We spent a long time silently turning over her possessions. Dusk settled in as we did, making the edges of things murky. I asked John to stay for dinner, and he accepted, and after we ate I had the butler drive him and Good Egg to the train station. Though we pretended that we would write to each other in the coming months, we never did. I told him he should take her suitcase and its contents with him, and I suppose he brought them all the way back to Ohio, and perhaps even gave her a burial of sorts.
By the time the weather changed, the legend of Max Darby and Cordelia Grey had taken hold. Of course no one really knew what befell them, if they weren’t living on some island somewhere, or in Paris, or if they simply chose never to come back down to Earth. Schoolchildren across the country talked about his feat of bravery, and her act of love, and generally agreed that his brief encounter with the bootlegger’s daughter had inspired him to break rules and reach ever higher into the clouds.
In the fall, The Good Lieutenant had its premiere, and I don’t suppose you need to be told what a sensation Letty was after that. If the stories are to be believed, she was never paid for her work in Mr. Branch’s film, but after its release she had her pick of studios, and of course everyone knows how when the era of talkies really took off, she and her husband made picture after picture together, he as writer and eventually director, and she as star. The partnership of Larkspur and Lodge is one of the most celebrated in Hollywood, even now. Out there in the land of year-round sunshine they were protected from many of the hard things that befell those of us who remained back East.
For months I got letters from Astrid, postmarked in Paris, saying that as soon as the Marietta Phonograph Company’s stock tripled in value she would come back and set up house. The Feds did find Charlie’s stores eventually, and he and Jones both got sent up to Sing Sing, so it would have been safe for them to come back. But then the crash came, in late October, and she didn’t write for a long time. When she did, she never mentioned the Marietta Phonograph Company again. Father might have helped them, but he lost everything, too, and Virginia left him for a racehorse jockey, and I had to work my way through my last year of college but was very grateful afterward for my degree.
Some years later, a painter friend of mine said that he saw Astrid and Victor in a Paris market, holding hands and buying groceries for dinner, and that they were married and very much in love. When I asked how they got by, my friend only shrugged and mumbled something about Victor pickpocketing tourists and Astrid taking in laundry, adding that he had never seen two people so happy. The bit about the laundry is difficult for me to picture, but it would be a curious detail to make up, and so I am inclined to believe it.
At some point I did try HUnter-4201, and a pleasant man named Ogilvy explained that he had indeed been associated with Max Darby, very briefly, as the executor of the Max Darby Aviation Fund. At first he insisted he couldn’t disclose who was behind the fund, but when I told him about the letter, he sighed, said it couldn’t possibly matter anymore, and told me about Thom Hale’s investment. It wasn’t until after Prohibition was struck down that I saw Thom again—he had spent those last few years on his boat, bringing liquor down from Nova Scotia. After repeal, he lived in his father’s house and didn’t see many people, although I ran into him one day by chance on a street corner in the city. Manhattan was a different place by then—instead of nightclubs, people lined up for soup kitchens, and the girls couldn’t afford panty hose anymore and had to draw the seams up the backs of their legs with kohl.
When I mentioned Cordelia’s name, his face fell about a hundred stories, and I knew that he still loved her.
“Please don’t ever say that name to me again,” he said, before wishing me well and going on his way. Even then, in the depths of the Great Depression, he was wearing a fine, new suit—he went legitimate with his liquor-importing business and made the Hales far wealthier than they were even at the height of Prohibition.
Anyway, I don’t say her name, or any of their names, very often. Only when the world seems a little too spare and impoverished, and then I will replay in my mind the finery we wore that summer, for no reason in particular, and the things that we dreamed of before the fall. You see? I told you how it would be. Those bright-eyed girls, flitting to the city like moths, how quickly they became embroiled in its madcap nights. Each of them escaped New York, in her own way—one of them is famous, one of them is married, and one of them is dead.
Although I don’t like to think of it that way. When I remember Cordelia, I close my eyes and I am with her, out there beyond the land and nothing but the big, blue ocean ahead of her. What a riot of excitement she must have felt! To be so high up, free from all constraints, flying into the future beside a man as determined as herself. In my mind’s eye she is still wearing that white silk evening dress, and thus she shall remain. Forever aloft.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very grateful to have such wonderful friends and editors in Sara Shandler and Farrin Jacobs, who helped build this series into what it has become. Many thank-yous also to Emilia Rhodes, Joelle Hobeika, Josh Bank, Les Morgenstein, Catherine Wallace, Kristin Marang, Sasha Illingworth, Beth Clark, Sarah Landis, Christina Colangelo, Lauren Flower, Liz Dresner, Aiah Wieder, Melinda Weigel, and Laura Lutz. And thank you to all the bright young readers who shared with me these stories, characters, and great adventures.
ALSO BY ANNA GODBERSEN
BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
BEAUTIFUL DAYS
THE LUXE
RUMORS
ENVY
SPLENDOR
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COPYRIGHT
The Lucky Ones
Copyright © 2012 by Anna Godbersen
THE LUCKY ONES: A BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS NOVEL. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
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Anna Godbersen, The Lucky Ones
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