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“She never left him!”
Over by the window, Joshua turned sharply, but she ignored him.
“Charles said that Emmaline left him,” Mrs. O’Dea said, frowning in obvious confusion.
“Why would he say that? She never…Oh. Oh.”
She could feel Joshua’s gaze piercing her, and she stared past Mrs. O’Dea’s questioning look, at the wall. On it hung a framed silhouette portrait of a man who was not Papa.
In a way, Mama had left Papa, hadn’t she? She had left them all. Cassandra had never realized it might have felt like that to her father. A fortnight ago, she would not have understood; she could not have forgiven him.
But now she knew the intense loneliness of having one’s beloved near but impossible to reach.
“After Charlie died,” Cassandra said.
“Yes.” Mrs. O’Dea smoothed her skirt over her knees. “He wanted to talk about Charlie. That’s how it started.”
“You knew Charlie?”
“My husband knew Charlie from Oxford. He was a professor, my husband.” Mrs. O’Dea followed Cassandra’s gaze to the silhouette and nodded. “He used to invite students to our rooms and we’d talk about everything, late into the night. We liked Charlie.”
“Everyone liked Charlie,” Cassandra said.
Yet someone had shoved a knife between his ribs, and so Papa, like Joshua, lost a son. But unlike Joshua, Papa had not raged or locked his doors against the world. No: Papa had smiled. Smiled and smiled and kept on smiling.
Much like Cassandra did.
“Your father wanted to talk about Charlie, so he came looking for Charlie’s friends,” Mrs. O’Dea went on. “He said no one would talk about him. His friends would change the subject and avoid him. So we talked. At first, it was only talking. But I was newly a widow then, and I missed my husband too.”
The small room filled with the echoes of a hundred thousand heartaches. How did they do it, these frail, proud humans? How did they get up, day after day? By thinking about other things, and lying to themselves, and finding love and joy and comfort where they could.
To her surprise, Mrs. O’Dea smiled at her. “He spoke of you too, Mrs. DeWitt. His Cassandra. He said you were his rock. But you were too young and had borne too much, and he didn’t want to burden you anymore.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. “But it wasn’t enough, was it? It was never enough to save him.”
Then Joshua somehow was right behind her, hands on her shoulders, giving to her what he would not let her give to him.
“‘Save him’? It was an accident.” But Mrs. O’Dea sounded unsure. Perhaps she already knew the truth, somewhere deep inside. Perhaps she held the key to why Papa had done what he’d done.
And so Cassandra said, “He shot himself.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when Joshua said, “Cassandra, no!” His hands were firm and sure on her shoulders, but his tone was unusually menacing when he added, to Mrs. O’Dea, “You will tell no one that. No one must know.”
Mrs. O’Dea nodded, but her mind was elsewhere, her eyes focused on some place that she alone could see.
“Have you ever experienced a London fog?” she asked. “That’s what Charles said it was like in his head. A thick, cold, soupy fog filling his head and choking his heart and his stomach. He said he felt as though he would never see through it or feel sunlight again.”
That, then, was the answer. Cassandra still did not fully understand, but it was probably the best answer she would ever get.
Charlie had died, and both Papa and Mama fell apart, each in their own way, and their family fell apart too. There never was anything she could have done.
Joshua had tried to warn her, in his way. He had had two families and they both fell apart, which was why he did not want a third. He cared for her, but he would leave her too, and even a child would not hold them together. Brilliant, efficient Joshua: He knew that nothing would ever hold together, and it was a waste of time to even try.
It was hopeless and futile, and it always had been. She would return to her life and be right back where she started.
Cassandra stood. Joshua’s hands slipped away. She wrapped politeness around her like a cloak. “I apologize for this interruption, Mrs. O’Dea. I thank you for your kindness, both to myself and to my father. If ever you have need of anything, please do not hesitate to contact my husband or me.”
Mrs. O’Dea stood too and looked from one to the other. “At the very least, it is wonderful to see you two together. Your match was the one thing that made Charles happy.” Cassandra did not dare look at Joshua. She could feel him not looking at her. Oblivious, Mrs. O’Dea smiled. “He said you would make each other happy and give each other what you truly need. He would be pleased to see that that, at least, has come to pass.”
