Chapter Forty-Eight
Hal returns the next evening in a foul mood, escorting his mother to her bedroom before I hear him bumbling and banging around downstairs. Pouring himself a drink, or mixing up some morphine—or both.
I glower in my seat before my vanity mirror.
I’m not in the happiest of moods myself, having escorted Penny to the depot just a few hours earlier and feeling as though a large part of my heart left with her on the train bound for Manhattan.
Now, with no idea when I might see her next, I’m back to my solitary existence.
Adding to my gloom are the two letters in my hands, which arrived this afternoon by post. Mercifully, they were delivered to me before Hal returned home, and I’ve had this stolen chance to open them away from his covetous eye.
He told me several weeks ago to stop sending letters without showing them to him first, but I’ve disregarded his order, and he has yet to notice.
These two letters will have to stay secret. The first is from Mamma—it’s my Christmas card, returned, after Penny hand-delivered it to her. She didn’t even write to explain why she couldn’t bear to look at it. I toss it into the fire.
The second note is postmarked from Philadelphia.
Chestnut Street. I close my eyes for a brief moment, and I can see it: the studio with its familiar smells of turpentine and coffee, its big windows that let in the ever-changing light.
But when I blink my eyes open and look back down, I see that this letter is not from Leah or Rachel.
It’s from a Mr. Ralph Perkins. He informs me, briefly but cordially enough, that Rachel and Leah no longer live at the address to which I’ve written.
I’d sent, on a lark, my Christmas card showing myself as a newly married resident of Pittsburgh.
They have moved abroad, to France, and he includes some address that’s a series of numbers and foreign words.
They did it. They went to France. I smile to myself, but feel a pang in my belly.
Happy as I am for the pair of them, that they’ve realized their long-held dream, this news does spotlight the dismal fact that I am stuck here, in this haunted mansion, living with nothing more than the harrowing ghosts of my own unhappy ending.
A knock on my door, and I slip the letter under a tub of rouge powder, rearranging myself before the vanity. I see Hal’s reflection in the mirror and summon a smile, endeavoring to greet him pleasantly as he comes barreling into my room, walking stick in one hand, top hat in the other.
“How was the visit, then?” he asks, catching my reflection in the mirror.
I hope he sees that I was preparing for bed. “Oh, Hal.” I finger a nearby pot of cold cream, turning to face him. “It was so good to see Penny.” I decide to leave it at that, hastening to ask, “And how was Hot Springs?”
“Taking Mother away like that…I hope you appreciate what I’ve done for you.” His eyes rove around my bedroom as though cataloging every detail to see whether anything has changed.
“I do, my dear. Thank you so much.” And I have no doubt that Mother Thorne derided me with most of her breath while they were away together. “Did you have a nice time?” I ask, my voice falsely bright.
He ignores the question, his gaze still intense, as though searching for something. “Leaving the entire house to you and that girl. I hope you both behaved.”
“Of course we did.” I stiffen. “Hal, it’s Penny. You know her. She’s like me.”
“She’s not like you,” he says, eyes cutting back toward me. “You’re reformed. She’s still living that life.”
“That life,” I say, my voice quivering, “was what led me to you. You came to my show every night.”
“I swear, Evelyn, sometimes I feel as though you still don’t understand how lucky you got.
” He’s spinning his walking stick in his hands, and I’m afraid he might knock something over with it.
But I say nothing. I do not move from my seat.
He sweeps my appearance one more time with his blazing blue gaze—taking in my dark hair falling loose over my shoulders, my thin silk wrapper cinched at my waist, the bare skin of my calves and ankles.
I want to recoil, but I resist the urge to fidget, for fear that any movement might set him off further.
He takes a step toward me, barely whispering the words: “I saved you. From all of it. From him.”
“Do you have men following me?” I lob the question at him, the words escaping before I’ve had time to fully think it all through.
I suppose I am just trying to catch him off-balance.
To change the topic. It works; he pauses mid-step.
And as his face hardens, I can see he does not know how to respond.
So he doesn’t. Instead, he turns on his heels and stalks out of my bedroom.
I nearly collapse in relief. Flying to the door, I lock it.
I check three times to ensure it’s bolted before climbing into my bed.
And yet, as I crawl under the covers and blow out the candle, I’m still trembling.
I tremble until, somehow, merciful sleep takes me into its embrace and pulls me into black.
—
But I wake, I know not how much later, to a sliver of light. And a clicking sound—the turn of a key. The soft padding of slippered footsteps. I stir. “Hello?”
I see Hal’s outline. My husband doesn’t answer but plods directly toward my bed.
“Hal, I’m sleeping. I’m tired.” But I can see it plainly, that he’s not himself. He might not even be hearing my words. He is certainly not listening to them as I plead, “Can’t we please speak in the morning?”
But then he’s right beside me, hulking over me in the dark, his whiskey breath enough to make me sick. Before I understand what is happening, he is pinning me down. Something hard and unyielding presses across my shoulders. It’s his walking stick.
“Please!” I’m begging now, afraid he might strangle me.
It’s so dark in the room that I can’t see his face, but I know how his features must be writhing in fury because I can hear it in his voice as he hisses: “Deceiver!” His face is so close to mine that I feel the spray of spit that lands on my cheek.
“Whore! You wanted him, didn’t you? All that flam about Stan Pierce robbing you of your virtue. You were willing the entire time!”
“No!” His cane is still boring into my chest, and when he puts the entire weight of his body on me, I truly don’t know whether I will survive. “Please,” I try again. “You’re hurting me.”
“You’re lying!” he growls. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time! You invited that tart into our home; you wish to return to your old ways.”
I protest, struggling to push him off. But this only seems to enrage him further. “I heard from the staff. I know! I know that letters have been arriving for you, two while I was away. From Philadelphia. And New York! From him! After everything I’ve done for you!”
“Hal, please!” I beg. He’s yanking on me, his hands rough. Intent on pain. So I close my eyes. I can’t breathe. Does he intend to kill me? In that moment, I decide, death might come as a welcome reprieve.
I do survive. Somehow. The memories are patchy and black in places, and that comes as some small mercy. But as wretched as the night was, the morning proves even more terrible. In a different way. The horror of the daybreak is in having to face him. In having to face another day with him.
Hal seems to dread our reunion almost as much as I do, as he comes slinking into my bedroom, everything about his demeanor reminding me of some sort of penitent serpent.
But I do not wish to hear anything from him, not even his best apology.
My entire body hurts. I already have the purpling prelude to bruises across my chest and shoulders.
My lips taste like blood; my neck is scratched red and raw.
But the cruelest pain lurks in the deepest parts of me, an ache far worse than the physical.
He doesn’t knock, nor do I welcome him in, but here he comes.
All pretense of genteel knocking is gone after last night.
He hovers a few steps away from where I sit in bed, my knees pulled up toward my chest. “I’m sorry, my booful.
” I won’t look at him. He goes on, his voice hoarse: “I wasn’t well. ”
A shudder escapes me.
“I had taken some morphine after the long day of travel,” he says. “I felt terribly out of sorts after the journey. And Mother had been…Well, you know she can be tedious.”
“Yes, I do know,” I say, my tone icy. It’s one thing that I can agree with.
But the fact that I’ve spoken seems to give him a drop of hope, because he asks, “Will you forgive me?”
I still can’t look at him. “See this?” I gesture toward the bruise that’s seeping across my neck.
He takes it in, and I force myself to meet his gaze for the first time. I see he’s horrified, and he puts his hands to his own throat, looking as though he may cry. And then he falls to his knees, groaning like a penitent as he rasps, “I’m so sorry!”
Looking down at him in disgust, I try to make sense of everything that’s happened. Of how to proceed. My mind is swirling. “You weren’t well last night, Hal. You said it yourself.”
He’s rocking on his knees. “You’re right, booful.”
I feel as though I have just the narrowest of windows in this period of his contrition, in this fleeting moment when he is the repentant worshipper—desperate for absolution and reconciliation—and the penance is mine to dole out.
So I make a decision. “I’ve told you for some time that I need a change of scenery. ”
I can see he’s in a conciliatory mood, an obliging mood. I must act. So, with my voice hard as steel, I say: “We are leaving. We must get away, you and I. We will take a trip.”
“Fine,” he says, nodding vigorously, making as if to rise from his knees. “Once the weather is mild, booful, we can travel. We’ll take a nice, long summer voyage. England?”
“But New York first,” I say. I see the shift in his eyes, the wavering in his willingness to agree. So I press on before he can say no, before I lose my resolve: “Before we sail, Hal. Even if we stay for only a couple of days. I wish to see the city one more time.”