“Matt. The day she buried Moore, the grief surrounding her was like a fire. Hot, impenetrable. It was not for him, that grief. I was sure it was for you, that you were dead.”
“It was not for me. We had a child.”
“What?”
“A daughter, Lavinia. I had her in my arms when Moore came. The bullet, it would have gone straight through my heart,
my gran says. But I was holding her, you see, so it frag … it, ah, fragmented.” Matthew felt his throat constrict around the phantom bullet.
“Christ. Oh, Christ.” Sidney pulled him down on the sofa, put the teacup in his shaking hand. “Drink, Matt,” he urged.
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Here, I’ll help you.”
The contact between their fingers was warm, concerned. Matthew closed his eyes, swallowed. The bullet dissolved. He could breathe. He leaned his head back on the cushions.
Sidney Lunt spoke softly. “The closest I got was the day she buried Moore. She put him next to her brother. Why there, I asked her. ‘Leland knows what he’s done,’ she said. ‘Leland will keep him there.’ Matt, Spense didn’t plan to fall in love with the Golden West. Or with me.”
“You?”
“Yes. Me. Yes, that love. The one that ‘dare not speak its name?’ Tell me you never once suspected … you didn’t.”
“No. I — I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry!”
Matthew Hart stayed silent a full minute. Blocks. Everywhere, blocks to the thought of it. Damnation. Make it come together. He knew there were men like that. Not all of them abominably cruel. You idiot. There’s the why. Why Sidney didn’t marry. “Sorry that I didn’t know, I mean,” he finally said. “Sidney, listen. This is hard for me.”
The smaller man flinched when Matthew Hart avoided his eyes. “It doesn’t change the fact that Olana was doing me a favor, does it?”
“Favor?”
“Yes, I bought the house. I set her up with a piece of the
Chronicle
as it finally went into the black. I badgered her into writing that column to help keep her sane while you were God knows where recovering. And Basil did manage to change her name to something that doesn’t make her twitch to hear. Olana and I, we’ve loved each other all our lives, Matt. Yes, she was
doing me a tremendous favor I’ll never forget.”
Matthew looked into Sidney Lunt’s eyes. “I can’t pretend to understand. I don’t. But if it helps, I don’t feel any different. Toward you, I mean.”
Sidney Lunt threw back his head and laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“That’s exactly what Olana said when I told her about Basil and me. Though I think she’s always known. Woman’s intuition and all that. Well, you must admit it bodes well. Look what I got her to do!”
“Damnation, Sidney.”
“Listen, I’m married to Spense. We even changed Olana’s name to mine on the certificate.”
“What?”
“So you’re only fornicating, she’s not an adulteress.”
“We ain’t —”
“Oh?” Sidney’s eyebrow shot up. “You’re not?”
“I mean, we are, but —”
“Well, that’s good!”
“But she divorced him, she Cherokee divorced him, and we got married. We married ourselves, in front of a statue even, before the baby came!”
Sidney looked down his nose. “Really, Matt. All we did was change the names on a perfectly legal document.”
“We’re legal, goddamn it!”
“All right! So you’re engaging in holy wedlock, and Spense and I kept her from being a bigamist! How does that sound?”
Matthew yanked his hand through his hair, exasperated.
Sidney took his shoulder, his voice no longer caustic. “Come back, Matt. We’ll figure a way through all this. Spense and I couldn’t be happy without her. And the two of you belong together, when are you going to see that?”
Matthew sat very still. He raised his head. “Sidney, I made this awful mistake.”
“Welcome to humanity.”
He stood. “I need a loan.”
“What?”
“Just until Monday.”
“How much? What for? What kind of banker are you?”
“Ten dollars. Will that buy a lot of flowers in this godforsaken town?”
Sidney grinned. “All you can hold.”
“Then that’s what I need.”
Matthew bought three shops out of the last of their day’s blooms, then camped himself on her front porch. He wouldn’t heed Patsy and Selby’s entreaties to come inside, but did put down the flowers to take their little boy on his lap, then watch him pick the petals from three roses before Patsy retrieved him. It was dusk and growing damp with cold when Olana came up the walk out of a fog patch.
He hastily gathered up the bouquets the baby had scattered. When she reached the top step, Matthew faced her, tongue-tied, unable even to release the flowers.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said.
She took his hand, led him inside, up the stairs, to her rooms.
He faced the windows, scanned the third-floor balcony of the house across the street. Through the loose-weave drapes, he saw a piano, a small man playing scales for a singing child. Sister Gertrude said Possum should have singing lessons. The scent of the flowers in his arms brought him back. He spoke to them. “Fact is, ’Lana, ain’t none of my business, how you … what you … I mean nothing matters more than that we found each other again, and you don’t hate me.”
“Shh,” she filled in the awkward space with the softest admonition, so soft he turned to make sure he had heard. That’s when he saw the loose-fitting chemise that was the only thing left on her. Her skin glowed through its delicate weave. He took in a pierced breath.
“I’m trying to do this up proper. And you’re — distracting me.”
“Enough to let go of that jungle?”
She stepped closer. The chemise drifted off her shoulders and settled around her ankles. He dropped the flowers. But they’d been holding him up, somehow. Without them, he went to his knees. His hands gently traced the contours of her hips. He kissed along the blue-silver scars of her pregnancy’s stretch marks. She raked her fingers through his hair. “Matthew —”
“Hmmm?”
“Your mustache.” She gasped out her pleasure. “I like it.”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t remember what happened to the flowers, but he caught their scent when they reached her bed. How much did he owe Sidney for them? He mustn’t forget, he was better with numbers now, he must show them. And the city, he must tell her. “Hey, ’Lana?” he summoned as she straddled him, as her fingers moved at his stiff collar.
“Yes?”
“I like cable cars.”
“Do you?” She laughed, pulling his shirt open. “Now that’s a wonder.”
Soon there was nothing between them, not even words. Her new grown hair sifted across his chest as she worked her hands, her lips, her limbs, toward pleasing him.
When she’d finally gone still in his arms, he breathed into her fragrant hair and kissed the pulse spot at her temple. “I visited at your parent’s today,” he said. “Part of my education from Sidney.”
“Sidney?” She lifted her head. “But I didn’t tell him anything. Of course. Basil did. They are both dear men, Matthew.”
He was not ready to concede her that, but he grunted.
“Bear,” she teased, resting her head against his chest again.
He did not know how to tell her of his instinctual fear of this stranger who held power, legal power over them. Let it go. It was so wondrous, her forgiveness, the feel of her in his arms again. Her voice led him away from that dark, confused part of his mind.
“The house is very different, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“When I came home Mother almost didn’t know me.”
“Me either.”
“Oh, darling,” she whispered, reaching up to kiss where the curve of his mustache met his lower lip.
He glided the back of his fingers along her bare shoulder. “So, we’re both different. Doesn’t mean we can’t go on. Changed.”
“Alone,” she whispered.
“We’re both alone, without her.”
Olana shivered. He drew up the covers and pulled her close.
The day Dora Whittaker caught Matthew unawares was a good day, when her husband was talking in full sentences, about his joy that their family was all together again. He’d thrown away one of his canes, too, to walk triumphant between his wife and sister. And he’d opened a bottle of his prized champagne, and they’d all had a glass, even Dora. Perhaps the champagne had given her the courage to take Matthew’s arm there, by the side gate that led to the trolley line he took home to the Mission District.
“Mr. Hart. Please.”
“Ma’am?”
“When Olana first came home, her dresses were spotted with milk. She had to bind up her … her bosom. There was a child?”
When he didn’t answer she pressed his hands, insisting.
“Lavinia,” he gave up that sacred thing, her name.
She would not break contact with his eyes or hands. Why, Matthew wondered. Why did women endure so much? “What happened to her?” she whispered.
He looked up the long block toward the bay, squinting as if the sun were pouring out blinding rays. But it was only a fog out there on the water, an afternoon fog rolling in.
“It was Darius Moore, wasn’t it? He killed his own child.”
Matthew didn’t think anything could get his eyes back on her. That did. “Not his, Ma’am. Olana’s. Hers and mine.”
He didn’t expect Dora Whittaker’s tears, or her hand taking
his, lifting it to her cheek. “My poor boy,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, well. Leastways I saw her in. Knew her a little while.”
He walked her back to the side door. “Matthew,” she called him his given name for the first time, “I have something I believe you were looking for.” She reached shaking fingers into her apron pocket and drew out the miniature doll of Olana, the one Leland had charged him to find years ago.
“I took his train from Winnie’s house. I never told anyone, even James. I had to have a piece of my son, a remembrance. I didn’t know this was inside.”
“Give it to her,” he said softly.
Trade. He had to offer her something in trade for this wondrous gift. Matthew reached into his vest and drew out the photograph. He hesitated only a moment, then placed it in her hands. She opened the holder, then cleared the thin tissue paper from the mounted image.
“There’s the lot of us,” he explained.
Her eyes scanned the faces. She gasped softly when she found the baby on Olana’s lap.
“Lavinia?”
“Yes. We took good care of her, Mrs. Whittaker. We took good care of them both until — I couldn’t get to my guns, you see? I never saw it coming.” He willed his racing heart to slow down, his mouth to talk sense, this woman was Lavinia’s grandmother, she deserved sense. But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t listening.
“She’s beautiful. A beautiful baby. And Olana. How proud, how strong she is.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Like you.”
“Who are the others?”
“This here’s Vita, she’s my mother. And Annie, my grandmother, is behind us. They helped Olana bring Lavinia in.”
“Bring in?”
“Give birth. They’re midwives.”
“And this child?”
“She’s my first daughter, Wesoma. We call her Possum. Her
mother, she drowned some years back. Gran and me, we look after Possum, here in the city. Though some days it’s the other way around.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She’s just married. Visiting with her new husband’s folks, over in Ireland.”
“How splendid for her. Your people have been very good to mine, Matthew.”
“We were your family a little while. Imagine. What one little baby can accomplish.”
“Matthew. I didn’t encourage this second marriage.”
“It don’t matter, Ma’am.”
“It does to me. That you know. Basil is all I would have wanted for Olana at one time. He’s what I sent her to the continent to find, before you two stumbled upon each other. But I didn’t urge it.
“After she married him she seemed more sad, more lonely than before. I know something of lost children, Matthew. I’m not quite as silly as the woman you knew.” She smiled. “Would you bring your family next time you visit?”
“Sure, Ma’am.”
“My name is Dora.”
Matthew was only dimly aware of the room’s light fading. His fingers ached for the photograph. But he couldn’t have taken it back from Dora. Lavinia was hers, too. Had he said good-bye to Olana’s mother, back at the house? He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember anything but the need to have the photograph again, wedged against his heart. It had never been far from him. The tightness in his throat threatened to strangle him. He closed his eyes against it. Phantom. Phantom pain. Not real. Sidney stood before him, resplendent in his opera cape.