There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age.
—HELEN ROWLAND
SOPHIE
Crossing the Third Avenue Bridge into Manhattan, an hour later
JAY NEEDS a cigarette. He asks Sophie if she minds.
“Not at all,” she replies. Who cares about a cigarette, after all? Sophie doesn’t. The top is down, the warm draft whips away the smoke.
“You all right?” he asks, after he’s put the cigarette case safely back in the inside pocket of his jacket
“Not particularly.” Her voice is braver than she expects. That’s something, isn’t it?
“Poor Sophie. I’m awfully sorry. I suppose he wasn’t much of a father to you, but—well, it’s an awful way to go, a damned shame that you were there—”
And Sophie begins to laugh, just high hysterical giggles rippling out over the Harlem River, louder and faster and louder. She bends over, clutching her ankles, staring at the floorboards, gasping for air, and each time she thinks she’s got herself under control, the giggles bubble back up in her throat.
And that’s when she realizes that her shoes don’t match.
BECAUSE JAY IS SO ABSURD. Sophie’s not really thinking about her father, is she? Not yet. That’s too immense to comprehend, too stunning, the sight of her father flinging himself upon her just as Lumley fired his gun. The little jerk his body made as the bullet penetrated his back and sliced through his heart, stopping the muscle instantly. The police said she was lucky the shot didn’t find her, too, but apparently her body crashed to the ground at just the right angle. The spent bullet ended up striking the wall instead.
That her father—her father!—just died, died just now, is no longer alive, has snuffed out his own life to save her life, because Mr. Lumley was going to shoot her: my God, that’s too much to think about. There isn’t even any pain, just the numb list of Things She Must Do. Find Virginia and communicate this development, before the newspapers generously handle that task on her behalf. (The reporters were already gathering outside the Pickwick Arms, clamoring for information, and Lieutenant Curtis had to escort the four of them—Sophie and Jay, Octavian and Mrs. Marshall—out through a hidden back door and a dark-shrouded basement that looked suspiciously like an underground saloon.) Make funeral arrangements. (Where on earth did you bury such a man? Greenwich? New York City? Boston, where he was raised and disowned?) Lawyers. Money. Personal effects. All those things, lining up like shocked miniature soldiers at in the center of her mind, while a single question pounds and pounds at the back of her mind: WHY?
Why would her father submit to a verdict of guilty in the murder of his wife, when he hadn’t committed the crime?
Because he hadn’t committed the crime. He didn’t murder his wife. Sophie knows that now. She knows that as surely as she now understands the terror that inhabited her body while she ascended the elevator in the company of Mr. Lumley, sucking his peppermint candy in greedy smacks of his tongue and mouth.
But she will never know why, or how, because her father is dead. She will never speak to him again. She’ll never know who he really is, who he really was, and it’s that—the shock of a story cut off in the middle, a life cut off in the middle—which she can’t comprehend. Can’t stretch her mind to encompass.
It’s over. She’s safe. And her father is dead.
And the front of her mind? That’s occupied, too. Stupidly occupied by another thought entirely, by an image: the image of Octavian, escorting Mrs. Marshall quietly to his green Model T, opening the door for her, settling her inside. His face absolutely still, not even looking her way. Not even a parting glance, as the magazines called it. She heard the motor start, the pistons settle. The smell of exhaust.
The thing about Mrs. Marshall, she’s so good at managing everything. The graceful way she extracted Octavian from Sophie’s side, the way Sophie found herself being led tenderly away by Jay Ochsner, while Octavian performed the same service for Mrs. Marshall. How had that happened? A few smooth words, a limpid gaze. A strange air of inevitability. Octavian didn’t even struggle. Like an animal led to slaughter, except he was doing the leading. He tucked Mrs. Marshall’s hand into his elbow and escorted her downstairs like the most delicate creature, which Mrs. Marshall certainly was not. Delicate. My God. Those shoes. How did Sophie come to wear one brown shoe and one black?
The car is pulling over to the side, slowing, stopping. The brake sets with a groan. Jay’s arms surround her shoulders. “Poor Sophie,” he croons. “Poor little dear. What a shock. No wonder.”
His chest is nice and warm. She lets her head rest there for a moment. She thinks of the way Octavian held her hand in the hotel bedroom, the way his palm felt around her fingers. He didn’t say anything, just allowed the understanding to flow between them, because he had just killed a man for her sake, hadn’t he? He had killed Lumley for her. They were united in a deep and primitive way by this terrible thing. Death. And now Octavian was unspeakably comforting her, and she was comforting him, and in that singular moment she wasn’t alone, and everything was going to be all right.
“It’s all right, darling,” Jay says. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll take care of you, darling, don’t worry about a thing. Jay will take care of you.”
Her head’s so heavy. Jay’s shirt is rumpled and damp, and Sophie realizes she’s crying. That her giggles have turned into shameful sobs.
“Jay will take care of you,” he says again, stroking her arm, and Sophie closes her eyes and thinks, No, you won’t.
THE TRAFFIC’S AWFUL, AND BY the time they turn the corner of Thirty-Second Street, Sophie has recovered her composure. She feels, in fact, quite clearheaded. She will telephone Mr. Manning and schedule a meeting for this afternoon, in the firm’s offices downtown, to sort out the events of this morning into some kind of logical order, to solve whatever mysteries can be solved—Mrs. Lumley is still alive, after all, still able to explain some part of the story—and in the meantime she will take a long bath and a nap. She will change clothes. She will summon the servants (surely they will have appeared by now) and explain the situation, or what she understands of it, and Dot will make her some lunch. Once all the practical affairs have been concluded, she will join Virginia in Florida, and they will decide what’s to be done. What they will do with their lives. Sophie’s not certain what that means, but she does know that it won’t include Jay Ochsner. Maybe not even any man at all, ever. She doesn’t seem to have much luck with them.
The car rolls to a stop, and Sophie doesn’t wait for Jay to set the brake and walk around the fender to open her door. She reaches for the handle and helps herself.
“Sophie! Wait!”
She takes the key from her pocketbook and opens the door. “Come on in,” she says, tossing her hat on the stand and the pocketbook on the table. “I won’t be a moment.”
When she arrives back downstairs, Jay is standing in the parlor, hat between his hands, as if he’s not quite sure whether he’s been invited to stay. Sophie pauses on the threshold, squinting a little at the polite figure he makes, planted near the window, through which the golden afternoon sun is still pouring. The diffuse light is gentle on his worried forehead.
She steps forward and holds out a square box of navy-blue leather, stamped in gold. “Thank you,” she says.
He stares at the box, and then at her face. “Thank you?”
“You’ve been very kind. I appreciate your driving me home. But I can’t marry you, and I don’t wish to raise your hopes. It’s simply impossible.”
He stands there, a bit stupid with shock, a few steps away. His hair’s all broken up into thin, greasy pieces from the drive, and his eyes squint in the sunshine. His poor suit, all rumpled. He turns his head a few degrees, taking in the decoration of the nearby wall, and says, “You do know that Rofrano’s my sister’s lover, don’t you? They’re planning to get married, once she divorces her husband.”
“I know that.”
“And you don’t care? You don’t—Look, Sophie.” He turns back to her, wearing a look of pathetic appeal, like a dog that doesn’t realize it’s no longer a puppy. “I know I’m not young and brash, like these bright fellas out there, but I do love you. I’ve stood by you, all this time.”
“You’ve stood by me? Or my money?”
He winces. “By you. I won’t say your money wasn’t a part of it, in the beginning. But I really—I came to care for you. It’s true. And I’ve already sowed my oats, Sophie. I’m ready to settle down and be a husband to a nice girl, a sweet loyal girl like you. I think you’ll see, when all the shock wears off, that—”
“No, Jay.” She says it kindly. “It’s not the shock. It’s just impossible. You know it is.”
He looks down at her hand, which is still outstretched, containing the navy-blue box. The rose-shaped Ochsner engagement ring.
“Jay. Please. Let’s be dignified about this.”
He says something, a couple of words she can’t hear. He lifts his head, and good gracious! His eyes are actually wet. Wet and blue. But he takes the box anyway, and then holds her hand in his soft, damp palm.
“Then I guess it’s good-bye,” he says, and he leans forward, kisses her cheek, and walks back down the hallway and out the door, settling his hat on his hair as he goes.