HAVE brought no luggage to speak of, but a dressing gown hangs thoughtfully from a curving silver hook on the door. I wear neither nightgown nor pajamas, only the most ancient and serviceable of underthings, obtained from a dry goods in Virginia somewhere, last supplied in the previous century. My clothes—likewise ancient, likewise Virginian—lie slung over the back of a nearby chair. I can’t stand the sight of them. I drape myself in the dressing gown instead, which is made of some kind of expensive silk, as fine as gossamer, trimmed in satin piping and no lace whatsoever. I tidy my hair with the silver-backed brush lying on the dressing table, and as I do these elegant things, I consider that our hosts—whoever they are—are likely well-stocked in the lettuce drawer, if you know what I mean.
And just as I’m giving this point the full weight of my concentration, some noise drifts in from the window, the screaming of happy children, and I lift the window sash and stick my head out into the hot afternoon sky. Underneath it, two girls and a boy tear apart the oncoming foam of a most blue ocean, supervised by a tanned, long-limbed, gravid woman wearing a shocking pink bathing costume that does nothing whatsoever to disguise the girth of her expectant belly. One of the girls in the surf is my Patsy, shrieking her head right off as a crestfallen wave swirls about her knees. The damn boy holds her hand solicitously. (As well he might.) The woman, perhaps hearing the slide of the window sash in its casing, cranes her head to meet mine. Waves. Calls out with cupped hand. Motions me down to the white, sunlit beach. Her head’s wrapped up in a matching pink scarf, and she’s so gorgeously happy, so free of every care, I want to fly right out through the window and into her arms, where my own sorrows might dissolve by the heat of her joy.
INSTEAD, I take the stairs, which lead downward to a series of bright rooms arranged around some kind of courtyard, smelling of lemon and eucalyptus, and go out through the front door and across the beaten lane to the beach on the other side. The woman awaits me patiently, wearing a calm, beatific smile beneath a pair of strict cheekbones, and a wary tilt to her dark, straight eyebrows. The Florida sun has washed her fair skin in shades of delicate apricot, which become her extremely. Under the cold sky of a New York City winter, she might be nothing more than handsome.
“I hope you slept well, Miss Kelly,” she says, by way of greeting, in a voice that speaks of private schooling and a dignified upbringing. I want to reply, Sure looks that way, don’t it, by the late angle of that afternoon sun, but I can be civil when civility is called for. My own vowels were shaped by a cadre of disciplined nuns, you know, though they do have a tendency to revert to their original form when left unattended.
“Very well, thank you,” I reply, in my best Bryn Mawr accent, though I did attend that fine institution but a single year. “I appreciate your taking us in like that, right in the middle of the night like a pair of thieves. I hope we didn’t scare you.”
She laughs pleasantly. “Well, you gave us a shock, that’s for certain. But Ollie’s an old friend, a dear old friend, and he’s welcome in our house anytime. Even at three o’clock in the morning.”
“I see Patsy’s making herself at home. I hope she hasn’t been any trouble.”
“Oh, not at all! She’s a darling. She’s your sister, Ollie said?”
“My baby sister. Five last year.” I shade my eyes and watch the small fry gambol about, soaking themselves in the kind of abandon we older, wiser ones have long since discarded. We haven’t yet told my baby sister that she is an orphan, that her daddy has joined our mama under the wet soil of River Junction, Maryland, and that the brother she adored—the brother who all but reared her up himself—now basks in the everlasting peace of the Lord Almighty. She imagines, I guess, we’ve taken her on a surprise vacation to a southern paradise, and as I watch her play, I have no desire to disabuse her of this illusion. The sun grows hot on my hair and my shoulders, the milky skin of my redhead’s neck. The salt air fills my chest. The pungent sky makes my heart race in recollection of my dream, and I clench my fist to quell the memory. “She must be over the moon. I don’t know that she’s ever seen the ocean beach before.”
“She’s taking to it wonderfully. Sammy and Evelyn practically grew up in the water. They’ve been looking out for her.”
“So I see. You have beautiful children, Mrs.—” I cut up short and turn to her. “Ah! I apologize. Ollie never did tell me your name, and I was about dead last night by the time—”
“Oh, look at me. Chattering on like this, and I haven’t even introduced myself! Fitzwilliam. Virginia Fitzwilliam.” She holds out her hand. “And my husband, Simon, who’s gone off with your Ollie right now, I’m afraid.”
I clasp her hot, firm hand and tilt my head back to the house. More like a villa, I perceive, the kind of Mediterranean building you see in pictures of Italy or the south of France, an impromptu eruption of yellow walls and red tiles and round arches. I consider the words your Ollie, carelessly uttered, and my stomach grows a pair of energetic hummingbirds. “In there?” I ask.
“No, no. In town. To our offices. I understand they meant to talk business.” Her expression turns a little blank, enough to send an electric signal shimmering across the surface of my brain, which—as you perceive—is something of a suspicious organ to begin with.
“Business?” I inquire.
“Now, Miss Kelly. I imagine you can tell me far more about all this than I can tell you.”
“But you’re too polite to ask.”
Mrs. Fitzwilliam places her two hands on the underside of her enormous belly, as if the infant has begun to weigh upon her insides and wants support. Turns her head and looks back out to sea, where her children play. “For what it’s worth, Miss Kelly, my husband left the rum-running business some time ago. He wasn’t cut out for it.”
“A rumrunner, was he?”
“We own a shipping company,” she says simply, and I guess she doesn’t need to say more. After all, any fool with a seaworthy boat and a sober pilot can get his start in the rum-running trade off the coast of the eastern United States, and a lucrative trade it is, too. A fellow with the foresight or the luck to own a fleet of such craft? Why, he might clear a fortune, in short order. He ought to clear a fortune, if he’s got a lick of mortal sense. Nothing extraordinary about that.
“I see. And I suppose that shipping company brought you to Anson’s notice?”
“Anson? Do you mean Ollie?”
“I beg your pardon. Anson’s his middle name. He took what I guess you’d call a nom de guerre for a time, which is when I met him. And you know how it is with names.”
She smiles. “They have a way of sticking to people.”
“Yes. But to you he’s Oliver Marshall. Reckon I shall have to get used to that.”
We have both returned our attention to the children splashing in the surf, but when I say these words Mrs. Fitzwilliam glances back at me. “No, don’t do that. Keep him by the name you knew him first. The name you fell in love with.”
“Who says we’re in love?”
She laughs. “Nobody needs to say it, Miss Kelly. My goodness. I have eyes in my head, even at three o’clock in the morning.”
“Then
