IN GARRETT’S MIND, it had all happened years ago now, even though only three weeks had passed. Garrett was losing time—or his sense of it at least. The photograph … the search … his periodic discussions with the police. All of this had been commingling within him.
Then a day came when the commingling reached its pitch. It was not something he could have ever foreseen.
Elizabeth had insisted that he accompany her to Washington Street—on errands. They had not been downtown together since the photograph.
“Why?” he had returned.
Her reasoning had been shrewd.
“People are starting to talk,” she had said to him. “I’m hearing it, and I don’t like what I’m hearing. They need to see that you’re in good health. That we are in good health. The way you’ve been going about town, in and out of coffeehouses … you can’t expect people not to talk.”
She was cold. When had she become so harsh and cold? But then, for one moment, she broke.
“I think they are afraid,” she said.
And then she added:
“I’m afraid.”
It was true … for the past three weeks Garrett had not felt or behaved like himself. Something had been happening to him—something he could not explain. There was a weakness in his heart that was having its effect over his every thought and movement. He didn’t know if he needed to give in to that weakness, or if it was something he should continue to fight.
And he certainly couldn’t ask Elizabeth.
“Very well,” he had said. “I will go.”
The traffic on Washington Street that day was particularly hectic, since the construction of a new hotel on Tremont was redirecting carriages and omnibuses to alternative channels. The people on the street seemed more numerous too, it being a pleasant day—an ideal one for spending.
He would not remember the stores, or the people, or what they said. The vision would be all that he remembered.
They were walking.
Men in bowlers, boys with boxes, and young professionals rushed past. Women with closed parasols casually sauntered by store windows. A horse whinnied, and then grunted—it had had enough of the tugs to its reins.
Elizabeth held his arm and walked closely beside him. They had not been this close since—
He remembered the spark flashing. Or did he ever remember? Perhaps he would never remember anything at all.
The sun had hit the window at the moment of their passing—the window across the street, filled with silver.
The flash blinded him, and he stumbled … not enough to cause alarm. It was more of a pause, which held him and Elizabeth for a moment, locked in their footsteps and staring across the street.
The door opened, and then the two familiar figures emerged on the doorstep. One of them was the scoundrel, and the other stared Garrett in the face.
Isabelle.
Isabelle?
Had that been her name after all? He had forgotten her name at some point during the years—hidden it, suppressed it. Murdered it even.
Yes. The woman was Isabelle.
The pairs of eyes on one side of the street fixated on the others opposite: Garrett and Elizabeth … Moody and the young woman. Each one of them frozen, like a picture.
There was one thing he remembered—that when she left, he had been relieved. It came back to him now, that immense sense of relief that had soothed his troubled thoughts when he learned that she had run off. Of course he would miss her, because over those months his care had grown for her, even though what had happened had, in his mind, not been real.
She looked at him. She knew. Her eyes told the truth. But there was also something else: there was that mist of himself on her face.
Elizabeth had gone down to see her mother, in Philadelphia, and he had stayed behind with the child. The child loved Isabelle—more, Garrett often thought, than anyone else. She had a way with William Jeffrey that was magical, and Garrett adored that.
She had crossed his path an impossible number of times. He could not deny what he felt.
“Watch yourself, old boy,” Dovehouse had once said. “There are transgressions and there are transgressions. I’ve never taken you for a fool.”
He had been careful … so very careful. He was a young senator, with everything to lose—or win. There was so much greatness in store for him. It was a greatness that he himself would create.
But on that one night, the world conspired against his winning. Elizabeth, his family, his career, the voice of society—none of it had seemed to matter in that moment.
“You do … feel something for me then?” he had finally managed to ask Isabelle.
The slight movement of her head had at least suggested the answer that, for years, he had been longing to hear.
When he approached her, she did not resist him. There were spirits on his breath. Still she barely resisted him, even when he pulled her close.
Then her body tensed. He was holding her in his arms.
“No, Senator,” she said. “No!”
He did not listen. He did not hear her. He simply did what he wanted. But he would never be able to forgive himself. The years would not bring forgiveness.
The eyes that now stared into his face from across the street understood everything that had happened. For they had been there—watched it. Recorded it. Remembered it. In these eyes was the story he never told.
Elizabeth would see it. She had probably already seen it. There was no denying that Elizabeth would immediately see to whom this girl belonged. And she would chastise him for wanting to take this girl under his care. It would have been tantamount to a full confession, and Elizabeth would never stand for it.
And then, it was as if a shard of glass had pierced his heart. Garrett grabbed at his chest, lost his balance, and fell away from the street. The wall of a storefront caught him, and held him as he continued to stumble. Elizabeth was far away from him now, standing firm—and focused on the others across the street.
“Officer, arrest that man!” she shouted.
What happened next, no one could rightly say, for many accounts eventually grew out of the incident. But the young woman disappeared, “kidnapped by a black man,” some said, while Moody marched forward and into the center of the street. He had made no attempt to run, as the nearby officer moved toward him. It was the traffic, and not the spirit photographer, that had made the arrest so difficult.
Many people had observed this, and many disagreed on how things happened. But there was one observer on the street that day who was unquestionably sure of what he saw—a devilish observer who glanced at the four faces, from Moody and the girl, to Garrett and Elizabeth, and then back at all four of them again.
Their expressions confirmed everything that Dovehouse believed but didn’t know, as if the truth had been revealed to him from the torn pages of a stolen book.