The Lucky Ones (6 page)

6

IT WAS THE HEAT THAT WOKE CORDELIA. SHE ROLLED over in the twist of her sheets and saw that the maid had been there. A polished wood standing tray had been erected, and there was a pot of coffee and a carafe of orange juice waiting for her. The newspaper had not come with the rest of the breakfast things, and for a moment she felt short-tempered with Milly, who never could seem to concentrate on a single thing at a time long enough to do it right and ought to know by now how Cordelia liked to start her morning.

But then she remembered how hard Milly had taken it about Danny, who died from bullet wounds the night Astrid was kidnapped, and also how busy Astrid kept her now that she lived at Dogwood, and decided that there was no use in being irritated. The Vault had been full last night, and Max Darby loved her—at least, she was pretty sure he’d thought it. Anyway, that habit of newspaper reading, of trying to learn about the world from smudgy broadsheets, seemed like a relic of her old life. Especially when she stood up and walked across the thick white carpets, past the low, fashionable white furniture of the Calla Lily Suite—which even now was stocked daily with fresh deliveries of its namesake flower—and peeked down on the rolling landscape of soft green velvet that was Dogwood’s west lawn. She was looking at her father’s vision of what life ought to be, and she knew that she had found it, too.

With a sigh of satisfaction, Cordelia determined to go find Charlie and tell him how well they had done the night before. It was a fine thing to have a brother, and though they never needed to say it out loud, they could glance at each and silently know how proud Darius would have been of them. She stepped into a pair of wide-legged trousers and an ivory camisole that fluttered at the neckline, and pinned her hair away from her face so that the skin of her neck would remain as cool as possible. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and went downstairs.

As she came onto the second-floor landing, she saw Keller, one of Charlie’s boys, coming out of the billiards room, and she smiled brightly. “Morning,” she said.

He averted his eyes. “Afternoon now.”

Before she could reply, he was past her down the stairs.

“Is something wrong with Keller?” she asked as she walked into Charlie’s office and sank into the big chair opposite his desk.

He was facing the window and didn’t turn around to look at her right away. Outside, the sky was hazing over, and she wondered if more rain wasn’t on the way.

“Who?”

“Keller! The new man. The one who can’t seem to grow a beard.” A few seconds passed without a response from Charlie, and her fine mood began to flicker. She wanted Charlie to feel as light with good fortune as she did, but he wouldn’t even look at her.

“Nothing is wrong. He just didn’t get much sleep last night, and I expect he’s feeling it today.” The chair groaned when Charlie took his feet off the sill and began to slowly swivel.

“Charlie!” she exclaimed, once he was facing her. “You look like hell. You might think about getting more sleep yourself.”

He smiled thinly and lit a cigarette before putting his oxfords up on the desk. “Dad never slept,” Charlie said after a while.

“He didn’t?”

“Said he didn’t like it. Said when he slept he just mostly tossed and turned and worried he was missing something.”

“Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have wanted you to.”

The focus of Charlie’s eyes drifted and became indistinct. They were milky, tired eyes, and the skin beneath them had a punched-out quality. “He would have wanted
you
to sleep. He always said you were just as pretty as your mother, and just as precious, and that you should be pampered the way he wasn’t able to pamper Fanny when she was alive.” He held the cigarette between his index finger and thumb, contemplating it. “I have one memory of her, did I ever tell you?”

Cordelia took in a breath. “No, you didn’t.”

“Well, it’s not a memory so much. More like a picture in my mind of a shack somewhere, probably some hideout of Dad’s, and they were listening to the radio and dancing. Duluth Hale was there, it was when they were still friends, and I can remember his fat face with its big gaping pie-hole, and dancing around Mrs. Hale, and everyone laughed a lot.”

“That sounds nice,” Cordelia said with a smile. She hadn’t known that Duluth Hale and her father had been friends like that, but it didn’t sound so bad, now that she was hearing it.

“They were probably drunk, and Dad probably smacked me later and told me I should have come from a nice, pretty girl like Fanny instead of the no-good one I actually crawled out of.”

Charlie still wouldn’t meet Cordelia’s eyes, and she was somewhat glad of this, because her face had grown long. She didn’t like to think that there was any difference between her and Charlie, or that their father could have said a mean thing like that. But she didn’t have to conjure a reply, because Elias Jones came in then and walked straight for the desk.

“Cordelia, I need to talk to Charlie.” The way he spoke, Cordelia knew he meant alone.

“Of course.” She stood up awkwardly, glad to go but also wishing she could have thought of something to say to her brother.

“I’ll want to talk to you, too. Later.”

She nodded and, after a few seconds of unsuccessfully trying to catch Charlie’s eye, went out of the room.

The dark mahogany of the second-floor landing had an icing of pale blue light from the skylight high above, and Cordelia paused, staring at it, wondering why she felt so ill at ease. She had seen Charlie in foul moods before, and there were always things that Jones wanted to discuss with him alone. For a while she hovered there, frozen, unsure whether to go back to her room or downstairs. Then the door to the billiard room opened and one of the boys came out. He paused when he saw Cordelia, and then his eyelids half sank and his mouth curled in a funny way.

“What?” she demanded indignantly.

But he only shrugged and went down, taking the stairs two at a time. The door to the billiard room was ajar and she paused for a moment in the door frame, as though she might catch someone doing something that would explain the pall that hung over Dogwood. But there was only one person left in the room—Victor, Astrid’s bodyguard, sitting on the worn sofa by the window, his legs crossed and a newspaper open in front of him.

“Miss Cordelia.” He stood up when he saw her and put the paper away.

“Where’s Astrid?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her all morning, is she all right?” He said it too quickly, then afterward cracked his knuckles as though he was embarrassed.

“I suppose there’s nothing strange about her being in bed past noon,” Cordelia replied slowly. “That’s how she was brought up.”

“Right.” Victor cleared his throat. “Of course.”

“Victor, what’s wrong?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

But before he could reply, she heard her name being said on the radio, and she forgot about Victor and charged toward the droning sound.

“…ever since Miss Grey entered the young pilot’s life, his golden touch seemed compromised. Whereas before he was incapable of doing wrong, now he erred, his interest in flying went slack, and though he was reputed never to touch alcohol, he was spotted in clubs where drinking was known to be the main draw. Of course, there were many in the sporting world who thought he would return to form once the bootlegger’s daughter was out of his life, but as was reported in the Night Owl column this morning, it appears they’ve been seeing each other regularly, that in fact Cordelia was visiting Max Darby in his mother’s Harlem apartment and was apparently in on the secret that he was a Negro by birth…”

Cordelia’s eyes rolled slowly toward Victor. Her face was numb, and she couldn’t begin to think of what to say. “It’s in the paper, too, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know—”

“Never mind.” She crossed toward him and snatched the paper out of his hand and flipped to the gossip section. There, taking up almost a quarter of the page, was a photo of her and Max stepping out of Mrs. Darby’s apartment, and then a smaller one of Max the next morning saying good-bye to his mother on the street. In the black-and-white photo the difference in their skin tone was exaggerated, but you could perfectly see the family resemblance.

After that she was deaf to the radio and the ceiling fan and anything Victor might have tried to say to her.

“If Jones comes looking for me, tell him I’ve gone on a long walk.”

She didn’t gauge Victor’s reaction. By the time the last word was out of her mouth she was at the door, and shortly thereafter she had arrived in the first-floor library, where she asked to be connected to the Hudson Laurels’ place.

“Mrs. Hudson Laurel’s line.” It was a strange, prim voice, and though Cordelia had never met Max’s patrons, she sensed that this was a secretary and not the lady of the house herself.

“Is Max at home?”

“I’m sorry.” There was a long pause. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Cordelia’s eyes sank closed, and she set her teeth. The horrid coldness of this statement made her want to lash out, but she knew that wouldn’t help her any. All that mattered in that moment was finding Max. “Yes,” she said evenly, “you do.”

On the other end of the line there was a sharp exhalation. “Well, he’s not here. Mrs. Laurel can’t have him in the house anymore. He was like a member of the family, you know, and that just wouldn’t do anymore. She was a suffragette! She’s still sore
they
got the vote before we did.”

Cordelia put her forehead into her palm, and then drew her long fingers across her face until they were massaging her temples. “Please,” she whispered. “Please just tell me where he is.”

After a long pause the woman went on in a changed tone. “There only ever was one place he seemed to like going. Mr. and Mrs. Laurel had a terrible row this morning, and I suppose he hasn’t had the heart to tell the boy that he won’t be able to fund him anymore.”

“Thank you.” Cordelia put the receiver down and allowed herself one long moment with her eyelids pressed closed. After that, instinct took over. She drove fast toward the gates, ignoring the shouting of the guard who wanted to know where she was going and if Charlie had approved it. Ignoring him was easy, because she could barely hear anything over her self-recriminating thoughts.

When Letty cracked an eye she saw that the light filtering in through the window was not yet strong. It cast the white expanse of wall next to her with the pale greenish color of six
A.M
., which meant that she was already late in getting up and that her father would be coming soon to rouse her. She burrowed deeper and closed her eyes and wished she could stay like that a while longer instead of going to the dairy. She pulled the sheet up close to her chin and let the silkiness settle over her, so that its cool surface caressed her skin. It was the silk sheet that jolted her. She opened both eyes again and blinked, remembering that she wasn’t in Union at all but in Manhattan, in the home of movie stars, one of whom she’d witnessed disappearing into a room with a man who was not her husband.

In Union, and even at Dogwood, she’d always dressed carefully before leaving her room and beginning her day, but she was too hungry for all that, so instead she stepped over the thick carpet and sat in front of her vanity in the pale peach ankle-length slip that Sophia had given her, along with several other items that the actress no longer had use for. She threw the cream-colored kimono that hung in her closet over her shoulders and tiptoed out into the apartment, just like that. The hall was quiet and lit by sconces, and she padded over its soft carpets toward the sunken living room, which was decorated with simple furniture that nonetheless seemed very expensive, and pampas grass erupting from gold urns, and gigantic portraits of Valentine and Sophia. The room was a little strange to her—somehow too grand to really be a home—and she was happy to step into a kitchen fragrant with the smell of cooking bacon.

“Ah, Miss Larkspur, the lady of the hour!” Valentine said in booming, perfectly enunciated syllables. He was sitting at the round pedestal table by the large double windows with the morning papers strewn before him. Letty couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that—she was helpless around compliments; she lit up when she got one, like a child who has been offered sweets. The kitchen made her happy, too—it was clean and simple compared to the rest of the house. The uniformed maid was busy chopping potatoes on the tiled sideboard, and the aroma of coffee emanated from the stove.

“Are you hungry?” he asked solicitously.

“Yes, I’m starving!” Letty said, sliding into a chair and putting her elbows on the sturdy surface of the table.

Valentine grinned. “Beryl, make Miss Larkspur an omelet, would you?”

“Yes, Mr. O’Dell,” the maid replied as she advanced toward the table with a porcelain coffee cup and saucer in one hand and a coffee pitcher in the other.

“My dear, what a phenomenon you are! You see, already your name is on everyone’s lips…” Jovially he turned open the paper near Letty’s hand to the society page and bent forward, putting his head close to hers as he drew his index finger across a photograph that took up almost a quarter of the page. In it, a girl with short dark hair sweeping over her pale cheeks was being moved across a dance floor by a tall, smiling boy in a tuxedo jacket, her body not so much tiny as exquisitely delicate in his arms.

“Is that me?” she heard herself say.

“Yes, if the
New York Troubadour
knows anything at all. ‘Miss Letty Larkspur, who has fast become inseparable from our leading light Sophia Ray, was seen dancing on the Ritz roof with the up-and-coming player for Montrose Filmic Company, Laurence Peters, at dawn…’” Valentine pushed the paper toward Letty, and she quickly scanned the column, as though she were afraid he might have made it all up. “Sound like you?”

“I guess, it’s only that…,” Letty whispered, as she began to read the item again from the top. “Well, the funny thing is, I don’t remember being on the Ritz roof.”