The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  Chapter 25

  Jordan

  May 1950

  Boston

  To you, O Lord, we commend the soul of Daniel, your servant . . .”

  Dan McBride’s coffin was covered with lilacs and roses. It was the lilacs that smelled strongest, wafting up into the warm spring day like someone had smashed a bottle of perfume. Jordan’s throat tightened in nausea. Who ordered a huge wreath of lilacs for a coffin, like a hoop of sickly purple tissue paper?

  “In the sight of this world he is now dead; in your sight may he live forever . . .”

  In fact, Jordan thought, eyes roving blankly over the flower-heaped coffin, over the bowed and black-hatted heads around the graveside—who decided flowers had to be heaped on a coffin in the first place? Her father’s coffin should have been heaped with fishing lures, scorecards from Red Sox games, flasks of his favorite scotch. Jordan should have dragged down the Minton dishes that they had used for Sunday lunch as long as she could remember and lobbed each plate one by one to go smash on the coffin’s lid . . .

  “Forgive whatever sins he committed through human weakness, and in your goodness grant him everlasting peace . . .”

  Peace, Jordan thought. Peace. What good was that to her dad when she didn’t have it, when Ruth and Anneliese didn’t have it? He was the hub of the family, the one who brought peace. They were still standing grouped together around the place where he should have stood: Anneliese a step away as though standing on his right arm, a slender column in black, a swathe of netting descending over her face from the brim of her black hat; Ruth trembling on what should have been his left side, hand in Jordan’s. “It’s almost over, cricket,” she managed to whisper, as the priest intoned, “We ask this through Christ our Lord” and a ripple of Amens echoed. Followed by a ripple of another kind as the coffin was lowered down into the earth.

  I lied, Ruth, Jordan thought of telling her sister. It’s never going to be over. This day is going to last forever. After this would be the graveside condolences, then the somber drive back to the house where cake and casseroles, whiskey and coffee would be served. More condolences and reminiscences and dabbing of handkerchiefs, everyone wanting to know what happened, everyone wanting the details, such a tragedy. How many times today were Jordan and Anneliese between them going to say it? A hunting accident. No, no one’s fault. His shotgun exploded . . .

  “Did your father look after his own weapon, miss?” the policeman had asked Jordan that day in the hospital corridor—Anneliese had been too upset for questions, frozen beside her husband’s bed, listening to the rasp of his breath.

  “Yes.” As long as she’d gone to the lake with him, Jordan could remember him wiping down his shotgun, cleaning it carefully before hanging it back on the wall. “It was my grandfather’s. He treasured it—he never let it go back on the wall in less than pristine condition. How did it—”

  “The problem wasn’t the shotgun, miss, it was the ammunition. It looks like he bought smokeless powder shells—with an old LC Smith twelve-gauge like he had, Damascus barrels, that soft old steel shreds apart if you use the newer ammunition. There are plenty who don’t know that, I’m afraid. The rounds look alike, and people just don’t realize. Did he buy his ammunition himself?”

  “Always.” Jordan fiddled with a crooked hook and eye at her waist. She’d torn herself out of that ivory bridal gown at the boutique and back into her summer dress so quickly, all the fastenings were crooked. “I don’t shoot, and Anna doesn’t either.”

  “Then he either bought the wrong variety or didn’t realize the newer kind wouldn’t suit his shotgun. I’ve certainly seen it happen before.” A sympathetic glance. “I’m very sorry, miss.”

  Everyone was very sorry.

  “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,” Father Harris finished at last. Jordan joined the unison reply. “May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”

  Amen.

  “SUCH A TRAGEDY, Jordan dear. In the prime of his life too!”

  “Yes.” Jordan maintained her polite expression, her grip tight on the plate of German chocolate cake she hadn’t touched. The woman was some distant cousin of her dad’s; funerals always brought cousins out in hordes.

  “How exactly did it happen, dear?”

  “A hunting accident, no one’s fault,” Jordan recited. “His shotgun exploded when he was out at the lake hunting turkey. He was using the wrong ammunition.”

  “I’ve told my husband once if I’ve told him a hundred times, always check your ammunition. Do they listen, these menfolk of ours?”

  The parlor at the house was jammed with people in black: helping themselves to casserole and cookies from the groaning table, sipping glasses of sherry or tumblers of whiskey. Anneliese stood by the mantel, about as lifelike as a waxwork. Jordan was never going to forget the sound that had come out of her when she saw her husband in the hospital bed—it was before bandages hid the full extent of his injuries, the missing fingers on his right hand, the wound to his neck, the horror that was the right side of his face. Anneliese had let out a choked whimper at the sight, like an animal in a trap. If Jordan had had even the remotest suspicion that Anneliese didn’t love her father, that would have put paid to any doubts right there. She’d seen the tears overflowing Anneliese’s eyes as the doctor went on and on about extensive shrapnel damage to the mandible and teeth and destruction of the eye orbit and the zygomatic arch. She didn’t seem to have any tears left, now. She and Jordan both stood in the parlor dry and stiff as pillars of salt.

  “At least your dear father didn’t suffer,” some well-meaning twit said.

  “No,” Jordan said through gritted teeth.

  “How did it happen, dear?”

  “A hunting accident, no one’s fault,” Jordan repeated, all the while wanting to scream Of course he suffered! He hung on for two weeks after the accident, you think he didn’t suffer? The party of hunters who had found her father just after the accident might have saved him from bleeding out in the woods, but they hadn’t saved him from suffering. The doctors had kept saying in jocular tones, “Your dad’s a tough one!” as if that helped to see him lying in the hospital bed, looking more and more shrunken as the infection set in.

  “At least his family was with him at the end.”

  “Yes.” All those hours they sat stroking his hands, Anneliese on one side and Jordan on the other. Can he hear us? Jordan had asked the doctors, and they said something about blast injuries to the eardrum, which seemed to be their way of saying they weren’t sure. He seemed to pass in and out of consciousness—he couldn’t speak, not with the broken jaw and mangled tongue, but sometimes he tried to move. “He threw my hand away,” Anneliese had cried once, and Jordan had climbed into the bed and put her arms around her father until he quieted. “I can’t stand to see him in pain,” Anneliese said, white as frost on a window. “Keep him asleep. As much sedation as he needs.”

  Only two weeks’ worth, as it turned out.

  The doorbell rang. Jordan went down, greeted more well-wishers, took another casserole into the kitchen. Every surface was already overflowing with casseroles and potato salad. Go away, all of you, and take your food with you. But these people were here for her father, she reminded herself. Rare book dealers and auction house owners; neighbors and church acquaintances; a cluster of fellow antiques dealers come from New York with hearty booms of “Fine fellow, Dan McBride. A thing like this happening, such a careful man . . .”

  Garrett’s voice in her ear as he wrapped her in a hug. “How are you?” I don’t want to be hugged, Jordan wanted to cry, I don’t want to be asked how I’m feeling. I want to be left alone—but that wasn’t fair. She made herself hug him back, trying not to feel smothered.

  “You poor dears,” a neighbor clucked. “Jordan, you poor child, not having your father to give you away at your wedding—”

  Jordan’s hand stole up to the Lalique pearls at her ears. Given for a w
edding, worn for a funeral. Garrett, seeing she wasn’t going to speak up, said, “The wedding’s been postponed till next spring.”

  A sudden explosion of tears at the other end of the parlor. Ruth’s voice, so unexpected because Ruth never had tantrums. “—she wants to come in!” Pink-faced and tearful, wrenching at the door to the back bedroom where Taro whined and scratched, locked up for the afternoon. “I want my dog—” Her voice scaling up to a wail, as Anneliese cut swiftly through the crowd and took her by the wrist.

  “It’s time you went to your room, Ruth.”

  “Not without my dog,” Ruth shrieked, yanking away.

  Jordan shook off Garrett’s arm and moved to scoop up her sister. “I’ll put her to bed, Anna.”

  “Thank you,” Anneliese said in a heartfelt murmur, heading off an incoming batch of neighbors as Jordan carried Ruth upstairs. Ruth was sobbing, flushed from heat and emotion.

  “It’s all right to cry, cricket. Just take off this heavy dress and climb in bed.”

  “C-can I have Taro?”

  “You can have anything you want, Ruthie-pie.”

  Ruth and Taro were soon snuggled up together, Ruth’s swollen lids drifting shut despite herself. “Hund,” she whispered as Taro nuzzled her elbow. “Hübscher Hund . . .” Jordan paused as she pulled the bedroom curtains, disquieted. Ruth hadn’t lapsed into German for years.

  “Thank you,” Anneliese said wearily as Jordan came back into the parlor. “I couldn’t think what to do if she started screaming.”

  “She’ll sleep now.” Jordan rubbed at her eyes. “Ruth’s the lucky one, getting some peace and quiet. How much longer do you think this will last?”

  “Hours.” Anneliese massaged her forehead. “Why don’t you sneak out for a while? Walk around the block, have Garrett take you for a drive.”

  “I can’t leave you with all this.”

  “Jordan.” Anneliese’s blue eyes were steady. “I would not have managed at the hospital those two weeks without you taking care of everything. Let me take care of this.” A small smile. “It isn’t so very hard, after all. Keep a handkerchief and a thank-you ready, and answer all questions with ‘A hunting accident, no one’s fault.’”

  Jordan felt her eyes burn. “Anna—”

  “Shoo.” Giving a small shove. “Go find Garrett. I’ll make excuses.”

  But Jordan didn’t go find Garrett. She saw his broad shoulders across the room, and with a guilty glance she edged out of the parlor, grabbing her pocketbook as she wrenched the front door open. “Jordan dear,” a plump motherly-looking neighbor clucked, black-gloved finger poised over the bell. “I brought some lemon meringue pie, your father’s favorite—”

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Dunne. You’ll find my stepmother upstairs.”

  “There was such a nice article in the paper about your father, what a pillar of the community he was. A pity they got his dates wrong—”

  “Yes, I saw.” It got her dad’s age wrong, it said Anna McBride was born and raised in Boston and not that she and Dan had met in Boston—“probably my fault,” Anneliese had said. “I was in such a muddle when I was being asked for the details.”

  “You just take this pie, dearie, and I’ll whisk on up!”

  For a moment Jordan stood on the doorstep with the pie in her hands. She wanted to dash down to the darkroom and hide until everyone went away, but Garrett was sure to come looking if she went there, and Jordan didn’t think she could take one more bear hug.

  “You want a ride, miss?” The taxi driver who had dropped Mrs. Dunne on the doorstep leaned out the window of the cab.

  “Yes,” Jordan said, half stupefied. “Yes, I want a ride. Clarendon and Newbury.”

  IT WASN’T UNTIL halfway to the shop that she came out of her daze in the backseat and realized she was still holding a lemon meringue pie. She almost burst out laughing, or maybe burst out crying. Dad’s favorite. Jordan scrounged enough change to pay the driver and climbed out in front of McBride’s Antiques, pie dish still in hand.

  The door had a black crepe bow on the knocker. Jordan tore it off, fishing her keys out of her pocketbook. The shop was dusty in the late-afternoon sunshine; it had been closed up nearly three weeks. Jordan flipped the sign to Open without thinking, setting the pie down on an antique ceramic birdbath, and wandered behind the counter. She traced her father’s initials in the dust, biting back an almost irresistible urge to call out—Dad?—because surely that meant the backroom door would open, and she’d see him there, smiling as he said What can I do for you, missy? All she had to do was call out. It hadn’t been him in the hospital bed. It was all a mistake.

  The sob that broke out of her was huge and noisy, echoing in the tomb-silent shop. Jordan gripped the counter, welcoming the tears. “Jesus, Dad,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you buy the right shells? Why did you have to use that old gun instead of a new one that wouldn’t blow up in your face?”

  The bell over the shop door tinkled. “Excuse me . . .”

  Jordan looked up from the counter, heaving a breath around the solid wall in her chest. “What?” Through the blur in her eyes she could see a young man in the doorway, hands in his pockets.

  “Do you work here, miss?” He closed the door behind him with another jingle of the sweet-toned bell. Her father had polished that bell every week, keeping it bright. “I’m here about a job.”

  “Job?” Jordan echoed. She couldn’t seem to focus. She blinked hard, once, twice. Why did I come here?

  “There’s a Help Wanted sign.” The young man jerked his thumb at the window. “I saw a German fellow last week as he was coming in—”

  “Mr. Kolb?”

  “Right. But he said I’d have to speak with the owners.”

  Help Wanted. Her dad had put that sign up the week he died, looking for a clerk. Some suave fellow or pretty girl to work the counter. Jordan blinked again, focusing on the man standing on the other side of the counter now. Olive skinned, dark haired, lean, about Jordan’s height, maybe four or five years older. Anneliese wouldn’t like that loose collar, the rumpled dark hair without a hat. Sloppy, she’d say with that Germanic tut-tut.

  “Anton Rodomovsky,” he said, offering his hand. “Tony.”

  “Jordan McBride,” she replied, shaking it automatically.

  “What position are you looking to fill?” he asked after a moment’s silence. “You’ve got your German fellow, what’s he do?”

  “Mr. Kolb does restoration work. My father—” Jordan stopped again.

  “So you need a clerk, maybe?” Tony smiled, lean cheeks creasing. “I know absolutely nothing about the antiques business, Miss McBride, but I can work a register and I can sell ice to Eskimos.”

  “I don’t—know if we’re hiring. There’s been a death. The owner—” Jordan stopped, looking down at the dusty counter. “Try back next week.”

  Tony looked at her a long moment, smile fading. “Your father?”

  Jordan managed a nod.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She nodded again. She couldn’t seem to move, just stood like a pillar in her ugly black dress behind the counter.

  “There’s a pie in a birdbath over there,” he said eventually.

  “Everyone keeps bringing me pie,” Jordan heard herself say. “Ever since he died. Like lemon meringue fixes anything.”

  He picked Mrs. Dunne’s pie up out of the birdbath, deposited it on the glass counter, then went to a display case where a set of thirteen apostle spoons had been laid out in a fan. He brought back two spoons, offering one to Jordan.

  Jordan’s chest felt like it was about to burst. She dug a heaping spoonful out of the middle of the pie and jammed it into her mouth. It tasted like absolutely nothing. Ashes. Soap shavings. My father is dead. She ate another heaping spoonful.

  Tony levered up a bite of his own. Chewed, swallowed. “This is—very good pie.”

  “You don’t have to lie.” Jordan kept eating. “It’s terr
ible pie. Mrs. Dunne never uses enough sugar.”

  “Where can you get good pie in Boston, then? I’m new in town.”

  “Mike’s Pastries is pretty good. The North End.”

  Tony jabbed the apostle spoon back into the meringue. “Looks like I’m going to Mike’s Pastries to get you something decent.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I can’t bring your father back. I can’t make you feel anything but sad. I can at least make sure you don’t have to eat lousy pie.”

  “I don’t want any more goddamn pie,” Jordan said and burst into tears. She stood there crying into Mrs. Dunne’s crummy meringue, hiccuping and gulping. Tony Rodomovsky fished a handkerchief from his pocket and pushed it quietly across the counter, then went to turn the shop sign around from Open to Closed. Jordan wiped her streaming eyes, shoulders heaving. My father is dead.

  “I’m very sorry to intrude, Miss McBride,” Tony said. “I’ll leave you alone now.”

  “Thank you.” There was a fresh explosion of sobs building up in her chest, making its way through the chink in the bricks; all she wanted to do was cry it out. But she stamped it down for a moment, pushing her damp hair off her forehead and looking squarely at her Good Samaritan. “Come back Monday, Mr. Rodomovsky.”

  “Sorry?”

  “My stepmother will want a proper application and some references,” Jordan said, scrubbing at her eyes. “But as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got a job.”

  Chapter 26

  Ian

  May 1950

  Boston

  Success!” Tony burst through the door of their newly rented apartment. “I have officially made contact.”

  Ian grunted acknowledgment, stretched out on the floor between window and table, halfway through his daily set of one hundred press-ups. “How?” he pushed out between counting. Ninety-two, ninety-three . . . His shoulders were burning.

  “What target?” Nina sat on the sill of the open window with her feet hanging out over a four-story drop, eating tinned sardines straight out of the tin.