Epilogue
Though I never set foot in the house on McPherson Square or at Friendship again, I couldn’t help but follow Evalyn and her friends in the papers through the years.
They continued to live flamboyant lives filled with important people and nothing important at all.
I’d heard it through the grapevine when Evalyn and Ned were divorced.
Given the number of women he’d been with and the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, it was no surprise.
And yet I’d felt a certain sadness for them, for all that was lost.
One chilly spring morning, I opened the papers, and there she was again, in the headlines.
“What are you reading?” Henry asked, bending over me to kiss my forehead. “Your face is scrunched.”
“She’s gone.”
His eyebrows knit together in the way I’d grown to love. “Who?”
“Evalyn McLean. She passed away, of pneumonia.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too.”
I couldn’t imagine such a vivacious woman frail and on death’s door.
I’d seen her from a distance a few years back.
She was driving and had pulled to a stop at a traffic light.
She still wore her tightly curly hair in a tamed waving bob, but it was threaded with gray.
She was wearing a hat, a large fur around her shoulders, and her gloved hands gripped the steering wheel.
Her face was drawn and her eyes were directed ahead, far away, as if she were searching for something beyond the horizon.
Her simple beauty was eroded by time and loss and disappointment, but the tilt of her chin somehow told me she was as vibrant as ever.
Something about her endless vitality made me happy, made me feel young again.
I’d waved but she hadn’t seen me, even as I’d stood on my tiptoes at the edge of the sidewalk, straining to catch her attention—straining to catch a glimpse of the Hope.
When the traffic light had changed to green and the car had inched forward, I’d seen it.
A glint, a flash of flint-blue at her neck before she’d sped away.
As if spooked by the sight of a ghost, I’d rushed home.
Evalyn, it seemed, still stubbornly believed her talisman brought her good luck, even if every sign pointed elsewhere.
I scanned the rest of the article. She’d passed away at sixty years old, predeceased by not one but two of her children, her parents, and her ex-husband.
Ned had died in an asylum. Most of the McLeans’ estate had been lost with their spending habits, and to pay the remainder of their debts, there was to be an auction of Evalyn’s jewels, including the Hope Diamond.
I gasped. “They’re going to auction the Hope Diamond!”
We exchanged a look. And I knew, without uttering a word, that Henry understood what I had to do.
* * *
The day of the auction, I put on my Sunday best and made my way to the auction house.
The place was crowded with exactly the kind of people I’d expected: those from the elite circles I’d so gladly walked away from many years before, except these were a whole new set.
The world had shifted, moved on, and there was a new stream of important people filling the vacancies of the rich and powerful just as eagerly.
One face I did recognize. A jeweler fast becoming one of the most renowned in the country and around the world: Harry Winston.
The auctioneer called the crowd to order. “Next up, the lot of Evalyn Walsh McLean’s jewelry, including the famed Star of the East and, of course, the Hope Diamond.”
The crowd hushed.
The auctioneer rattled off the statistics about the incredible collection and decreed if there were no takers for the lot in its entirety, each piece would be auctioned off in due course.
“Sir.” A gentleman raised his paddle. “Could you tell us more about the Hope Diamond?”
“Certainly.”
The auctioneer returned to the Hope to describe its dimensions and its history, the audience rapt by his every word.
While I listened, I found myself asking the question that had haunted me those years ago when I’d first stepped into Evalyn’s world.
Was the curse real? After the many misfortunes that befell Evalyn, her staff, and her friends, the deaths of her children and her husband, and, of course, Julien’s death as well, I knew what I believed. I believed in possibilities.
At last, the auctioneer came to the part for which we’d all been waiting.
“It is said this rare blue diamond is cursed. Many believe it brings bad luck to all who own it and potentially all those who hold it, wear it, or”—he paused for effect—“even to those who merely look upon it.”
The crowd gasped again.
I pictured Evalyn’s face and her would-be delight in such a spectacle surrounding her beloved necklace and smiled.