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July 15, 1925

It’s strangely soothing when everything goes wrong all at once. A bit like being in the eye of a cyclone. There you are in the middle, watching the chaos spin around you, knowing you can’t do a damned thing but wait out the wind.

Today, the winds have been particularly harsh.

“I’m tired, Sadie,” Ted told me, only minutes ago. I’d barely finished my vichyssoise when he took my hand from across our usual table at the Montpellier Tea Room and said he was tired. Tired of my moods. My moping.

But I was tired, too—of his lies and waiting for him to make up his mind. I never intended to fall in love with a married man twenty years my senior. What a mistake. I can almost hear Mama’s voice in my head now: Sadie Frances, what did you think would happen, getting wrapped up in a thing like that?

I pick up my teacup and take a shaky sip. My rouged lips leave their imprint on the rim. A scarlet scream. I’m proud I didn’t cry when Ted shattered my already fragile world into pieces. I only stared at him in disbelief as he broke my heart with cool indifference, then left me here, alone, with a tab I can’t afford.

I didn’t cry at Mama’s funeral three weeks ago, either, come to think of it. Although the ache of missing her has grown deeper by the day.

“Miss Halloran?” Miles, the headwaiter, appears at my side, an expectant look on his face.

I open my handbag, eyeing the five-dollar bill inside. I hope it’s enough for the tab. I’ve lingered too long, alone at this table. I don’t belong here, not among Kansas City’s upper crust. I haven’t belonged for years. “I suppose you need me to leave.”

“No, not at all. There’s a lady over by the fountain. She says she knows you. She’d like to join you if that’s all right.”

I turn to look. A woman dressed in immaculate white lawn lifts her head, and I recognize her at once. My eldest cousin. Louise. She of the spotless manners and the glorious wedding at Our Lady of Sorrows and the three perfect blond children who came after. Louise is the last person I want to speak to right now. I wonder how long she’s been sitting there. How much of my humiliation she’s seen.

“Yes, Miles. You can have her come over.” I sit up a bit straighter and dab my lips with my napkin. Louise’s cloying gardenia perfume arrives before she does.

“Sadie!” she gushes. I rise to greet her. She kisses me on each cheek, then folds into Ted’s vacant chair. She’s just had her hair done. It lies in freshly set waves along her jawline, two shades lighter than my own dirty-dishwater blond, though our eyes are the same bright, crisp green. Thorne eyes. “How are you?” she trills. “It’s been far too long.”

It hasn’t been long at all. I saw her at Mama’s funeral. “I didn’t realize you were a member here,” I say, drinking down the last dregs of my tea.

“Oh, it’s more of Toby’s thing. He comes here with his doctor friends. We joined late last year.” Louise fans herself with the menu card. “This heat. Can you believe it?”

I shrug. “It’s July.”

“I saw Ted on the way in,” she says, placing her gloved hand over mine. “How are your wedding plans coming along? If you still need someone for the invitations, you can use my engraver.”

I recognize the catlike smile on Louise’s face—the smile that tells me she already knows what’s happened. For a moment, I consider lying. Pretending I’m still engaged, even though we never set a date. How could we, when Ted never signed his divorce papers? I look down at the diamond he gave me at Christmastime. Fifty-eight stair-step facets, cold and bright as a winter day. At least I’ll be able to pawn the ring. Generous of him to let me keep it. I can only imagine the jewels he’ll give his wife as an apology.

“There isn’t going to be a wedding, Louise.”

Louise’s mouth drops open in an exaggerated O. “Surely that’s not true!”

I barely refrain from rolling my eyes. “I’m afraid so.” I pick up my empty cup and silently curse myself for drinking my tea too quickly.

“What happened?”

“The very thing all of you told me would happen. Don’t pretend to be surprised. And please don’t be smug about it, either.”

“I’m sorry, darling.” Louise squeezes my hand. “Truly. But it’s for the best. The scandal ...”

“Yes. The scandal.”

“Well. There’s hope. You’re still young.”

I choke back a laugh. “Am I?”

Louise raises her hand to signal the waiter. “Could we have two mint juleps, please,” she whispers when he reaches the table. “Heavy on the mint with mine, if you know what I mean. And don’t try to tell me you can’t do it, dear.”

“More tea for me, please,” I say to the waiter, motioning to my empty cup. “ Only tea, thank you.”

A few moments later, Louise’s cocktail arrives, cleverly disguised in a gilded teacup. The Montpellier Tea Room, as a private establishment, is one of the more discreet speakeasies in town, catering to Kansas City’s elite with its art nouveau decor and French cuisine. Few patrons would dare a daytime tipple. Not Louise. I cattily wonder whether she’s an alcoholic. It does run in the family.

“Have you heard the latest about Aunt Marguerite?” Louise asks between dainty sips.

“No.”

“Mother spoke to her nurse last week. She took a spill on the stairs. She wasn’t hurt badly, just a few bruises, but it’s worrying.”

“I’m glad she’s all right. How terrible,” I say, although I’m selfishly relieved that my great-aunt’s ill health has turned the subject from Ted and me. “Is she still in that enormous house?”

“Yes. She refuses to leave it.”

I last visited Blackberry Grange as a child. Despite the name, the home isn’t attached to a farm or granary. It’s simply an overblown mansion with a rabbit warren of rooms and an abundance of gables, perched precariously on an Arkansas bluff. It was a place of wonder to my childish eyes, but I can only imagine how perilous the winding staircases and uneven floors would be for a frail, elderly woman.

“That can’t be safe.”

“No. She wanders about at night. They’ve placed an ad in the local paper for a round-the-clock companion, but Mother is concerned.” Louise eyes me over her teacup. “The wrong sort of person might take advantage.”

“I agree. It should be someone trustworthy.”

A thought suddenly occurs to me, sitting there in the sunlight streaming through the arched windows—an impulsive one, but intriguing all the same. I’ve met Aunt Marguerite only a handful of times, but she made quite an impression on me. Unlike her older sister, our prim society matron grandmother, Marguerite was spirited. A chimera. An artist who broke rules and paved her own path in life. I’d long admired her from afar and regretted not knowing her better. Perhaps now might be my chance. I’ve nothing keeping me in Kansas City, after all. Not anymore.

“Do you think if someone in the family cared for her, it might be better?” I ask. “What if I did it?”

“Did what?” Louise’s eyes narrow.

“Became Aunt Marg’s companion.”

Louise laughs, a loud, bright pealing that turns heads throughout the room. “Really? You? ”

I bristle. “Why not me?”

“You’re hardly the sort, Sadie. You’re too impatient. Too busy . I can’t see it. I’m sorry.”

“I’m more patient than you realize. And what does ‘busy’ mean?”

“You’re just not suited for that sort of thing.”

“I think I am.” My resentment simmers beneath the surface, as I think of all the ways I’ve never been good enough in my family’s eyes. I’d always been the flighty one. The flapper. The good-time girl. No one ever considered that my “busyness” might be a distraction from my broken heart. From my grief.

“Do you want to do it because of Aunt Marg’s money?” Louise arches her brow. “If so, you can admit it. I understand your predicament, Sadie. I do.”

“No. That isn’t it at all,” I say stiffly. Although I must admit it is. At least in part. I received only a smattering of my mother’s jewelry and a meager monthly stipend as my inheritance. As executor of her estate, my older brother, Felix, took her house and what remained of Da’s investments. If I don’t find a job, and soon, I could very well become destitute. Ted was my insurance policy. I’d been foolish to depend on his empty promises.

“You know,” Louise says, her tone softening, “once you’ve had a chance to lick your wounds, I could set you up with Toby’s friend Alan. The dentist? He’s ready to settle down and won’t mind about your ... situation. Why—”

I rise swiftly, knocking against the edge of the table. The teacups clatter in their saucers, splashing Louise’s mint julep onto the white tablecloth. “I think I’d better go. Before I end up saying something I’ll regret.”

Louise frowns. “Sadie. Really. There’s no need to be angry. I was only—”

“Goodbye, Lou. Enjoy your tea .”

I sweep from the room, leaving her with the tab. Unlike me, she can afford it. Presumptuous brat.

Outside the tearoom, I hail a cab and climb inside. The summer heat curls around me in the back seat, steaming thick as soup. I crank down the window, trying to catch my breath. “Waddell and Westport, please.”

As the cab merges into traffic, I take out my compact to reapply my lip rouge and powder. I’m still shaking with anger at my cousin’s words. But she’s hardly alone in her opinion. No one in our family believed I would amount to much. No one but Da. And after Da? There was no point in proving them wrong. I reveled in their low opinion of me. In being the rebel.

I laughed in the face of my pain and became fun Sadie—a skinny, scrappy girl with sharp elbows who favored the new fashions and sat somewhere on the pretty side of plain. I wasn’t born a great beauty like Louise, but I learned how to make men laugh. I learned how to please them in bed, too. But despite all the men I’ve charmed, none of them deemed me worthy of marriage. Ted gave me a ring only to string me along. To keep me content. If I were a better person, or smarter, I’d have ended our affair long ago. It’s well past time to grow up and prove to myself, and everyone else, that I can be something besides an aging cigarette girl or a rich man’s mistress.

I pinch my eyes shut against my angry tears as clouds gather outside the car windows, shuttering the sun. A crackle of thunder splits the sky. By the time the cab reaches my boardinghouse, the clouds open, streaming rain, and I’ve made up my mind.

The following day, I pack a single suitcase and go downstairs to pay Mrs. Dunlop for my week of room and board. I don’t telegram to tell Marguerite’s staff I’m coming, nor do I tell Louise or anyone else in my family I’m leaving. I don’t want anyone to talk me out of this.

“Where you going?” Mrs. Dunlop asks, opening her door wide. Smoke trails from her fleshy lips. Her apartment smells of liver and onions.

“Arkansas.”

“You’re coming back, hmm? You know I have a waiting list.” She cocks a hip out and her floral-print robe slides open slightly, showing half a flaccid, white breast. “You ain’t back by next Thursday, I’ll be letting your room.”

On my fifteen-dollar-a-month allowance, I can no longer afford to live here without Ted’s help, but I’m not quite ready to let the room go. Not completely. “I’ll be back.”

“Sure, sure. This ain’t about that man, is it, sugar? You know we’ve had complaints. About the noise.”

“No,” I say with a crisp shake of my head. “You won’t be seeing him. Not anymore.”

“Good.” She pockets my money and turns back to her skillet of fried onions.

An hour later, I’m at Union Station, with the tickets for my journey to Eureka Springs clutched in my hand. I find the correct waiting room, sit on one of the long benches, and use my straw cloche as an ineffective fan. The train roars into the shed just as the heat becomes interminable. My head goes a bit woozy when I stand, and I clasp the arm of a well-dressed man to steady myself. He shrugs me away with indifference. Not pretty enough or young enough to warrant even the most common of courtesies anymore, it would seem.

Yes, I decide, I am quite done with men.

On the train, after some polite bargaining with a kind-faced woman traveling with her granddaughter, I manage to claim a window seat in our compartment. It’s not the view that interests me. The first leg of the journey, to Joplin, consists of nothing more than endless green pastures and small, nondescript towns, but I’ll be able to lean against the window and sleep. I caught only a scant hour or so of rest last night, too charged with spite at Louise’s words.

I think of Mama, and all the ways I’d failed her. Even though she tried to hide it, I know she was embarrassed over my affair with Ted. She raised me to be better and I disappointed her, time and again. I’d disappointed myself. Caring for Aunt Marguerite feels like a chance at redemption. A chance to start over. Mama would be proud of me for doing this—for honoring my family.

The conductor comes through to tear our tickets as the train begins its slow chug out of the shed. I close my eyes against the white-hot July sun, the carriage’s wood paneling cool against my cheek. Soon, I’m rocked into slumber. When I wake, the woman and the girl are gone and the sky outside the window is painted a seamless black.

My hunger rises, and I realize I’ve not had anything to eat since morning. I make my way to the club car. There isn’t much on offer this late, but I order a turkey sandwich and a Coca-Cola. There’s only one other person in the car—the same middle-aged man who brushed me aside at the station. In his double-breasted suit, he reminds me of Ted. I switch to the other side of the table, turning my back on him.

“How long to Joplin?” I ask the porter when he brings my food.

“Less than an hour,” he says. “That where you’re headed?”

“I have a connecting ticket to Eureka Springs.”

“It’s hotter than Satan’s swimming pool down there, miss. You ever been?”

I smile at the young man’s jovial tone. “It’s been a while since I visited. My great-aunt lives there. I remember the humidity, though.”

“Like that all through the South. Especially where I’m from. You let me know if you need anything else.” The porter hurries back to the kitchen, and I tuck into the dry sandwich, washing it down with the cola. Mama wouldn’t have approved of my hasty meal. She said food needed to be savored, not rushed. Our Sunday dinners together were always special occasions. If I’d been with her on the day she died, as I usually was on Sundays, things might have turned out differently. She might still be here.

But I was with Ted that day. Ted, who lured me with his lust and put me up in Mrs. Dunlop’s flea-bitten boardinghouse, so he might have me whenever he pleased. I’ll never reclaim the time I gave to him.

I push my dire thoughts away, locking them into the tidy box to deal with later. When I’ve finished my meal, I leave some change on the table as a tip. The rude man glances up at me as I pass by. I don’t return his smile.