helplessly, as loath to lose control as her father was, Margot murmured, “Thank you.”
“And I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, about Preston.”
Margot made herself say, “It’s all right. It’s forgotten now,” a lie told out of affection.
With obvious effort, he smiled at her, and waved her back to her chair. “Come now, tell me what Peretti said when you met with him. And Whitely.”
Margot settled back into her chair and linked her hands in her lap. “Dr. Peretti didn’t exactly apologize,” she said. “But he did mention observing Frank’s surgery. He said the board had reconsidered, and now feels that the evidence against me was flimsy. His word,
flimsy
.” She gave a wry smile. “Is that synonymous with nonexistent?”