“Yes, because you know me, school’s the only time I crack a book.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It does happen to be for a seminar I’m taking. Colonial America. Visions and Dissertations.”
She was distracted. “Did you and Ben work last week?”
“All week. The boats never stopped coming. Father is going to have to do something, convert one of his other buildings perhaps. We’re out of room. We rented the last two apartments Friday.”
“Talk to him about it at dinner. How is Ben?”
“Ben is, as always, fine. Soon you will see for yourself how he is.”
She stared out the window.
Presently a carriage pulled up and a youngish man popped out, not Ben. Esther sat up straight, emitted a small sound of distress and got up. “Put away your book, Harry. Someone’s here to see you.”
He glanced outside. “To see me?”
“Well, who is that man?”
The young clean-shaven gentleman was nervous and portly as he lumbered through the gate and to the portico.
“He looks as if he hasn’t started shaving yet,” Harry remarked.
The doorbell rang. “Louis, the door!”
Louis Jones, their butler, the man who ran the house, had been with the Barringtons since before the Civil War. They were supposed to call him Jones, but throughout their childhood they called him by his first name because that was what his mother had called him, and they couldn’t alter this when they got older. Louis and Leola were escaped slaves who made it to Boston in the late 1850s. They were hired by Harry’s grandfather and lived in the back of the house in the servants’ quarters, working for three generations of Barringtons. Leola died at eighty-seven a few years ago. Seventy-two-year-old Louis was almost completely deaf but pretended he wasn’t. “I hear the doorbell, you impertinent children. I’m right here.” He moved slowly, hobbled by arthritis and cataracts, but still retained his sharp tongue, his sharper memory and his shock of white hair. Esther and Harry joked that if he weren’t careful, the rest of Louis would soon turn white too. “I’ll drop dead before that happens,” Louis would retort.
“Who do you think that is?” Harry said to Esther with a glint in his eye as they stood in the doorway studying the young man at the front door.
“How should I know?” Under her breath she tutted.
At the back of the house, a heavy door creaked open and Herman Barrington’s firm footsteps echoed down the hardwood, darkly paneled center hall. “Elmore!” they heard him say. “Come in! How are you? Thank you, Jones. Would you please fix the creak in my office door, it’s getting worse. Do you not hear it? Come in, Elmore. Let me introduce you to my children.” As Herman walked by, he appraised them—Esther briefly, Harry longer, his son’s frockcoat, his pressed herringbone trousers, his starched white shirt and gray vest. Harry slowly took his hands out of his pockets. He knew his father found that habit obnoxious.
The sister and brother exchanged a mute look. Elmore? they mouthed.
Fumbling with his umbrella, the plump man awkwardly removed his coat and hat and then dropped them all, one by one. Louis helped him pick everything up, as the three Barringtons stood and watched. Herman was tall, gray, stately, impeccably groomed and crisply dressed in a chocolate sports coat and tan slacks. He looked like a male, more elegant version of Esther.
Elmore was dwarfed by Herman.
“Elmore Lassiter, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Esther, and my son, Harold.”
Harry shook Elmore’s soft hand. “Please call me Harry.”
“Yes, thank you,” the young man said. “Please call me Elmore.”
With great amusement, Harry glanced at an exasperated Esther.
“When is everyone due to arrive?” Herman asked. “They’re running late.” His punctuality was legendary.
“Not for another thirty minutes,” Harry replied. But he didn’t carry a watch on Sundays.
“Shall we take our drinks in the drawing room? No, let’s go outside. It’s a beautiful day. Jones!”
“I’m right here, sir.”
“Ah,” Herman said. “There you are. Please tell Bernard to hold dinner so it doesn’t burn.”
“Dinner won’t be ready for another ninety minutes, sir.”
“Well, let’s hope the tardy guests get here before then. Otherwise, Elmore, we’ll just have to eat the entire feast. Bernard is a wonderful cook. Would you like a refreshing mint julep? Esther, come, please. Would you like a tour of the house? Esther will be glad to show you around. Perhaps there’s time for a walk. Have you been to our little town before? No? Well, it’s a fine place.” Herman’s hand went soothingly around Elmore’s tense shoulder as he led him down the enormous high-ceilinged hall to the French doors that opened into the yard. “Esther, Elmore is a resident at Mass General … surgical unit, is that right?”
“That’s correct. I’ve got another two years of residency.”
“It’s a good thing you’re at Mass General and not City Hospital,” Herman said to Elmore as they exited the house onto the rolling and manicured lawn. “I hear they’ve closed five or six wards there, including the men’s surgical unit.”
“Oh, yes,” said Elmore. “You’re quite right. The men’s, the women’s, the medical beds, even the gynecological ward.”
Harry and Esther were following close behind. Speechlessly they turned to each other. “Did he just say what I think he said?” Esther whispered.
Harry shook his head. “Get your mind out of the sailor’s gutter, Esther,” he said. “Honestly. What kind of gentleman would he be, saying something like that in the presence of a lady the first time he meets her?”
“Or even the fiftieth. Father,” Esther called, pulling Harry to a stop. “I’m going to run back and get my shawl.”
“I’m going to help her,” said Harry, and turning, they hightailed it back inside through the open doors. He put his arm around his sister. “That’s what you get for gallivanting with medical students. I don’t know how you’ll be able to resist.”
“Who said I’m going to resist, Harry?” countered Esther as they ambled through the center hall, both having no intention of going back outside. Lightly she shoved her brother. “Father continues to make the vulgar error,” she said, “that to a woman, love is her whole existence.”
“Isn’t it?” said Harry, at the very moment Ben opened the front door and walked in unannounced, followed by his mother and the three chattering Porters.
“Mrs. Shaw, hello, how good of you to come today,” said Harry to Ben’s mother. Ellen Shaw was the epitome of deceptive
