From This Moment (22 page)

There wasn’t much time for that. It was Tuesday afternoon, and her regular four o’clock telephone call to her parents was coming up. Would Ernest let her use the telephone in the archives now that she’d been terminated from City Hall?

There was only one way to find out. The archives telephone was so much quieter than using one in a noisy hotel lobby.

Ernest was surprised to see her as she entered the archives. Setting down a stack of cataloging records he was adding to a drawer, he looked up with concern in his face.

“I’m real sorry about what happened,” he said. “I wish they hadn’t let you go. You were the only nice lady in this whole building.”

She doubted it, but given the snickering from her fellow stenographers whenever they spoke of Ernest, perhaps he had cause for his statement.

“I was wondering if I could still use the telephone,” she asked. “My mother’s condition is precarious, and I haven’t been able to find a better spot to place a call. Please?”

To her relief, he nodded toward the telephone at the small desk near the map cases and went back to sorting records.

It took several minutes for the various switchboard operators to patch the call through to her father’s house, but soon his warm voice greeted her. “How is my darling girl?” he asked in a hearty voice.

A little too hearty . . . as though he was going through the motions of happiness. “I’m fine. How is Mother?”

His pause was so long that she worried their connection had been severed, but finally he replied. “There are still bad days,” he acknowledged. “This is one of them.”

The hollow despair in his voice sliced through her. He went on to say that Eloise was going through a phase in which she obsessed over memories, dragging out Gwendolyn’s old drawings, school essays, even the toys from their childhood saved in their attic.

“Gwendolyn wouldn’t have wanted this,” Stella said, leaning over to rub the pounding in her forehead. Gwendolyn had loved to dream about the day she would be married and have children. She already had baby names picked out and had even knitted two baby blankets, one in pink and one in blue. Just thinking about those things made Stella’s heart ache over the dreams that would never come true for Gwendolyn.

“Papa, I’m worried,” she said. “I know this scar will live with us all forever, but Mother’s obsessing isn’t natural.”

“I know, baby girl,” he said. “I’m hoping to coax her out on a trip, just the two of us. There’s a resort hotel in Boulder Point I think she will enjoy.”

“Boulder Point, Massachusetts? Why there?”

“Because it’s where we went on our honeymoon, and she loved it. We need to rekindle what we’ve still got. I love her too much to watch her keep drifting away.”

“I’ll be praying for you both,” she said before hanging up the telephone.

On the walk back to Evelyn’s house, she stepped into a church with an unlocked door. She didn’t attend here. The last time Stella had set foot in a church had been for Gwendolyn’s funeral.

She’d always been a lackluster Christian. She didn’t have time for mundane rituals like attending church services when the glittering temptations of London beckoned. The world was bright and dazzling, and withdrawing from it to pay homage to God seemed like an interruption. There would be time to settle down and become more devout when she was older. At
least that was what she’d always believed. Who could anticipate how brutally short life could be?

At least Gwendolyn had been a good Christian . . . one of the many ways her baby sister was a better person than she. Gwendolyn had been the good sister, the modest one who obeyed rules and aspired to the simple joys of marriage and motherhood. It was Stella who lived recklessly, seizing each day with wide-open hands and squeezing every drop of joy from it. Why did God have the good sister perish and leave the wild sister unscathed?

Stella said a brief prayer for Gwendolyn, but mostly she prayed for her parents. The undertow of grief was dragging her mother farther away each day, and it seemed her brave, courageous father was floundering in his quest to help.

She squeezed her hands tighter, wondering if God would pay more attention to her appeals if she were a better person. It made her a little angry. Maybe she was a lousy Christian, but what had her parents ever done to deserve this misery?

It wasn’t fair. Her parents were good people. Not perfect, but good. And Gwendolyn had been the best of them all. What kind of loving God—

She stopped the angry train of thought. She’d read the book of Job, she knew life wasn’t fair, but it was one thing to read the words and another to take them into her heart and accept them.

Stella hadn’t realized quite how serious the injunction against
Scientific World
was until she noticed that Evelyn had not returned from the office until almost nine o’clock that night.

And in the middle of the crisis yesterday, she had waltzed in and pestered Romulus with pleas for more help. She had to make it right. So far, he and Evelyn were the only allies she’d made in Boston, and she couldn’t afford to alienate half of that team.

Not that she regretted locking horns with him. Romulus was a force of nature whose personality would overwhelm any woman without a good, strong backbone, and Stella never shied away from a fight. Although she’d grown up in the loving household of Karl and Eloise Westergaard, their family was a boisterous, turbulent one. Her parents fought as fiercely as they loved.

The classic example came when Stella was twenty-two and had been invited to display her lithographs at the Royal Exhibition Hall in London. Her father refused to permit it, and since she didn’t have the funds to buy ship’s passage on her own, it looked as though the invitation would come to nothing.

But her mother was determined to see her daughter shine in London. Eloise called a family meeting at the modest kitchen table overlooking her rose garden, the place where disagreements were always thrashed out. Her father was intransigent. He refused to even sit at the table and kept pacing before the kitchen window, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Stella can display her pictures at the gallery in Cornell,” he said. “No daughter of mine is traipsing off into a foreign den of iniquity.”

“And no daughter of mine will be shackled in obscurity when she has the chance to fly with the eagles,” her mother retorted.

Eloise set an amethyst bracelet on the table, the stones clicking in the suddenly silent room. It was the bracelet Karl had given Eloise on their tenth wedding anniversary. “I shall sell this bracelet and buy two tickets and accompany my daughter to London,” Eloise said calmly.

“Don’t you dare,” Karl said, warning heavy in his tone.

They were fighting words, but Eloise did not rise to the bait. “What are you so afraid of?”

“What rational man wouldn’t be terrified of sending his daughter alone to London?” Karl roared.

“We can find a solution without you shouting the house down and stomping on all of Stella’s hopes and ambition.” Her mother pushed the amethyst bracelet to the center of the table. “If it takes the sale of some purple rocks to make my daughter’s dream come true, I’m willing to make the trade.”

“Don’t you dare,” her father said again, but this time he whispered the words gently. His tone was laden with love, affection, and yes, a healthy dose of fear. He sank down into a chair, blotting his brow with a handkerchief. “Those amethysts are precious to me, as are Stella’s dreams.” He turned his attention to her. “I’m sorry, baby girl. I’m terrified of setting you loose into the world. Your mother and I will go with you to London. Perhaps we’ll even wait for the spring so Gwendolyn can come with us.”

Two months later, the four of them boarded a steamer to England, her mother proudly wearing her amethyst bracelet as she stood beside Stella on the deck of the ship as it pulled out of the port in New York. Her fear of water made it hard for Stella to endure the crossing, but if her father could be brave enough to send his daughter into the wider world, she could face her fear of water with no whining.

And the four of them had a magical time in London. Her parents stuck close to her side as the grand salons and museums were opened to her. She signed contracts with two famous publishing houses on Fleet Street, earning a healthy commission to illustrate a novel and three scientific textbooks. Her lithographs were sold for staggering sums. She moved through the art circles of London, dressed to the nines and laughing with an endless parade of suitors. Her popularity was due as much to her novelty and personality as her artwork, and she savored every moment of it.

At first, her parents worried about Stella’s meteoric rise in the world of artistic acclaim. Karl accompanied her everywhere,
hovering in the background like an archangel ready to descend at the least provocation. Some girls might have chafed at such vigilance, but not Stella. Every day of her life she was secure in the knowledge she was loved, protected, and supported to pursue whatever high-flying ambitions she could envision.

At the end of their one-month visit, her family returned home, while Stella chose to remain in England. None of it would have happened if her mother hadn’t had the backbone to confront her husband, or if Karl didn’t have the respect and patience to listen to an opinion he didn’t want to hear.

Stella rolled from bed. This time it was she who was wrong, not Romulus, and she would make it right. Tackling him at his office probably wasn’t the best strategy. Romulus was easily distractible, and he wouldn’t welcome her intrusion when he was surrounded by his duties at the office.

Evelyn concurred when Stella brought up the subject. “He always takes breakfast in the dining room at his hotel,” she said as she sipped coffee and fed bits of pastry to the housekeeper’s two children while Miss Delaney scrambled eggs and bacon in the kitchen. It smelled wonderful, and a plate had been set for her, but Stella did not want to linger. She had no idea how long Romulus loitered at breakfast and wanted to intercept him before he left for the office.

The dining room at the hotel was almost full, but Romulus sat alone, reading a newspaper and sipping coffee. She had dressed to impress this morning and attracted her fair share of attention as she sauntered through the tables toward Romulus. “May I join you?”

His eyes widened in surprise as he set down the newspaper. He made a great show of surveying her emerald cutaway jacket, slim-fitting black skirt, and lingering on the Byzantine gold choker snug against her neck.

“Disappointing,” he murmured. “I’ve always held to the belief in only one exclamation point per ensemble.”

She raised a brow. “You are
not
going to give me fashion advice.”

“A fancy choker
and
a cutaway jacket? Too much icing on the cake, dearest.”

He turned his attention back to the newspaper. He had a point, but she’d swallow strychnine before admitting it. The tailoring of her jacket was a masterpiece of engineering, but she probably had overdone it with the choker.

“May I join you?” she asked again with forced brightness. She had an apology to deliver and could hardly do so standing up.

He gestured to the vacant seat opposite him.

“I’m sorry about the way I burst in on you yesterday. I was obsessed with my own needs and didn’t realize the problems I had been causing you, so I’m truly sorry.” She risked a wobbly smile and waited for his reply.

“Does this work for you a lot?”

“What?” She honestly didn’t know what to make of his chilly tone. She’d just delivered a brilliant apology, and he was supposed to accept it.

“Batting your lashes. Gracing me with your presence. I just wondered if other men are so desperate for your company they roll over for it.”

“They usually recognize a genuine apology when they hear one. I was wrong about asking for another autopsy. It was a stupid idea.”

“What were you thinking?” he burst out, exasperation in his tone.

“I wasn’t! I was letting my emotions run away with my judgment, and I was wrong. I wanted to find a villain in all this mess and was ready to skewer Dr. Lentz because he was convenient.
I truly am sorry. You’ve been nothing but helpful, and I’ve been an idiot.”

The first hint of a smile curved his mouth. “Have you eaten? The eggs Benedict here are out of this world.”

And that was that. A waiter delivered two platters of eggs Benedict and a bowl of freshly cut melon. They talked about everything from the horticultural properties of melons to the excavation of land beneath the Charles River for the subway. Stella had once illustrated a series of drawings about underground caves and karsts and had learned a great deal about how subterranean water could produce fissures and sinkholes beneath the surface of the land. Romulus took notes as she spoke, suggesting it might make an interesting article for the magazine someday.

This felt so comfortable. So domestic. She could imagine having breakfast with Romulus every morning. Which was a problem. Romulus was relentless in his determination to escape any woman who dared get too close.

And she was getting far too close. It seemed that when Romulus walked into a room, he sucked up half the oxygen. The clocks stopped, the world slowed its rotation. Honestly, if anyone could see the inner workings of her mind, she’d be locked up in a lunatic asylum. She’d never been clobbered with an adolescent infatuation, and her attraction to Romulus was equal parts thrilling and mortifying.