Chapter 17 #2
Was he…disappointed I didn’t let him touch me?
It couldn’t be… We were friends. In fact, I’d known Henry all my life.
We’d made mud pies on the banks of the Potomac River, shared flavored ice in the summer, and invented games with rocks and sticks the way that children do.
He’d been my constant companion, second only to Julien.
And yet somehow, I’d always known he was Julien’s friend and mine only by proxy.
Nearly everything had been that way with my brother.
He was the leader and I was the sidekick, the second in line.
After I changed my clothes, Henry took me to the Hungry Tiger for lunch.
Over barbecue sandwiches and coleslaw, we talked about Henry’s frustration at the continued closure of the museum since the war and about the fieldwork he’d need to do for his research in the spring.
He’d studied history and more recently had become a curator for the Smithsonian Institution at the National Museum.
“I’m worried about Julien,” I said, nudging the last dregs of coleslaw on my plate with my fork.
“He’s been acting strange. He rarely spends time in the workshop or with Father for their sales outings.
He’s out until dawn all the time. When I ask him where he’s been, he insists that he’s working for the McLeans. Has he said anything to you?”
Henry laid his hand over mine. He’d touched me in such a way a hundred times, perhaps even a thousand, but for the first time in my life, I felt a flicker of something different. A heat, an eagerness.
Embarrassed, I yanked my hand away.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Light pink dusted the curve of Henry’s cheeks, and I realized he was either offended or as embarrassed as I was.
“I… No, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s fine, really.
I’m not myself today.” The truth was I’d dreamed about Henry a few times since I’d last seen him.
I’d awoken discombobulated on those days, as confused as I was filled with pleasure.
Just that morning, I’d realized something I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself for quite some time: My feelings for Henry were changing, deepening in a way I couldn’t have predicted.
But I would never jeopardize our friendship, and I’d never come between my brother and his best friend, not ever.
Besides, come what may, I knew Henry thought of me as his best friend’s sister.
His touch was merely perfunctory, or so I told myself.
“That makes two of us,” he said, his eyes on mine.
My stomach did a slow turn. When he looked at me like that…I didn’t know what to say, what to do. All I knew was I hoped he would never stop.
“As for Julien, I’m worried, too,” he said, his expression changing.
“At first I thought he might have a crush on someone new, but when I asked him, he denied it. Said he was consumed with trying to court this new influential group of people. Apparently, they have ties to the president and an impressive list of powerful people in Washington. He said he’s trying to play his cards right and all that. ”
Hurt that my brother had kept the truth from me, I avoided Henry’s eyes, played with the edge of my napkin.
“Whatever he’s doing, I hope he’s being cautious.
The McLeans are known all over town. One wrong step and he could hurt the business’s reputation.
Father would be livid—and devastated.” I groaned as I thought of Julien being pulled in way over his head and pushed my plate away.
He might be highly competent and capable, but he was also a little too confident for his own good sometimes.
Henry shook his head. “I know. I’ve warned him, too. But he insisted he’s fine and that he’s being careful. He said I was acting like his dad.”
“His attention span never lasts for long, and in this case, I think that’s a good thing. Do you think…” I shook my head.
“What?” he said, covering his glass with his hand as a waiter offered more sweetened iced tea. “No, thank you.”
“I keep thinking about the Hope Diamond.”
“Why? The curse?”
I shrugged. “He has been acting erratic lately. He’s gone a lot, has circles under his eyes.
I don’t know. I’m sure I’m being ridiculous.
I’ve always thought curses were dumb.” But whether it was the curse or something else entirely, a pit lodged in my stomach along with a sense of foreboding I couldn’t shake.
He nodded. “No, you’re showing your sisterly concern. I suspect we’re both worrying far too much about nothing. But keep an eye on him, and if he continues running himself ragged for these people, we’ll talk to him. Convince him to find work elsewhere.”
I nodded, but what I didn’t say was I’d never been able to convince my brother of anything once he put his mind to it, and I was pretty certain Henry had the same experience.
Julien might follow flights of fancy, but he was also as stubborn as a mule.
The only thing we could do was say our piece and wait for the fallout.
We couldn’t have known that day how dangerous Julien’s pandering to Evalyn’s circle would become.
* * *
“Elisabeth?” Henry nudged me, pulling me back to the present.
At the memory of that day, my hands began to shake. Our worry about Julien had turned out to be right on the nose—and my fault. Our fault.
“Yes,” I said, clutching my handbag to steady myself. “I’m sorry. I was…lost in thought.”
“We’re here. Are you ready?”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We walked from our stop to the National Museum, its gleaming white dome and pearly facade bright in the sunlight.
The lengthy stretch in front of the building would become a park soon, but for now, it was a puzzle of crisscrossed dirt paths and patches of greenery where construction had flourished for nearly a decade.
To the west, an enormous monument dedicated to Lincoln was nearly finished.
The original Lincoln statue had been deemed far too small for the massive classical style temple that would house it, so the statue was recommissioned at twice its original size.
Soon, it would be installed for posterity.
“I’m looking forward to seeing it when it’s finished,” Henry said, following my gaze.
“How big do you think the statue will be?” I asked, thinking of how much marble they used for such a magnificent monument.
“I’ve read it’ll be somewhere between eighteen and twenty feet tall.”
I pictured Abraham Lincoln in gleaming Georgia white marble. How regal he would be. It was befitting of one of America’s greatest leaders.
When we arrived at the National Museum, we bounded up the steps and headed inside. As the smell of cool marble rushed around me, my shoulders relaxed and the tight knot of anxiety in my stomach eased.
“It’s this way,” Henry said.
“What is?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
We crossed the rotunda in front of the building and took the stairs to the ground floor.
In the easternmost wing, there was a series of offices for research.
As we wound through the halls, I tried to picture rows of desks and typewriters and stacks of documents from the war organization that had marred the beautiful space for the past two years, but I couldn’t.
To me, museums were as sacred as a church, not to be desecrated by the mundane.
Henry steered me to a back room closed to the public where new exhibits were being constructed. “We’re building another whale exhibit, but this time, they’ll be using its entire body.”
I gasped at the massive cradle of would-be bones and plaster, the stacks of tools and blueprints, the expansive scaffolding, and the three men lifting what looked like an enormous puzzle piece mimicking the whale’s skin. “How in the world did they manage to make this mold so accurate?”
He grinned. “Do you remember when we talked about the death masks from the French Revolution? How they poured wax over the face of the dead to create a mold?”
I cringed. “How could I forget.”
He chuckled. “Our scientists didn’t use wax, but they worked in much the same way.
They left the deceased whale suspended in the water near the beach where they found it to accurately capture how its fins would float and covered the entire form with burlap, fine curled wood shavings used for packing, and plaster of paris.
They worked in sections from the tail to the head.
Apparently the head deteriorates more slowly than the rest of the body. ”
I couldn’t imagine such an undertaking, sitting in a dinghy on the water for hours upon hours, rocking over the tide as I attempted to wrap the world’s largest animal in plaster. “It’s incredible.”
“Mmm, isn’t it,” he said, staring up at the framework. “Think about how many people will see a blue whale for the first time. It may change the way they see the world. Perhaps they’ll better appreciate nature and science. That’s always my hope anyway.”
I nodded, eyes wide, considering the incredible lengths scientists went to in order to understand our world and to bring that understanding to others. I felt a pang of jealousy at missing out on such important work.
I glanced at Henry. He was watching me, and he’d read my face, just as he had since we were children.
I wondered how I must look to him, how the woman and the girl he’d always known was morphing before his eyes.
I’d felt the seismic shift inside me with Julien’s death, and since I’d taken over the business, I’d felt it again—the grinding of one version of myself against the other.
I only feared that part of me would disappear in time, and I wanted to hold on to both somehow.
“One of the scientists is in the process of cataloging a set of stones,” he said. “Would you like to see them?”
“Would I like to see them?” I rolled my eyes, eliciting a laugh from him. “Of course I would. Isn’t that why you brought me here?”
He laughed.
In the hallway leading to Henry’s office, a woman walked toward us and almost passed without a greeting.