“Oh, Thom!” she interrupted him, and gave a sad, sparkling laugh. “I know all that. You couldn‧t be responsible for such an awful thing.” And she added, as an afterthought, “I hadn‧t known him very long, you know.”
They had turned with the dance, and she became aware of a man, thick in the waist and wearing a pale pink suit, on the steps up to the house. He had a scarred platter of a face and the kind of eyes that are never moved, and she knew somehow that he was Duluth Hale. Then they turned again, and a few seconds later she felt Thom‧s shoulders go rigid. But his voice, when he spoke next, had his characteristic smoothness.
“I‧m so glad you came. I thought you wouldn‧t want to see me anymore, after everything that happened …”
“I‧m very happy to be someplace like this, where everything is gay.” She paused, as though realizing something. She was lying a little more than necessary to confuse him and perhaps catch him fumbling in his story; but really just to exact a small revenge. To lie to him in some miniature, petty version of the gargantuan way he‧d lied to her.
“Did you wait very long for me on the road?” he asked.
A pause followed, and when she turned her face to look at him, she could see that he was thinking about something else. “Yes—but that‧s all right.”
She closed her eyes and pretended to be enjoying the music, trying to swallow the fury this deception stirred in her. She would like to slap his pretty face and tell him how stupidly she‧d worried over him on the road.
They had come to the edge of the dance floor, and suddenly he stepped off.
“Will you follow me?” he asked. “I‧d like to be alone with you.”
So—her moment would come sooner than she had imagined. “Yes.” She tried to twist her face flirtatiously.
They walked quickly across the grounds, past the house. He picked up her hand, and she matched his pace as he began to run between trees. They had gone far enough to not be seen, and she realized he must be searching for some specific location. Soon they reached the stone wall, and they moved along it until they came to a spot where the wall had been broken and worn down, dipping to a low point about four feet high.
Thom put his hands on it, testing its strength. When he turned toward her, his eyes had become uncharacteristically wild. Both his hands sought her waist; he took hold and pulled her closer, putting his mouth to hers. She draped her arms over his shoulders, playing along, mimicking his passion. Their lips parted, and he glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the party. “How did you get here?”
That was not a question she had anticipated. “In a Marmon coupe,” she answered before she could consider the best reply.
“Good,” he said. Then he climbed up, so that he was sitting on the wall, and offered her his hand. She grabbed hold and, pressing her foot against a stone, let him pull her upward. In a matter of seconds, they were on the other side. The darkness here was more complete, and she could just make out his features by the golden glow at the edges of his face. He leaned against the wall again, glancing back to see if anyone had noticed. That was all the time she needed to bend down and remove the six-shooter from the garter between her thighs.
There was a noise when she cocked the gun, and Thom revolved, slowly, to face her. All that bright-eyed sweetness of the past quarter hour went out of her face, and she allowed herself to look at Thom and see him for what he was: a cold deceiver, who even now, after having made her complicit in the murder of her father, was willing to take advantage of her for his own personal gratification.
“Cord,” he whispered.
He had never called her that before, and the memory of her father using the nickname the day he‧d taught her how to shoot caused a pain that seized up her throat and spread toward her jaw. “Don‧t you dare,” she said. “Don‧t—we both know what you did.”
“I can imagine what you must think, but you must let me—let me explain,” he said, stepping toward her and reaching out in his usual smooth manner.
“Stay where you are!” She moved backward, keeping the gun steady and pointed at his head, but he kept coming, and as the seconds passed, a panic overtook her. She lifted the gun over his head and fired.
The noise a gun makes was louder than she had remembered, and it shocked both of them. Her hands stung—she had forgotten how heavy and hot the gun was after it went off. Her eyes grew wide. Thom was contained and watchful, yet he was frightened, too—though he held his body motionless, the veins along his neck were alert. She remembered how terrified she‧d been about the possibility of her father and Charlie hurting him, when she thought they‧d been holding him at Dogwood. She imagined him like her father: his pristine suit ruined, his fine torso torn up in three different places. For a moment she was sure she was going to be sick. The gun fell out of her hands, landing faintly between them.
She became aware of shouting, from over where the rest of the revelers were. One of her eyebrows quivered, but neither she nor Thom said anything, and before he could try, she had turned and started to run. Really running this time, kicking off her shoes as she went and hurtling forward through the trees as fast as she could. If there were stones or needles underfoot, she did not feel them. She looped outward, making her way back around near the entrance, where the lawn was filled with guests’ cars.
There were still two guards at the gate, talking in a hushed, agitated way, but they apparently thought the gunman would be coming from the other direction, because their backs were to her and they were pointing their rifles inward toward the property. Thom had not followed her, and she was able to tiptoe, very quietly, between the vehicles. Once she found the Marmon, she slipped over the closed door, so as not to make a sound, and crouched with her head down by the wheel. As soon as she got the engine going, she stepped on the gas pedal as hard as she could and careened away from Duluth Hale‧s place without daring to look back.
The guards must have heard, but by then she was gone. She headed inland at a reckless speed, glancing over her shoulder, indifferent to her hair as it came down and blew back across her face. It was late, and she hadn‧t yet passed anyone on the road, but she barreled on wildly, praying that the Hales weren‧t on her trail.
Around the time a small sign told her she had passed out of White Cove and into the town of Nashitogue, she realized she had told Thom what make of car she was driving. It would be easy for them to spot her, even if she pulled over and crouched in the back, or put a hat on and returned through White Cove at a respectable speed. Surely they were fanning out now, all over the town and probably all over Long Island, looking for her. They had had little trouble killing her father, with all his connections. Why would they hesitate when it came to Cordelia, who was just a girl from Ohio whom nobody had heard of two weeks ago?
That thought haunted her a while, and then she careened off the road, crashing through a decrepit split-rail fence. The Marmon made a red streak across an open field, until her erratic driving caused the car to stall out as she was trying to go up a rise. It rocked to a stop. She twisted around, checking for pursuers over her shoulder. The cloud of dust she‧d raised was sinking slowly back toward the purple earth, and besides a few cicadas, there was only a vast silence. She sank back in her seat and tried to feel relieved—she had escaped, after all.
But the quiet worsened her fear. That was when her heart began to assume a ragged beat, and a true sense of hysteria settled in.
For where could she go to now? All her life she‧d saved pennies and borne indignities with a prideful shrug of her shoulders, buoyed up by the idea that someday she would meet her father, that he would be a great man and that he would take her in. Well, she‧d had that, only to ruin it with her own heedlessness. And in her failed attempt to avenge the old man, she had now made herself a fugitive, too. The enormity of her trouble dawned on her, and with that, her breath became short. She had nowhere left to go.
She would never know how long she sat out there in the field, or how it would have
ended had something extraordinary not happened: There was a roar just behind her, unlike any sound she‧d ever heard, and a great flying object came speeding by, so low and close to her that she felt its extreme heat. For a moment, she thought it might have been a comet, but then she realized that was absurd. After she heard the crash and saw the flames rise up down the field, she knew it was an airplane and that someone was in it.
Though she drove fast, she was more controlled than she had been before. In a few minutes she arrived at the wreck. The nose was in the dirt and the left wing was on fire, but she did not make out the pilot until she had stopped the car and rushed forward on foot. He was hanging half out of the cockpit, his flying goggles still on his face. Perhaps he‧d hit his head, because he didn‧t appear to be trying to escape the burning biplane. Placing her body under his and bracing herself, she undid the strap that held him. The weight knocked them both over, and for a moment she feared she was trapped. But in the next moment he said, almost matter-of-factly, “You‧d better get us out of here, before the fire spreads to the gasoline tank.”
Wincing, he managed to push himself up enough so that she could roll over, and then, wedging herself under his shoulder, she helped lift him upright. They walked like that together to the car. He was young, and he wore a white cotton undershirt tucked into brown pants that his black boots laced over. He was not much taller than she was, and though he was slender, there was a compact strength to every inch of him.
“Are you all right?” she asked, as they hobbled forward.
“Fine.” His voice was deep and calm—almost perversely, considering the smoke now blowing over them and the fall from the sky he must have just experienced. “I hope you don‧t drive like a woman,” he said as she helped him into the front seat.
“I beg your pardon?” She was almost too shocked by his lack of gratitude to fully respond to what he‧d said.
But he only stared back at her, with wide-set, pale blue eyes that were somehow out of place against his sun-darkened olive skin. His hair was deep brown and cut close to his scalp, and he had full, unsmiling lips. She blinked and slammed the passenger-side door, and then didn‧t look at him again until they were headed toward the road and she heard the explosion behind them.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
The calm drained briefly from his face, and it seemed as though something might actually have hurt him. But he only asked her if she knew where the hospital was.
“No,” she answered truthfully, and though she felt she ought to be insulted by his terse manner, she was mostly awed by the coolness he maintained despite the pain that his bruised and broken body was surely causing him. If she‧d had that kind of toughness, she thought, she could have taken care of Thom Hale, or better yet, not fallen prey to his advances in the first place. “Do you?”
“Where are we?”
“Nashitogue.” They were racing down a road between two farms now. “I think so, anyway.”
“Good.” He tried to adjust his leg, which was obviously badly wounded. “Take this road all the way down, and then a left at Willow Lane. That will bring us to the Catholic Hospital in Rye Haven. You can drop me there.”
Her body felt almost weightless with adrenaline, and both their breathing was audible as they hurtled through the darkness. It must have been very late, and though she supposed she might have asked him what he was doing up in the air in the middle of the night, she never did. There was only an ever-lightening sky and the thought of getting the stranger to a place where they would declare him okay.
Cordelia brought the Marmon to a shrieking halt in front of a stern, redbrick building with yellow light pooling from the high windows, and came around to help him out. The lobby was deserted, and so for a minute or two they stood alone in the plain white hall. Just as she was about to ask him what he thought they ought to do, a nun in a black habit came walking down the hall, and then several more appeared from other directions.
“Oh, dear,” said the first.
“Is it really him?” asked another.
“I‧ve had an accident,” he said in that plain, clear voice. Turning toward Cordelia, he said, “By the way—you don‧t drive like a woman.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a raised eyebrow, “although I‧m not sure that‧s a compliment. And anyway, shouldn‧t you be thanking me?”
“Yes,” he said, and smiled. His face, so symmetrical with its big, serious features, had not previously seemed capable of smiling. But in that moment she realized how false most smiles were, and what a tremendous waste of time. His was rare and incomparable, and she was glad that he had been gruff before and saved that happy expression for now, so that she could truly appreciate it. “Thank you.”
“It was nothing,” she answered lightly.
“On the contrary; I could have died.” The nurses flocked around him and were excitedly talking among themselves and calling out to others down the hall. Someone produced a wheelchair and urged him off Cordelia‧s shoulder and down into it. “I will make it up to you, I promise.”
He reached out for her hand. She was surprised by how reassuring it was to feel a human palm against her own, and took in a sudden breath.
“What‧s your name?”
“Cordelia Grey,” she said. She wanted to know his, but she paused too long, lingering in the curious glow of that simple touch, and by the time she realized that she ought to ask, he was being wheeled away. Then she glanced down and realized how ridiculous she looked—she was barefoot and wearing a dress that wasn‧t good for anything except drinking and dancing in, and her hair was falling down over her shoulders, and she no doubt had black makeup smudged around her eyes.
“Are you all right, dear?” one of the younger nuns asked.
“Oh—yes. It was him that was in the accident.”
“Ah.” The young nun crossed herself. “Thank God, he didn‧t die.”
“Do you know him?” Cordelia asked.
The young woman giggled, and then realized she wasn‧t joking. “Of course! That‧s Max Darby, the famous pilot.”
“Oh!” Cordelia started. Her head dropped back, and she heard herself laugh. “Of course it is!”
“Well, what do you mean, of course? He‧s a very good pilot; he‧s never had a crash!”
“Oh, yes, I‧m sure he is. Only—he‧s been following me, I think, without knowing it.”
The young woman let out a dreamy sigh and said, “Lucky you. He‧s an angel”
“Yes.” Cordelia turned to leave that cold, hygienic light. “I guess he is.”
The fear and urgency that had driven Cordelia to that field had dissipated by the time she settled back into the car. It seemed a long time ago that she had pointed a gun toward Thom Hale‧s head, and longer still that she had wanted him so badly, she‧d thought of giving up everything. Dawn was already brightening the sky, but she did not feel tired. The last bedroom she‧d called her own was in a house full of bootleggers who probably had little interest in her survival anymore. But she wasn‧t afraid. By chance, she had been handed a finer sense of her powers. Her life had taken a wonderful turn, and then an awful one, but there would be a great deal more of it yet. She started the engine and turned the car in the direction she was always heading for—toward White Cove.
“They‧re waiting for you in the library,” said Anthony, the night guard, when Cordelia pulled up to the gates of Dogwood.
In fact, they met her on the front steps. Charlie and Astrid were both still wearing their black funeral clothes and carrying a woolen blanket, which they wrapped around Cordelia‧s shoulders.
For a moment she could do nothing but glance from one to the other.
Charlie put an arm around her, squeezing her shoulder with his big palm. “We‧ll get ‘em, don‧t worry.”
Astrid stepped forward and took Cordelia‧s face in her hands. “You look like hell, darling. But we‧ll make you all better tomorrow.”
“I can stay here, really?” Cordelia sai
d.
“‘Course.” Charlie managed to give her something like a smile. “Dad would kill me if I didn‧t look after you.”
“Can I go to bed now, then?” she asked. “I‧ve never been so tired.”
“Yes, but—”
“There‧s someone here for you,” Astrid finished his sentence. “In your bedroom.”
Cordelia pulled the woolen blanket around her shoulders as she climbed the stairs. Her legs ached, and it took her longer than usual to rise to the third floor. By the time she entered her room, her lids were heavy, and she had almost forgotten there was a guest.
But then she opened the door and saw Letty sitting on one of the stuffed white sofas by the window. She appeared more petite than Cordelia remembered, in the old black dress, with her slick dark hair framing her tiny white face. One of her eyes was swollen and bruised, and there was a rather scrawny greyhound lying at her feet. She appeared fragile and exhausted.
“What happened to you?” Cordelia asked.
For a moment Letty didn‧t reply, and Cordelia remembered that the last time they had seen each other, they had been angry. But then the younger girl giggled and said, “What happened to you?”
Turning, Cordelia caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and laughed outright. “I guess neither of us are at our best,” she said after a while. “Do you hate me?”
Letty lowered her eyes and shook her head. “No.”
“Are you going to stay awhile?”
Letty lifted her head, and her blue eyes rose under the line of black bangs. “I don‧t have anywhere else to go,” she said. Perhaps she feared that sounded insufficiently grateful, because she quickly added, “I mean, I‧d love to, if that‧s all right with you.”
Cordelia smiled and went over to her friend, sinking down on the carpet beside her and laying her head on the other girl‧s lap. The white curtains fluttered open, and she could see a mandarin light just beginning to shine through the tops of the trees. There were many things she wanted to say to Letty, but she wasn‧t sure she had the energy, and anyway there was lots of time. They had traveled a great distance, and now they knew what a big city was, and they were both worn down. But all that could be discussed tomorrow. Tonight they‧d sleep well, at Dogwood, whatever that meant.