LITMIR.BIZ

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      Samuel shrugs. “So it seems.”

      Mr. Burnside breaks in. “Of course, if you don’t think Mr. Fitzwilliam’s the right man for the job, I’m happy to look about for a replacement.”

      You know, there’s something about Mr. Burnside’s tone that brings out the streak of perversity in me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been such a very good girl the past few years, a model of respectability, absorbed in my child and my home, never once mentioning the thing that plagues me. Smiling serenely, while the world buckles and shifts around us, while women bob their hair and run out to smoke cigarettes and to vote, while fortunes are made by the illegal importation of liquor, while broad new highways are laid in their hundreds and I am not.

      Or perhaps I’m just wondering—and surely you noticed it, too—why Mr. Burnside so artfully changed the subject when I mentioned those company accounts.

      “Well, then. Maybe you should look around for a replacement, Mr. Burnside, just to be prepared. I think Samuel understands that he’s here on trial. I’ll be in a better position to make these decisions once I’m fully intimate with the details of the business.”

      My exceptional height gives me a small advantage in making this pronouncement. Even as large as Samuel is—and I judge he’s a good four inches over six feet—I don’t have to turn up all that far to meet his gaze, and I can see that I’ve startled him. You know the look. His eyebrows shoot to the roof; his lips part.

      But that’s nothing compared with Mr. Burnside, who gasps and mutters by my side, flapping his mouth and his eyelids, while Samuel and I lock eyes like a pair of rival giants.

      “Come now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”

      “She’s right, however,” says Samuel, not looking away. “It’s her business now, isn’t it? Once the estate clears probate.”

      “But she’s just—”

      “A woman?” Samuel breaks our little encounter at last and turns to the lawyer. “Mr. Burnside, I’m surprised a man your age doesn’t know better by now than to put those words together. Just a woman. Women rule the earth, don’t you know? A man doesn’t do a single thing that isn’t somehow inspired by a woman’s will. Sometimes all it takes is her mere existence. Anyway, you haven’t seen this particular woman drive a rattletrap Model T through the mud of a French battlefield, swearing like a sailor.”

      “You’re wrong about that,” I say. “I never swore.”

      “Didn’t you? Well, I suppose I never saw you in action, either. I only have it secondhand. Now, then. Would you like to see the rest of the offices, Virginia? All the accounts are in order and ready for your inspection.”

      I glance at the clock on the wall, and the two other occupants of the room—the typist and the accountant—turn sharply back to their work. The steady undertone clatter of typewriter keys picks up again. The sound of business. Good, solid, American business, rushing on to meet the brash new age before us.

      “I’m afraid I’m going to have to defer that pleasure until later this afternoon, Mr. Fitzwilliam. My daughter needs her nap.”

      WHEN I FIRST MADE ACQUAINTANCE with the name of Mr. Cornelius Burnside, I was sitting at the desk of my suite in the Pickwick Arms Hotel on the Boston Post Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, sifting my way through a thick collection of mail that had been forwarded from the house in New York City. It was the middle of May and I was exhausted, having sat through yet another court hearing in the days before Father’s trial, and at first I didn’t quite understand the neat, typewritten words before me. (Typewritten, quite possibly, by that silent young lady in the navy blue suit in the office of the Phantom Shipping Company.)

      I still have the letter, packed in a separate valise, the one that contains all my important papers, though I hardly need to see it. I must know every word by now. It’s short, after all, and I have read it many times.

       Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,

       You will forgive my intrusion on your notice at such a busy time, but I have reason to believe that you may be the surviving relic of Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam, late of the city of Cocoa, Florida, who I regret to inform you passed away in a fire at his home in Cocoa Beach, in the early hours of February 19 of this year.

      I must beg you to confirm your receipt of this letter, and your identity as the former Miss Virginia Fortescue of New York, married to Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam of Penderleath, England [Cornwall, I thought automatically] in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the 31st of March, 1919, at your earliest convenience, so that we may proceed with the proper settlement of Mr. Fitzwilliam’s estate.

       Yours respectfully,

       Mr. Cornelius S. Burnside, Jr., Esq.

      On the first reading, I didn’t understand at all. Something about the sight of my husband’s name—Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam—all typewritten and impersonal, as if I were reading about him in a newspaper, simply froze my thoughts in place. My eyes skimmed over the rest of the words without absorbing a single one.

      Only upon a second reading did I realize that something had happened to Simon, and only after the third did I perceive that Simon was dead. That he had burned to death in a house in Florida, a terrible accident, and left to me—Virginia Fitzwilliam, his legal wife—the entirety of his estate. His estate, whatever that was.

      Because while houses burned down regularly, and people died all the time, I had never imagined that Simon could meet his end like that. You could not extinguish my husband in mere flame. It simply wasn’t possible.

      And while I had never tried to forget Simon—how could I, when his daughter gazed up at me every morning, an incarnate reminder of our brief life together?—I had, over the course of the previous three years, sequestered his image into its own tidy corner of my head, rigid and unchanged, a two-dimensional portrait covered by a sheet against the dust. I had refused to allow any memories out of that corner, because those might bring him back to life, and where would I be if Simon became human to me again?

      But the shock of seeing his name, understanding the bare facts of his death, had a catastrophic effect on that mental frame I had erected around Simon, confining him in two dimensions. Simon: dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. It simply didn’t make sense. I stared and stared at that letter, and I put it away in the desk, and then I woke up at midnight and pulled it out and read it again while my sister, Sophie, slept in her nearby bed.

      A week passed before I found the composure to answer that letter, and when I did, my reply was just as slim and factual as the original, though I wrote it in pen on Pickwick Arms notepaper. I simply confirmed my identity as Simon’s widow, indicated that I would not be at liberty to attend Mr. Burnside in person for some weeks, but that I would be happy to answer any inquiries by letter in the meantime.

      At the time, however, I made no mention of Evelyn. For one thing, I doubted Mr. Burnside—or Samuel Fitzwilliam, for that matter—would have any idea of her existence.

      I’M CARRYING EVELYN IN MY arms this minute, as we cross the street to the Phantom Hotel and Simon’s private apartment on the fifth floor, overlooking the docks. I haven’t seen it yet. We spent a few brief moments in the hotel lobby this morning, Evelyn and I, depositing our luggage and waiting for Mr. Burnside to appear. I’m afraid I didn’t notice any details, other than a clean-lined, simple décor and the impression of light and mirrors.

      Samuel offers to carry Evelyn, but I decline politely, even though my arms ache under her weight. Instead, he puts his hand on my elbow and makes sure there’s no traffic as we start across the pitted street. It’s the first time he’s touched me since we shook hands in the office, and his fingers are unexpectedly light against the sharp point of my humerus. As we reach the safety of the paved sidewalk, the hand drops away.

      This time the hotel staff recognizes me, and the manager hurries over the instant I pass through the doorway and hoist Evelyn—already half-asleep—further

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