Page 120 of Gave Proof Through the Night

When I finally pull back, her hands are still fisted in my lapels like she isn’t planning to let go of them. I’m kneeling at her feet, checking for signs of duress on her face.

“You said you had to use the bathroom. Then when you didn’t come back, I thought…”

“What? That I’d leave without having dessert?”

“I didn’t think you’d left. I saw that Hobbs guy go after you. I stood outside the bathroom for ten minutes. Then those German-Argentinians walked by complaining about the woman with the black dress and pointed in this direction.”

“You used your spidey senses to find me.”

“My spidey senses are tingling right now. Were you running from Hobbs? What were you doing out here?”

“Exacting revenge. It would be very satisfying if I had a mustache to twirl right about now.”

I laugh, once, and it surprises me more than it surprises her. Then it dies in my throat, because I know exactly what she’s talking about, and none of it is funny.

“Revenge? For what he did to you when you were eighteen? Or for your father?”

“Both.”

She says it like the answer costs her nothing. I know for a fact it costs her everything.

I sit down next to her, close, my knee against hers.

“Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer it.”

“Depends on the question.”

I choose the next words like they’re the last ones I get to spend.

“Your job. The logistics thing. What is that, exactly? Because I’ve asked you probably six different ways over the last couple of weeks and I get six different non-answers, and I keep telling myself that’s just you being private, but…”

“But?”

My jaw works before anything comes out of it.

“But Hobbs cornered me in the hotel lobby yesterday and told me you were casing a museum. And I told myself he was lying. I still mostly think he was lying. But I need you to just… Tell me it’s nothing. Tell me straight and I’ll drop it.”

She goes quiet in a way I’ve never seen her go quiet.

“You really want to know? Right here. Right now? Before dessert?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? There’s layered cheesecake. Strawberry, vanilla, and blueberry. Red, white, and blue!”

“Erica, tell me. I’m a big boy, I can take it.”

She looks down at her hands for a second. When she looks back up, something in her has decided.

“Okay. Here goes.” She lets out a hard sigh and says, “Queen Victoria sent Mary Todd Lincoln a mourning necklace. From one widow to another.”

I open my mouth. Close it again. Brace myself for a history lesson, and let her keep going.

She tells me the necklace is known as the Friendship Jewel. The same one sitting on display right now inside the Corcoran Ballroom.

Mary Todd Lincoln’s own son had her committed to an asylum years later, unjustly. And after she got out she spent a long stretch traveling Europe. She didn’t travel alone. Her companion was a woman named Eleanor Armitage, from a wealthy family in Lexington, Kentucky, the same place Mary Todd herself came from. That woman is Erica’s five-times-great-grandmother.

“Wait,” I say, counting on my fingers. “Your great, great, great, great… great grandmother knew the actual Mary Todd Lincoln?”