The Other Side

Angie sighed, sinking back against the stiff horsehair cushion of her cousin’s closed buggy. “All right, we were both wonderful. Also splendid and brilliant and crafty and clever. Especially you.” A passing streetlamp lit Henry’s face long enough for her to see his smile—a lovely thing, and she was falling into the habit of trying to provoke it. “I’m beginning to understand,” she said, “the appeal of your profession.”

Henry sidetracked certain subjects so regularly, she was getting used to it. “My grandfather used to call him the white sheep of the family, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. I think Lucien probably does loathe you, because you’re everything he isn’t.”

“It is true. He’s homely and plain, you’re—not. He’s stiff and uncomfortable, not just with other people but with himself, and you . . . you’re the sort of man people want to be around, because you seem so at ease with yourself.”

“No. I suppose that might’ve been true once, but . . . ” He shifted to face forward again. As the buggy turned a corner, she was vividly aware of the part of her thigh that pressed against his. He, she was sure, didn’t even notice.

“Do you think we can be ready for the séance by Thursday? I can tell Mrs. Grimmett something about the moon if we need more time—it needs to be full, it needs to be new.”

“Yes. Even if we don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t. One thing I don’t understand, Henry. If everyone’s holding hands around a table, how can we play any tricks? Our hands will be tied—literally!”

The buggy had stopped in front of Mrs. Mortimer’s. Henry didn’t move, though, so Angie didn’t either. “You are,” he said, and stopped. “You are the most . . . ” She thought it would be another of their jokes—You were great; No, you were great—but his voice changed. “Angiolina Darlington, you are . . . the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.” His eyes, glowing with warmth, seemed to see nothing but her. He leaned nearer.

He was going to kiss her. She was going to let him. Their faces were so close, she could feel the soft exhale of his breath on her skin. Hell with it. The dim thought floated past, and every scruple, every misgiving she’d ever had about him—and she’d had many—drifted away. They didn’t matter. Nothing did but this.

The long, delicious moment stretched. I’m going to die, she thought clearly. She lifted her hand to touch him—just as he pulled away. “Late,” he mumbled, and opened the buggy door.

With her own light out and the curtain open, Angie could see, across Lexington Street, the rectangle of gold that was Henry’s window. Once he even walked past it, a dark, fleet silhouette, but that was a quarter of an hour ago; since then, no sighting. But his light was still on. She imagined him in bed, reading.

A flash of movement in the yard made her press her nose to the glass and peer harder. Oh—Astra. He’d recently fallen in love with the dog next door, a spaniel named Lulu with long, curly ears and saucer-sized eyes. Henry said he was hardly ever home anymore.

Margaret, curled up at the bottom of the bed, never fell in love. Never came into her estrous cycle, was the technical term. She’d been born that way. Neutral.

Angie used to feel a kinship with the cat in that way. Not literally, of course; metaphorically. Passion was something that afflicted other people, she’d thought, not her. She knew all about it, though. You could say she’d spent her childhood watching other people behaving passionately. What a mess it was. Chaos, absolute chaos—her parents’ marriage was a perfect example in miniature, and a traveling theatrical troupe was a perfect example in . . . whatever the opposite of miniature was. Maxiature.

Her grandparents’ marriage—that was her ideal. They’d completely adored each other, but their love had been steady and deep and calm. Fight? Never, not a cross word. They’d lived a rich, satisfied life, like two devoted fish on the bottom of the ocean. Shouting was the sound that had characterized her parents’ marriage; her grandparents’—laughter.

That’s what she wanted—if anything. Really, she was fine the way she was. But if she ever did have a chance for a partner, a life companion, God forbid it should be anyone like Henry Cleland. That would be like—like marrying her father. Another huckster, another showman, just in a different field. Please, God forbid.

She might be an aging spinster, but she wasn’t completely inexperienced, no indeed. She’d had a suitor once, a serious one, too—Abel Odenton, of Spears, Rank, & Odenton Insurance Agency; they had an office on the square and one in Springfield as well, so he was an “up-and-comer,” or so he had often assured her. Maybe she should’ve married Abel. If anyone. Or someone like him: steady, even, safe. (Safe—an underappreciated quality, practically ridiculed in romantic novels, where the hero was always the risky, exciting one. How childish.) Abel, unfortunately, had had a disqualifying flaw she’d managed to rise above until the first (and last) time he’d kissed her: fishy-smelling breath. (Why? Why? Did he eat tuna every day? It had been like kissing Margaret.)

Henry . . . would be lovely to kiss. She even liked the smell of him. The way his hair fell. His strong, straight shoulders. His wrists. His sideburns. She could go on.

Obviously he didn’t feel the same, although she would prefer to attribute other motives to him: he was too much of a gentleman to kiss her—he never mixed business with pleasure—he didn’t feel he’d known her long enough. But she couldn’t have it both ways. If he was the confidence artist she’d hoped for when she’d hired him, then he was unlikely to have gentlemanly scruples about something as frivolous and unimportant as kissing old maid Angie Darlington.

What a cruel irony. She got in bed, and when the cat crawled up to snuggle, she asked her, “How do people ever get together?” Margaret yawned, reminding her again—twice in one night—of Abel Odenton. “Why couldn’t I have loved him? Why can’t Henry love me?”

Pointless questions, the kind not to ask yourself right before trying to fall asleep. Anyway, this was no time to be distracted by a hopeless crush she’d be over as soon as Henry was gone. Focus, she told herself. You’ve got a house to haunt.

Mrs. Mortimer had already gone to bed when she’d gotten home tonight, but tomorrow, first thing, Angie would pop the question her landlady had probably wanted to hear all her life but never realized it: “Would you like to go to a séance?”