The Lady in Residence

by Allison Pittman

  She instructed Alexa to stop playing music in order to listen to the instrumental overlay of the flickering images on the screen. Quin shifted, handing her the reasonably warm cup of coffee, and took up his own. From what she could tell, The Rebel Was a Maiden was a story about a Union soldier in love with the daughter of a Confederate general, with all the difficulties such a relationship entailed.

  “This is 1922,” Dini said. That magazine is dated, what, 1918?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Quin affirmed. “So, this is after the fall from favor.” She felt his response in every vertebrae and considered posing one question after another just to feel him speak.

  They watched the couple on screen fall into a kiss behind a rosebush by the door. “And to think,” Quin said, his breath against the back of her neck, “those people are dead now.”

  “I had no idea you were such a romantic.”

  He laughed, and everything within her liquefied to the consistency of her coffee. Propriety, she supposed, demanded she move away. But, glancing at the clock on the bottom of the screen, they had little more than an hour left to be together. Bad enough they had to spend it watching B-rated silent film actors on YouTube.

  Then she and Quin let out a simultaneous gasp.

  There she was, standing on the back porch, oblivious to the couple canoodling behind the rosebush. She paused her comically furious sweeping to holler for the boy, then placed her hand on her hip, waiting.

  Dini paused the video.

  Quin leaned closer. “Are you sure that’s the same woman?” He leaned over, picked up the magazine, and held it next to the laptop screen. “She looks…darker.”

  “I think,” Dini said, choking past the unexpected tears forming in her throat, “she has makeup on. They put a black actress in blackface to make sure she was black enough for the role.” She paused the movie at a moment where Thalia was midshout and said, “Hand me the Christmas picture?”

  Quin handed her the magazine and reached for the photograph. This too they held next to the screen. The clothing was nearly identical—drab, nineteenth-century calico and apron, though Sallie wore a white cap and Thalia’s character, a dark kerchief. But the resemblance was unmistakable. The blurred phantom in the photograph, the starlet in the magazine, and the actress on the screen were all the same person.

  “Do you think,” Quin asked, “that’s what she meant when she said her life was ruined from that night?”

  “Like she’d been cursed for her crime? Punished in ways other than prison?” Dini closed her laptop and moved away, creating breathing space between the two of them. “Her visit to Hedda was a couple of years after this film. Not only did she have to watch her career die because of racism, but the man she loved had to watch it die too. That had to have been humiliating.”

  “I don’t know if I can feel sorry for a man who didn’t stand up for his wife.”

  “They probably weren’t married. It wasn’t legal yet. But if I put this together with what Mom told me, that child was my great-grandfather, whom I never met. I’ve only ever known the grandfather who lived in this house—and he’s barely a memory—from my mother’s family. And nobody from Dad’s. I guess I’m just a sad little orphan, all alone in the world.” She hadn’t meant for the final sentence to sound so mournful and pathetic, but apparently it did, because Quin reached for her and took her to him, her head cradled on his shoulder.

  “I don’t ever want you to feel alone, Dini.” He touched the bottom of her chin and raised her face to meet his. “And I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know I hate the fact that I have to leave and I won’t see you tomorrow.”

  “I hate that too.”

  “Mostly, though, I hate leaving you with all of this. It’s so much. How are you feeling? About…everything.”

  “Good,” she said, and with the next thought, reached for her laptop again, opening it and typing “IMDb” in the search bar. From there she typed in “J. Preston Hale Photographer.” “I can’t believe I have to go to a website to learn when my own ancestor died,” she said, attempting levity before looking at the date. “Wow. Just a few months before Sallie—Thalia—came to Hedda.”

  “Does it say how he died?”

  “No, but it could have been…anything. Hedda was right not to name her. She’d been through enough. And Carmichael too.”

  “Maybe he didn’t put it all together.”

  “I think he did. Maybe he didn’t cut the corner in his notebook, but he did in the magazine. And, maybe …” She stretched for the notebook, hating to leave the cocoon of Quin’s embrace, but wanting to check a final detail. Finding the page with the list of Valentine’s party attendees that night, she saw that most were marked out, a few were left blank, and two had a tiny star etched beside them.

  Thalia Hale

  John Hale

  “He knew.” Dini showed him the list. “Why do you think he didn’t say anything? Do anything?”

  Quin took out his phone and began to scroll through, finally stopping and tapping on a picture, which he showed to Dini. “It’s the family Bible. Remember? This shows when he was married. April 12, 1921. By the time he got the Christmas picture in the mail, he had a wife. Maybe even a kid. He wasn’t going to go back to Hedda Krause.”

  “But he kept everything.”

  “Kept it away. All wrapped up with a bow. Literally.”

  “And never recorded another case in his notebook.”

  “Case closed.” He touched her cheek.

  She turned her head and kissed the center of his palm. “Case closed. Do you want to watch the rest of The Rebel Was a Maiden?”

  “Ah, no. But”—he picked up the magazine—“it would be cool if we found some footage from her leading lady days. Just to—” He stopped short, taking off his glasses and bringing the magazine closer.

  “What is it?” Dini inched forward, but he kept the page angled away as he took out his phone, opened the camera, and held it over the image.

  “Oh man,” he said, then moved closer. The image on his phone had zoomed in on a thin ribbon of silk edging the neckline of Thalia’s white dress. And there, right at the deepest point of the V, an unmistakable jewel.

  “My witch’s heart.” She held out her hand. “She kept it.”

  “They probably sold everything else off to get themselves out to California.”

  “But this made its way down to me. I don’t know what to do now. I need to find a new obsession.”

  “You could try being obsessed with me.” He spoke with his chin tucked under, like a shy child sure of his rejection. “Because I am with you, Dini. Everything about you. And not in that creeper stalker way—”

  “If you were a creepy stalker, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “I just—my head tells me that it’s way too soon for me to feel like this. It’s crazy, isn’t it? To fall in love in, what, a week?”

  “We’ve only seen each other three days. So, yeah. It’s ridiculous. You know if we lived in the same city, if we didn’t have this stupid countdown, you wouldn’t feel this way.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. I know what it’s like to know someone my entire life, and I never had five minutes feeling about her the way I do about you. I’m in love with you, Dini.”

  Her heart longed to say that she loved him too. She was allowed to love him because she didn’t know any better. He had ignited parts of her that she thought were too damaged by loneliness and grief to ever come to life. Surely she would recognize those stirrings again. Quin had been the first to access them, but that didn’t mean he would forever be the only one.

  He was waiting. Not expectantly, but not seeming to be in any hurry to fill the silence with any other sentiment.

  “I might love you too, Quin. I mean, I do—I probably do. But that might be because I don’t know what else to feel. I’ve never been this close to anybody. I’ve never had my time be so consumed by another person. But we don’t know each other’s worlds. We’ve just started to
belong in each other’s lives. I can’t imagine you anywhere but here. I’ve only seen you in the Menger, in my car, the Sidecar, and in my house. Other than the picture of you with the ducks, I have no proof that you exist away from me. You’re like a refrigerator light.”

  “Wow.” He ran his hand over his beard, as if trying to wipe away his words. “That might be the most wisdom-packed rejection I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s not a rejection. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t that.”

  “I’m just afraid, I guess. Like you said, that this is all going to disappear when I leave. Like a broken spell.”

  “There’s no such thing as spells,” Dini said. “I should know. I’m a magician. There’s no magic to any of this. It’s just our minds playing tricks, making a few days seem like…more. Showing us what we want to see, making us feel what we want to feel.”

  Another silence, a long one this time. The atmosphere still and heavy like a summer night before a storm. They didn’t move, they didn’t speak, they didn’t touch—but in every way it felt to Dini like their most intimate of moments. There were no words left to say, there was nowhere to go, and the consequences loomed certain if they dared to touch.

  “I think I’m going to call for a ride.” He opened his phone, and she noticed his lock screen was a photo of the empty Menger Bar.

  “It’s early, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I think maybe it’s time.”

  He stood and she followed, looking around the room as if she might find something that could entice him to stay. “You want to see my gig room?”

  “Car’s on its way. Seven minutes, so maybe next time?”

  “There’ll be a next time?”

  “I hope so.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “My bag is still in your car. Want to wait outside with me?”

  “Of course.” She took his hand and they walked outside. It was chillier than she’d anticipated, but she resisted the urge to wrap her arms tightly around herself. Instead, once Quin took his bags from the back of her car and set them on the driveway, she allowed him to hold her and protect her from the breeze.

  He made a frustrated groan. “I just don’t want to end up like Hedda and Irvin. I don’t want to walk away and never see you again.”

  “But maybe you’ll meet a modern version of your great-great-grandmother. Have a little Irvin the Sixth.” She felt his laugh roll through her and lifted her head for a kiss.

  “First of all, disgusting. Second of all, I don’t want you to be like that girl at that inn and pine away for me until you die.”

  “Text me from the airport. And text me when you land. And text me when you’re home. And, if you don’t text me, I’ll send men on horseback to find you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. I’ll make them drag you back.”

  “Why can’t we be like J. Preston and Thalia? Heading out on an adventure together? Loving against the odds.”

  “Because they were jewel thieves who ruined a woman’s life before he died making Thalia a washed-up single mother.”

  He laughed and tugged her closer. “Isn’t there a single happy ending in that book?”

  She thought for a moment and stepped away, cradling his face in her hands. “Yes. Hedda and Bert. They were friends for the rest of each other’s lives.”

  She pulled him down for a final kiss, thinking of the one and only shared between the lifelong friends. How it had given her courage to face every fear, how it had been given and received with no hint of expectation and no promise of another to come.

  They kissed until the crunch of tires on a silver Toyota Camry brought them apart.

  “I think I might be finished with Hedda,” she said.

  “Good,” Quin said, reaching for his bag, “because I don’t want to be Bert.”

  Chapter 22

  Like the other passengers on the crowded flight, Dini turned on her phone the moment the plane’s tires touched solid ground. As they scooched through the landing, Quin’s message tone played over and over.

  Q: HAVE A SAFE FLIGHT.

  Q: TEXT ME WHEN YOU LAND.

  Q: I LOVE YOU.

  This last one she had answered with I LOVE YOU TOO. The sentiment came easier with every message and had wormed its way into video chats throughout the spring. She texted her safe landing, with a message that she would call when she got back to the house, wanting to be phone-free at baggage claim. When her Lyft arrived, she climbed in the back seat and immediately put in her earbuds, trading music for conversation on the familiar ride.

  She’d been gone for two months, taking a decent-paying job as a crowd-warming act at a regional theme park. “Another set of stories about the summer you spent with the carnies,” Quin had said, thinly masking a disappointment at canceling their plans to spend part of the summer together. Or at least, in the same town. Instead, they’d watched the entire Little Dorrit BBC miniseries one episode at a time—she in a shabby motel room, he in his cozy bachelor apartment—making sweet, snarky comments on FaceTime throughout. But even that level of togetherness disappeared under a punishing show schedule. Now she was touching down, going home, for two blessedly empty weeks before a string of gigs in New Braunfels for Oktoberfest.

  Her heart sank a little at the sight of Arya’s Escalade overtaking the small patch of concrete in front of her house. Not that she didn’t love her friend or appreciate all she’d done to keep extra money rolling in, booking the house consistently, but Dini was looking forward to uninterrupted silence and solitude.

  She thanked her driver and declined his offer to take her luggage to the door. Arya appeared the minute the trunk slammed shut, ready to help.

  “Sweetie,” she said, after a surprisingly restorative hug, “you look terrible.”

  “Always good to come home to a friendly face,” Dini said, taking the handle of the largest of the three cases.

  “Sorry.” Arya held the door and followed, rolling the two smaller bags. “But I do have a fresh deli pizza and Dr Peppers in the fridge, and there’s some cookies in the Gladware in your breadbox. And”—she held up a bottle—“wine for later. Plus, I had the whole place cleaned top to bottom yesterday. So welcome home.”

  Dini immediately regretted her flippant remark. “Thank you for everything, and I’m sorry I was such a snot. It was a three-plane-ride day. I just want a hot bath, a ton of good food, and to watch the entire Real Housewives of New York season in one sitting.”

  “Well, may you be blessed with all of that,” Arya said, planting a kiss on Dini’s forehead. “I’ll get out of your way, but maybe let me come back tomorrow and help with your unpacking and laundry?”

  “Let me guess—need to get away from Bill for a while?”

  “You can’t even imagine.” She paused at the door. “How are things with the nerd?”

  “You’re going to have to learn his name sometime, Arya.”

  “Really? Why? Because he’s sticking around?”

  “Yeah,” Dini said. “At least I hope so.”

  Her friend dispatched, Dini texted Quin: HOME. WILL CALL YOU LATER! thinking that of all the things she loved about him, maybe the most was that he would not call her until given clearance to do so.

  She set the oven to preheat and took a quick shower to wash off the day spent with strangers. After, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, she drew herself a bath, telling Alexa to play her favorite music while she soaked. Love songs, one after another, the lyrics of each conjuring pictures of Quin. While she loved Arya for stocking her fridge with a favorite soda, bath time called for a chilled glass of wine, poured in a plastic cup for safety.

  She supposed she should be happy. The exhaustion currently wrapped around her muscles was a symptom of success. This was the life her parents led, only on busses and trains instead of planes and rideshares. She was doing what she was born to do, fifth generation in the business of dazzle (as her father liked to say). He—her father—would have been so proud of her, as he was always co
nsumed with procuring the next big booking. And her mother would have been here, filling in the quiet moments, padding them with bits of comfort meant to simulate a home. She’d done her best, making sure Dini always had her own bedding, her own special shampoo and soap, her schoolbooks and travel case of little tricks, packing and unpacking a normal life from town to town. And, really, if asked, especially in the long conversations with Quin late into the night, Dini had been happy. That was her life. That was her normal.

  The difference—and perhaps this explained the emptiness after returning from what was arguably her most financially successful run of shows—is that all that time, all that travel, she’d been with a family. Tonight, as affectionately as she kicked Arya out of her bungalow, she felt the weight of loneliness descend. To combat it, she scrolled through her phone, holding it safely above the water, catching up on social media posts. Through the intimacy of Facebook and Instagram, she had been introduced to Quin’s entire family—parents and sisters Lauren, Cassie, and Jill—virtually attending the glitter ponies birthday party, and a few others since. She video-coached an eight-year-old nephew through a magic trick for his end-of-school talent show. Every post that featured this rambling family gathered in lakefront rentals and campsites got a like with a side of envy. Summer gone, she scrolled through all of their back-to-school pictures, one slideshow beginning with an adorable pigtailed, freckled girl heading to her first day of kindergarten, and ending with twenty-nine-year-old Quin ready for his fifth year of teaching. He stood on the same redbrick porch (must be the sister’s house), holding the same slate with his year written in chalk. Dini couldn’t even imagine that sort of commitment to tradition, and blamed the weird tears pricking at her eyes to a day of travel fatigue and the now empty glass of wine.

  Food would help.

  She dragged herself out of the tub and put on a thick terry cloth robe. She took the cheese pizza from the refrigerator and was about to cover it with the sliced Roma tomatoes and fresh basil Arya thoughtfully provided, when her phone sounded Quin’s text tone. Her stomach flipped exactly as it had during their first week together, and while that same stomach was grumbling with hunger, she abandoned her pizza and opened the message.