Epilogue
Seven Months Later
THE WISTERIA WAS draped just the way Grace had instructed. Purple, and wisping, and light as lace, even though it was frigid outside.
She stood in front of the gilded mirror. It was wintertime, she was going to a floral ball, and she was dressed in many layers of luxurious clothing—but this time, every layer belonged to her.
She examined the rich silk gown that trailed in heavy pleats at her hips, and the embroidery that knit along the train.
It was astonishing what a difference a year could make.
“My darling,” a man said from behind her.
He was sharply handsome. He still limped from the scars on his leg, the occasional pain in his side.
“I never knew how much you truly loved me,” she said to him. “Until you voluntarily agreed to host this party.”
“I’d almost rather be stabbed again,” he said.
He kissed the skin on the back of her neck, and she smiled. She turned around and straightened his tie.
“I thought I hated parties. As it turns out, I just hadn’t found the right person to endure them with,” he murmured, admiring her dress.
“Though I hope you’ll still glower at everyone from the staircase,” she said. “Your black cloud is so… mysterious.”
She kissed his jaw, tracing her fingers across his birthmark.
“Stop,” he said in a low voice, gently turning his mouth toward hers, “or we won’t make it to our own party.”
When she pulled away, his hands reluctantly trailed after her. On her dressing table, he picked up a small, gilded spoon.
The gold caught the light. It was painted with the words 1904 WORLD’S FAIR.
“For better or for worse,” he said, turning it in his fingers. “It brought us together.”
And after tonight, for all its beauty and horror, the fair would close forever.
The buildings of the Ivory City would soon be razed.
The Ferris wheel would be disassembled, its parts sent elsewhere.
The winding canals would be filled in, to be erased by the growth of new earth and flowers.
It had been a temporary moment in time that forever impacted the people who had walked through its gates.
“After you,” Theodore said, his gaze falling to the ring he had given her. It sparkled on her hand. “Mrs. Parker.”
Grace made her way down the massive staircase. Her train spread out behind her, a ripple of echoes down the stairs. It never ceased to amaze her when she took the turn on the landing that this was all hers.
She surveyed the house, with its arches of blooming flowers, lanterns, and luminaries that lined the sweeping front hallway.
She took a moment to appreciate it, but also to remind herself that she didn’t need it. She was determined never to be a slave to wealth, but to make it work for her. To use it to reshape the world more how she wanted to see it.
Which was why they were holding the ball that night in the first place.
She adjusted a hanging bough of dew drops along the edge of the banister.
“Lillie,” she said, her stomach filling with warmth at the sight of her cousin.
Lillie turned. She was a vision in soft pink, her silk sleeves falling from her exposed shoulders in arcs of gold-and rose-colored beads like freshly dropping petals.
She greeted Grace with a kiss on the cheek. She smelled like narcissus.
“Thank you for the dress,” Lillie said.
Grace squeezed her. “Only twenty more and I’ll have repaid the favor,” she said.
She was happy that her cousin looked lovely. Lillie was glowing. She held a fizzing drink in her hand that almost matched the color of her gown.
“Where’s Oliver?” Grace asked.
“I believe he’s showing the kitchen staff how to make a proper peanut butter and pickle sandwich,” she said.
“Oliver!” Grace said, sighing. She shook her head as though warding off a headache.
“What?” he asked, sauntering up behind her. “I know how much you’ve always loved my PB-and-pick-which,” he said. “Or are they not sophisticated enough for you now, my darling?”
It had taken months, but the color was finally returning to his face.
“You look dashing, and a little impish, and that always looks good on you,” she said.
He kissed her cheek. “To be honest, I think I’ll feel better tomorrow, when this fair is finally behind us.”
She squeezed his hand. In the days to follow, workers would demolish the building where Harriet died, as though it had never been there. The city would move on, even if Oliver had not yet. But for the first time, his eyes lit up when Theodore offered him a box of cigars.
“He looks better tonight,” Grace commented as the two men ambled away.
“He does,” Lillie said. “His appetite has finally returned, and my mother is keeping him well-fed. Or so I hear.”
Lillie’s smile was bittersweet. Grace squeezed her hand.
Lillie had chosen to officially study and work with Dr. May, despite her parents’ threats to cut her off.
She was no longer living at home or within her parents’ means.
Someday, when Oliver inherited it all, he would assuredly share their family fortune with her.
But Theodore and Grace quietly supported Lillie now, by asking her to live with them and funding a new women’s house she was working in with Dr. May.
It was strange, how their positions had shifted. And yet it was fitting. They both recognized the joy of giving generously to someone they loved and the humility it took to receive it.
“I think someone’s looking for you,” Grace said, glancing over her shoulder.
A strikingly handsome man was glancing their way. Thomas Kenton was someone Theodore had known since childhood and heartily approved of. Someone kind, with a proven character that was almost worthy of Lillie.
Lillie smiled and Grace said behind her gloved hand, “He’s already requested strong interest in your dance card.”
“And should I take him up on it?” Lillie asked with a faint touch of wariness.
She had become much more guarded in friendship and in love. Grace worried that Frannie and Earnest had forever ruined the delicate something in Lillie that made her so special, but somehow Lillie had come out the other side with a toughness that made her even lovelier.
“I think he’s the exact opposite of Earnest,” Grace said firmly. “And therefore, a good man in every way.”
Lillie threw back her drink, shot Grace a mischievous glance, and accepted Thomas Kenton’s hand onto the dance floor.
In the far corner, Harriet’s sister Penelope was also present, swaying as she listened to the voice of Ethel Adams fill the ballroom. She had agreed to come when Grace explained that the Ball was given in honor of Harriet—a benefit in her name to save the theater she had so loved.
Grace came to stand beside Penelope.
“That’s beautiful,” Penelope said, glancing up at a framed painting.
It was new. It was a scene of the fairgrounds at daybreak, when the sun was just awakening, and the rest of the grounds were still hidden in shadows. It had captured the whole experience, with its light and darkness, so exquisitely.
Grace had climbed up the ladder herself and hung it, replacing a large portrait of one of the Parker ancestor’s dogs. Theodore had slow clapped.
“Thank you,” Grace said now to Penelope. She smiled and added proudly, “My brother did it.”
Her eye caught on someone who had just arrived. “Excuse me,” she said, and went to greet Frannie Allred with genuine warmth. “Welcome.”
Frannie glanced stiffly around the party. “Thank you,” she said.
She had been summarily turned out of all other social circles after what Earnest had done came to light.
He and Copper were in jail, awaiting trial for the murders of Harriet Forbes and Sylvestor Watson, and the attempted murders of Theodore and Grace Parker.
Frannie had no fortune and no family name or reputation left to speak of.
But what she had done that night at the fair had likely saved the Parkers’ lives, and they would never forget that.
Grace took Frannie by the arm and introduced her to a few people who might be willing to look past the surface stories and actually see the faceted, frustrating, more complicated woman for who she was.
“Is that Frances Allred?” an older woman to Grace’s right sniffed.
She pulled Grace aside, a concerned look further creasing her lined face.
“I know you’re new to these circles. Would you accept a little friendly advice?
” Giant diamonds sagged from the woman’s ears.
“I am not sure I can stay if this is the company you choose to keep.”
Grace shrugged. “Our butler would be happy to call your carriage, if you prefer. I’d advise you take some of the pecan buns for the road. They’re divine.”
The woman looked stunned. “Well, I never.” She grasped her husband’s arm and backed away.
“Becoming better and better at gardening, aren’t we?” Theodore came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.
She turned toward him. “Gardening?”
“Helping people to weed themselves out,” Theodore said.
Grace snorted. She loved Theodore Parker.
She felt it in every part of her body. And she was willing to spend the rest of her life enduring society gossip about her motives for marrying him when the truth was, she had fallen in love with him despite herself.
She felt a new kind of freedom now to let people believe what they wanted.
They could run and run with false versions of the truth until mercifully, reality sometimes intervened—just like it had with Walt; just like it had with Earnest.
Fantastical worlds could be built temporarily, but at some point, they always had to come down.
As the night wore on, Ethel sang, they held a moment of silence in Harriet’s memory, the head of Harriet’s theater proposed a toast, and Oliver convinced enough people to pledge donations that Harriet’s theater would be saved for the immediate future, if not many years to come.
Grace leaned into her role as mistress of the house with the grace and poise of her mother, who looked utterly at ease back in high society.
Nell Covington smiled as the exquisitely cultivated appetizers were served around her.
“These bacon-wrapped dates are divine,” Lillie said.
“Your uncle made them,” Nell said proudly.
“If anyone ever wondered why you married him, they won’t now,” Lillie said, nudging her.
“It’s almost as delicious as watching them eat their words.
” Nell raised a glass of sparkling punch to Grace as she took to the dance floor with her husband.
Grace’s parents had traveled to St. Louis to attend the party and visit Walt, who had decided the fête would be too much of a temptation for his tenuous sobriety.
Grace had asked for their help in planning, and they had executed their roles with resounding success, given how many guests stayed well into the morning hours.
Finally the last song played, goodbyes were said, and the final carriage departed. Grace saw her parents to bed, then took off her shoes and traipsed up the flower-draped stairwell.
“Mrs. Parker,” Theodore said, leading her outside, where the air was cold but his arms were warm. “As memory serves, momentous things seem to happen to us on balconies.”
He kissed her.
“Was it so torturous tonight?” she asked, nestling in closer to him.
He wrinkled his nose. “I largely married you because you claimed you don’t like parties.”
“I solemnly promise to only use them for good causes.”
“Your cousin is Lillie Carter,” he said dryly. “I hardly think we’ll want for good causes.”
She gave him an impertinent smile. “You may want to rip out your hair, but at least you won’t ever be bored.”
“Never,” he deadpanned. “My hair is my best feature.”
“That’s debatable.” She touched his handsome face. Kissed his birthmark. The scar on his arm. The parts of him that were the most beautiful to her.
“And now it’s all over,” she murmured as he led her in a private slow dance. She turned toward the fireworks that were beginning to explode over Forest Park, lighting up the sky. “How unbelievable, that for a few months, the entire world was encompassed in the span of a few blocks.”
“And yet I found my whole world there,” he whispered roughly against her temple, “encompassed in a single person.”
Grace was surprised by the sudden tears pricking her eyes.
The fair had changed her life irrevocably, and she would never walk its paths again.
There were things about its passing existence she would miss and return to often in her memory.
Stories she would tell her future children, and some she would hold close to her own heart.
Horrors she had witnessed and scars she would likely carry for the rest of her life.
She would walk its paths in her dreams, and perhaps, a few nightmares.
She took Theodore to bed as the fireworks fell, the city darkened, and in the distance, the Ivory City shut its gates for the final time.