Chapter 20

The immediate excitement is over. I can sit beside Jarrett on his deck above the lake and talk with him almost calmly. Myra has been taken to a hospital, where she will recover from the flesh wound inflicted when Vasily struggled with her for Ross’s gun. The police have been questioning them, and the whole miserable story is out.

There can be no escaping the horror ahead that will keep everything painfully public for a long while. Myra will be tried for Gretchen’s murder, but Jarrett believes that Vasily, for all his original intent, has done nothing legally criminal, and he certainly saved my life. All along he had been trying to stop his former wife from carrying out the plan she had launched them into. They were two adventurers, and perhaps that was her greatest appeal for him. Yet I think Gretchen was not wholly cheated by Vasily in their marriage.

Brett had managed to leave the house before everything exploded. She and Gretchen had been coming close to the truth, but neither had suspected that Vasily’s former wife, Myra Ritter Karl, alias the actress Elberta Sheldon, had installed herself so impudently right under their noses at Poinciana.

When Jarrett had left for the hospital, along with the police, I had gone upstairs to see Allegra. She had heard the shot and it had brought her out of bed in trembling fright. I helped Coxie to quiet her, and then we sat together in her little gray and red parlor, while I told her everything. And at last she talked to me.

The sound waves of that shot shattering their way through Poinciana seemed to have broken through her defenses. That she had seen her granddaughter fall from the tower had nearly destroyed her sanity. Perhaps would have, if she hadn’t been able to retreat into her own refuge. She had known Gretchen was in the tower, because her granddaughter had stopped to see what she was doing, had discovered that she had the Sleeping Mermaid again, and had taken it for safekeeping.

Yet Allegra had never known who was in the tower with Gretchen that day. She had been engrossed in examining her lovely gowns, lost in her memories, her fantasies, and she hadn’t seen Myra climb the stairs. However, she had been standing near a window, holding a dress up to the light, when Gretchen had fallen past the glass. She had heard her scream, heard the crash of her fall—and the shock and horror had been too much for her to bear. She had fled into the past, dressing herself in a favorite gown and going by way of her secret passage to dance in the ballroom—where I had found her.

After that, she had drifted in and out, between past and present. Whenever the present came too close and threatened her with terror and collapse, she ran from it, saving herself. But she could have told us nothing useful anyway.

A few tumultuous days have passed, and now for this little while we can sit on the deck outside Jarrett’s cottage, watching the brilliance of a Florida sunset. The poinciana tree is green now with plumy leafage, and I feel a deep sorrow because Gretchen will never see it again. Or Ross.

Jarrett and I are making our plans quietly, because we know now that there is never enough time. We will be married as soon as possible. When we can leave Poinciana, we will take Keith and Allegra with us to some suburb of New York or Washington, where we can find a smaller house, and live the sort of lives that will better suit us all.

Though I know we will return. Allegra must have her say about what will be done with Poinciana. She too wants it to be shared with those who come to visit in the future. Perhaps as Flagler’s beautiful Whitehall is being shared.

But for now—for this little while—I am content to sit beside Jarrett, my hand warm in his, while Keith and Brewster play on the lawn nearby, rolling coconuts. I am content to experience these last peaceful moments at Poinciana.

We can never forget what has happened here, but there are good new memories to be made, and so much lies ahead for all of us.