Page 54

December 12, 1925

Marguerite is gone by the time I return to her room, as I knew she would be. She rests peacefully in death, still warm, the morning light dancing across her face. I rest my head on her folded hands, my tears running freely. Beckett comes in, his eyes red from crying. “I tried to find you, at the end. Where were you?”

“Right where I needed to be.”

Beckett gives me a questioning look, then sits next to Marguerite’s body, stroking her hair.

“I’m sorry I’ve been out of sorts lately,” I say, reaching for his hand and lacing my fingers with his. “I love you, Beck. I do.”

He raises my hand to his lips, closes his eyes. “And I love you.”

The doorbell rings downstairs, echoing through the house.

“That must be Claire,” Beckett says, rising.

“I’ll get it. If it’s Aunt Claire, I should be the one to break the news to her, I think.”

I descend the stairs, my nerves jangling. I’m about to meet someone who should be dead, but isn’t any longer, for reasons I have no way of explaining.

I ease open the door cautiously, unsure of what to expect. The woman on the porch is petite and compact, her bobbed hair gray now instead of red, but her blue eyes are still as round and wide as they were in her youth. She smiles at me, then pulls me into her arms, kissing both my cheeks. “Sadie. So good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, too, Aunt Claire,” I say, my head spinning. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was fine. You know how the trains are. Tedious. I got here as soon as I could, but I’m already too late, aren’t I?”

I duck my head. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, child. We can’t control these things. Where is she?”

“Upstairs. In her room.”

I follow Claire up the stairs but stop short on the landing. One of Marguerite’s paintings hangs there—one that wasn’t there before. It’s the autumnal landscape I saw in my vision of Iris and Marguerite at the gallery. It’s eerily realistic, the brilliant, jewellike leaves lit by sunlight, the rolling hillsides drifting like waves into the distance, shifting from gold to deep violet.

“ The Last Light of Autumn. That’s what she called that one,” Claire says. “It made her entire career. She bought it back from the Met. She wanted Laura to have it someday. I suppose it’s yours now, dear.”

“I suppose it is.”

Beckett looks up when we enter Marguerite’s room. Claire goes to her sister’s side, crossing herself as she kneels on the floor. She doesn’t cry, only takes Marguerite’s limp hand in hers. “What a rich life you had, sister. A full one. May you go easy, knowing you were loved.” She kisses the back of Marguerite’s hand, then replaces it on her chest with a tidy pat.

The rest of my family descends over the next few days. Louise, accompanied by her husband, Toby, and the children; Pauline; Aunt Grace; Felix, Rosalie, and their boys. Though Harriet is still on strict bed rest, she phones to offer her condolences, with a promise to visit with the new baby in the spring.

Despite my worries, Felix is curiously generous, taking charge of the funeral arrangements and, after meeting with Marguerite’s attorney, reassures me he won’t interfere with the probate proceedings. Rosalie pulls me aside at the wake and confesses to having smoothed the way on my behalf. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but Felix was gravely ill recently. He and the boys came down with some terrible, sudden anemia—the doctors couldn’t figure it out. Things were touch and go for a few days, but they’ve made a remarkable recovery.”

“Oh my.” I feel my skin blanch. But of course, it makes sense. I was ill with the same thing. If Marguerite had succeeded in changing the past, I would have ceased to exist, and so would my brother. His boys. We all narrowly avoided annihilation.

“I told Felix he was being selfish, fighting with you over this house. His illness softened him. Made him see that he needs to change.”

“I suppose I can’t really blame him. Selfishness seems to run in this family. It’s our curse, I think.”

“Well, we must do better, for our children, mustn’t we?” She smiles, eyeing my belly. “Beckett told me your news. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. It was unexpected. I don’t know that I’m ready to be a mother, but now’s just as good of a time as any, I suppose.”

“I felt the same way with Leslie and George. But it comes to one naturally. Most of the time.” She smiles. “I brought some of your mother’s jewelry with us. I’d like you to go through it tonight, pick out whatever you want. It should have been yours to begin with.”

“How kind of you.”

Rosalie presses my hand into hers. “I’d like us to be sisters, Sadie. I never had a sister, but always wanted one.”

“I did, too. I’m sure you can imagine what growing up with two boys was like.”

“Oh, I know. Too well.” She laughs, then grows somber. “It must be difficult for Aunt Claire, being the only one of her sisters left.”

“Yes. I’d imagine so. Although she seems matter-of-fact about it all.”

“I suppose as one gets older, the inevitability of death becomes a part of life.”

“Perhaps. Although I’m in no rush to find out.”

“Nor am I.” She squeezes my hand. “I’m glad everything worked out for the best, Sadie. I am. Marguerite was very lucky to have you looking out for her.”

“No,” I say. “I was the lucky one.”

Across the room, I spot my husband chatting animatedly with a new arrival—a glamorous young woman I don’t recognize. I go up to them and greet her, smiling. “Hello,” I say, “I’m Sadie Hill. I see you know Beckett.”

“Sadie, this is Sybil Vaughn. My cousin,” Beckett says. “She was Marguerite’s companion a few years ago, before you came.”

Sybil. “Of course. Beckett’s told me so much about you,” I say, schooling my face.

“I was so sorry when Beckett phoned me with the news,” Sybil says in her crisp English accent. She takes my offered hand, and goose bumps prickle up and down my arms. “I did quite enjoy my time with your aunt. I’ve just wrapped a movie, so I thought I’d come pay my respects and meet Beck’s new wife.”

“I’m so, so glad you’re here,” I say, though she’ll never gather the true meaning behind my words. Marguerite did it—she saved Sybil, just as Iris hoped. “I knew your grandmother.”

“You did?” She gives me a puzzled look. “How?”

“T-through Beckett and Marguerite’s stories,” I say, stumbling over my words. “And the portrait she painted. Of Iris.”

“Well. Isn’t that wonderful? Say, I’m famished, Beck,” Sybil says, eyeing me curiously. “Could you show me to the food?”

I take a break in the powder room, splashing my face with cool water to shock myself out of disbelief at meeting my formerly dead aunt Claire and Sybil. It’s going to take some time to unravel all the twisted threads of this new reality Marguerite created and I now find myself a part of. There are things that happened in my past but never happened to those around me. I’ll need to sort my own memories from everyone else’s, lest they think me mad. I have no idea how much my own husband remembers about the last few months.

Beckett finds me later, after all our company has gone for the night. It’s just the two of us alone now, in this big house. He builds a fire in the library, and we cuddle together on the sofa, my head tucked beneath his chin. “It’s not going to be the same house, without her here.”

“No,” he says. “It never will be. But we’ll make it our own, Sadie.” His hand rests gently on my belly, and the new life growing there. “Because she wanted us to.”

Three days later, Aunt Claire and I linger at Marguerite’s graveside after the other mourners have left, the wind frigid despite the warmth of the low December sun. She sits on a stone bench, and I sit next to her, both of us quietly contemplating the small churchyard, speckled with fallen leaves.

“Aunt Claire, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Did you ever know a man named Weston Chase?”

Her eyebrows draw together. “Weston. Weston. That name does sound familiar, but I can’t think how.”

“He was a writer. Tall, dark headed. Quite striking. She painted a portrait of him. He stayed at your house one summer, in the ’70s.”

“Oh, yes. I remember him. Papa had all sorts pass through in those days. Mr. Chase was writing a novel, I believe. He stayed with us for a few months.”

“Did Grandmother ... have a fling with him?”

“Florence? A fling?” Claire snorts. “Heavens no. She was too conventional for that sort of thing.”

“I don’t think she was as conventional as everyone thought,” I say quietly. “But Weston was a real person?”

“Of course he was. I believe Marguerite has one of his books in her library, come to think of it. The one about the sisters. He wrote several novels.”

“He sounds very charming, from Aunt Marg’s recollections. Sort of a ladies’ man.”

“Oh, he was good-looking, as I remember, but I wasn’t interested in men yet. I was much too shy and always had my head in a book. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t have a beau until I was in my twenties. You probably don’t remember my Harold. He died in 1898. You were very young. Very young.” She shakes her head. “We met in California, in 1881, when I was on holiday with Florence and Marguerite. Harold was a stagecoach driver. I scandalized the whole family, marrying him. It was great fun.” She titters like a satisfied pigeon.

“Do you ever have strange feelings about the past, Aunt Claire? Like you’ve been somewhere before. Experienced something before?”

“Only once. The same summer I met Harold. I had recurring dreams the entire month before we left for California. Terrifying ones. I dreamed I fell from a great height, but at the last moment, Marguerite caught my hand and pulled me up over the precipice. On our holiday, we stayed near a bluff on the coast that looked just like the one in my dream. Anytime I went close to that bluff, I had the strangest sensation I’d been there before.” She shrugs. “Déjà vu. That’s what they call it.”

“Yes. I think so.” I pause for a moment, thinking. “So, Weston—Mr. Chase—wasn’t with you in California?”

“Oh, no. We hadn’t seen him for years at that point, and it would have been wildly improper for a man to travel alone with a group of young women in those days, dear. It was only my sisters and I, and Marguerite’s friend. Iris.” She slaps her knees, standing. “Well, shall we go back to the house? They’ll be waiting on us.” As we walk away, I cast one final look at Marguerite’s grave, wondering how many times she went back to that cliff in California. How many times she tried to save Claire and failed. Until the one time when she succeeded, and brought her sister back from death. As for Weston? I have a feeling I already know the answer—that the peace I feel inside Blackberry Grange is a sign he’s moved on and that Marguerite was successful in saving him, just as she saved Sybil and Claire. Marguerite’s actions in the past must have shifted things in such a way that Weston never became romantically involved with Grandmother, at least not by the time they were all together in California. If so, he might even still be living, although he’d be an old man by now. I probably wouldn’t even recognize him if we passed on the street.

That night, after everyone has gone to bed, I light a lantern and go to the library. I skim my finger over the spines, searching. On a shelf across from the fireplace, I find it—a volume bound in green leather and embossed with gold leaf: Three Graces by Weston A. Chase. The frontispiece displays the publication date: 1884. Three years after that cataclysmic day in California—confirmation that he survived.

I sit and open the book, relieved, thumbing through the pages. I pause on a passage that catches my eye.

“And Cecilia was the purest of heart,” I read aloud, “though her eyes held an uncommon curiosity her elder sister lacked. Her charms were often disregarded when Felicity was about, but William saw in Cecilia the unrealized potential of the dreamer.”

It’s the same passage Claire recited from Weston’s portfolio in the tête-à-tête in the gazebo I witnessed months ago. I go back and start at the beginning and read straight through, until morning light breaks through the windows. The novel is about three sisters—akin to Little Women , in many ways. If there’s any similarity between Weston’s sisters and those in my family, it’s shallow. The sisters go to dances and parties, gossip, marry very different men, and Cecilia—the main character—lives happily ever after with the stalwart and kind William on a farm in Wisconsin. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It’s an innocent little book. One that would be at home in any child’s library.

I stand and stretch, replacing the book on its shelf, content with the sense of closure I feel. I go up to the tower. Marguerite’s portrait of me sits on its easel, the likeness filled with as much light as Weston’s was with shadow, its colors radiant and fresh. I feel nothing but delight when I draw near to it—no sensation of vertigo, no strange, otherworldly sensations. And then I see the envelope with my name written on it, propped atop the canvas.

I open it and read.

Dearest Sadie,

I hope you like your portrait. I’ve been sketching you for months now, without your knowing. I thought I’d create one last beautiful thing before I died. Don’t be sad. It was my time to go, and I have the peace I’ve always wanted. I’ve fulfilled all my promises. To Florence. To Iris. To you. I’m grateful we had our time together. I’ve lived my life the best way I knew how. Righted all the wrongs I could. And now, you must live. Live well.

I am always with you.

Love, Marguerite