Beautiful Days

by Anna Godbersen

  “Smoke?” Charlie took the pack from his front pocket and Cordelia pulled one out. Jones lit it for her, and then retreated to the edge of the room and leaned against the bare wall.

  “Thank you.”

  “Dad wouldn’t like what a tough broad you’re becoming,” Charlie said, with a smile and wink.

  Cordelia inhaled and watched her brother reflectively—he was joking, she knew, but how much she couldn’t be certain. “I don’t know how tough a broad I can be when I never leave the house.”

  This was not, of course, the New York life that she’d imagined for herself on those lonely, bleak nights back in Ohio. There had been plenty of trees and quiet there, and she had longed instead for noise. She’d imagined busy, epic evenings during which she would meet a great variety of people. Astrid, meanwhile, was always trying to convince her to go out, but in her grief, Cordelia hadn’t felt like having fun, and even if she had, it wouldn’t have seemed appropriate. Instead she’d spent her days obsessively going over the hours that had culminated in her father’s murder. She played back the reel of those days again and again, trying to locate the moment when she went wrong, imagining that if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, she could return there and make the story come out differently. It had been a sleepless, nervous time, and if Letty hadn’t been there, checking in on her with those round blue eyes, gently encouraging her not to drown in grief, Cordelia might have given up on eating and bathing entirely. Smoking seemed to her the least of the bad little habits she could have picked up.

  “Cord, please. You don’t have to stay in the house forever, and anyway, you can’t live in the past.” Charlie smiled at her in a softer way now, bringing her out of her thoughts and back into the spare office. “If Dad thought you weren’t having a good time, he’d figure out how to come back to life just to kill me.”

  “But your absence—that has gotten a lot of attention.” Jones leaned forward and put his fist against the desk, watching Cordelia. A few lines emerged in his forehead—the most dramatic facial expression he ever made. “That’s why we wanted to speak to you.”

  “Exactly.” Charlie jumped down from the desk and crossed the floor a few times excitedly. “See, Jones and me, we decided not to take vengeance on Duluth Hale for what he did to Dad in any ordinary way. At first I wanted to strike him down, of course, but Jones convinced me it would be better to work slow, methodical. Really hurt him. Hurt him by taking away everything he’s got. And we’ve made progress. We’ve near edged him out of Manhattan. Only a few speakeasies left get their liquor from the Hales.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  A manic light crossed Charlie’s eye. “Don’t worry about that, princess. What I want you to worry about is something else. Everyone knows the Greys control New York’s hotels. That’s because Dad was such a class guy, and because he always knew how to get the real stuff from Europe. We’ve managed to hold that, even without him as our leader. Now we control most of New York’s speakeasies, too . . . and to show how big we’re getting, we want to open a place of our own.”

  “A speakeasy.” Jones leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “To show the public, not to mention the rest of the bootleggers, we’re strong as ever. That we still got class.”

  “This place will be our gem, Cord.”

  “I’m glad business is good.” Cordelia’s eyes went from one man to the other. It felt even more inappropriate to have spent the day lying by the pool after hearing all Charlie had done to get them out of the mess she’d created. “But what does that have to do with me?”

  Charlie gestured at Jones, who produced a few newspaper clippings. Cordelia rested what remained of her cigarette between her lips and stepped forward.

  GREY THE BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER: AN AMERICAN TALE OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE AND UNBELIEVABLE LOSS, read the headline. Cordelia scanned the page. It contained a rather exaggerated version of her pauper upbringing far away, her coming-out on the charmed lawns of White Cove, and her introduction, shortly thereafter, into the adult world of pain when she watched her father expire with her very eyes.

  “They’re all curious about you, Cord.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you’re interesting to them. You’re beautiful, but not the way they are, and something awful happened to you. And, of course, because as of late, you’ve made yourself scarce.”

  “People don’t want to take their eyes off a thing like that,” Jones interjected.

  “Oh.” Cordelia sighed, exhaling a cloud of smoke that obscured her view, and then put her cigarette out in the ashtray on the desk. How strange, she thought, that the very thing that closed her off from the rest of the world should make her so fascinating to it. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “We want you to run the place.”

  She tried not to look shocked. “The speakeasy?”

  Charlie nodded. “We got a lot of power behind this thing. I put my muscle up against the Hales every day—you don’t have to worry about nothing like that. You’re gonna be the pretty face of the operation.”

  “We’ll find you the place, all that,” Jones said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Oh.” Cordelia felt a little stunned, but she wasn’t worried. For a month now she had wondered what she could ever do that would make right the way she’d betrayed her father. But with his dying breath he’d declared her an heir to his business, too, and now she saw how she was going to get the chance to prove herself. What Charlie and Jones had proposed brought her no anxiety at all; in fact, it sounded like fun. “Of course! I’d be honored.”

  “Good!” Charlie clapped his hands and wrapped his arm around his sister’s shoulders once again. “Now, I want you to go get dolled up. No more pool clothes. We’re going to have dinner as a family, just like Dad would have wanted. Leave the details to Jones for now—but be ready. We’re going to need the infamous Cordelia Grey working for us soon.”

  Chapter 2

  NOT FAR FROM DOGWOOD, DOWN THE LITTLE COUNTRY lanes that skimmed the edges of farms, stood a very different kind of house. It looked similar enough from the outside, with its impressive bulk and Tudor flourishes and leaded glass windows, its multiple chimneys just visible above the high hedges that surrounded the property, its lawns sloping down to a well-manicured orchard. But it lay across an invisible line, perceptible only to a chosen few, which separated the old White Cove from the one where the newcomers lived. Marsh Hall was named for the man who had built it, and it was still occupied by his descendents. It was half a mile closer to the White Cove Country Club, and while it may on occasion have been known for a scandalous evening or two, nothing ever happened there to make necessary armed guards.

  These were differences that Astrid Donal, riding home to Marsh Hall in one of the Greys’ Daimlers, had been trained to see from a young age but chose not to notice. She could be perceptive, and in three years at Miss Porter’s, her boarding school in Farmington, Connecticut, she had proved that she could be a good student when she put her mind to it. But among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.

  As the car sped along the road that ran by the water, she let her eyes close, breathing in the salty air, and did not even bother to open them when the car swerved and went up the gravel drive toward the house. It had been such an absolutely perfect day, and Astrid felt sure that even if she were the sort to keep a long memory, she wouldn’t be able to recall a time of such contentment. Cordelia was a true friend, and then about a month ago she had multiplied herself, and now there was Letty, who was such a delightful little fairy creature, always entertaining everyone with some silly face or gorgeous gesture. Meanwhile, someday in the not-so-distant future, she and Charlie were to be wed. Charlie Grey was the most exciting person she had ever met—at least, she had thought so until she’d met his sister, Cordelia—and he had been her boyfriend over a year now, and as of a month ago, she’d been calling him her fiancé. This was al
l a good riot, and a good riot was what she lived for.

  Astrid had left Farmington with the notion that she was not to return, and at the end of a day like this one, she felt even more convinced of it. Her home was here in White Cove, and with the golden light warming the skin of her eyelids, she wondered vaguely if summer couldn’t just roll on forever.

  “We’re here.”

  “Oh!” The car had come to a stop, and when Astrid opened her eyes she saw her mother’s third husband’s grand house standing stolidly before them. Its high stone walls seemed to offer enduring sanctuary, but Astrid knew from a childhood spent living out of suitcases and hotel rooms that any impression of that kind was illusion. She smoothed her bright yellow hair down over her ears and smiled a thank-you at the young man who’d driven her home. He was wearing an undershirt tucked into brown trousers, and he had a prominent nose and olive coloring, as though his grandfather were perhaps Italian. His lashes were thick and black. “What was your name again?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth to tell her, but she laughed before he had the chance to make a sound.

  “Oh, never mind, I’ll only forget it. Thank you so much for the ride!”

  “Victor,” he said with a grin. “My name is Victor.”

  But by then she had jumped out and hurried up the stairs.

  The house was quiet as she went through it. She loitered a moment in the hall outside her room, examining her reflection in the large gilt-framed mirror there, taking pleasure in her appearance after an exquisitely lazy day. Her rich yellow hair was cut short, so that its thick strands—a little puffy after drying in the sun—curled in at her cheekbones. She had the soft, heart-shaped face of a girl who is well fed, but the slim limbs of a lady whose clothes are custom made for her. Her old black suit clung to her small waist in a way that she was not embarrassed to recognize as quite fetching.

  When she stepped inside her own room, she saw that the maid had been there. The pale pink bedclothes were crisp and smooth beneath the half-moon polished oak headboard, the dresses she’d decided not to wear the night before had been put away, and the windows were open to allow the breeze to pass through. This room—with its walls painted a glacial shade, its cream coved ceiling, its simple handsome furniture with subdued marquetry details—always had a quieting effect on her. It was one of a long string of rooms that she had occupied, not the finest, but far from the worst.

  Astrid knew that her mother’s dinner guests would be arriving soon, and that she ought to bathe and dress immediately. If she delayed even a moment, it might impede her slipping out early, back to Dogwood. But the laziness of the day was entirely too pleasing, and she decided that it wouldn’t matter much if just for a moment she crawled up on the bed and put her face against the cool, clean sheet.

  “Astrid?”

  The voice belonged to her mother; Astrid grimaced.

  A rat-tat-tat of insistent knocks on the door followed, after which she rolled over and opened her eyes. The light coming in her window was decidedly more dusklike than when she’d returned to Marsh Hall, and her mouth was chalky and dry. When she realized she had been asleep, she grew cross—she should have said hello to Charlie before she left Dogwood, for at this rate her mother would make her stay all through dinner and she wouldn’t get to kiss him again until tomorrow.

  “Astrid Donal, they’re arriving now,” her mother said as she pushed open the door and came into the room.

  Virginia Donal de Gruyter Marsh’s hair was dark, but otherwise her appearance was not unlike her daughter’s—they had the same features, although those belonging to the older lady had thickened with age and her cheeks were more hollowed out. She wore an excessive amount of dark eye makeup, to distract from the ditches her late nights left under her lower lids. It gave her a severe appearance, especially early on in an evening, or when she stood beside her fresh-faced daughter.

  For a moment she seemed to be giving Astrid a stare of imperious indignation, but then a small, dry smile began to form at the corners of her mouth. “Come—if you get dressed right now, we shall be just exactly late enough.”

  Astrid extended her hands reluctantly and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. It was well known around White Cove that Virginia liked a party just as well as her daughter did, and maybe better. “Interesting” people were her favorite hobby. She collected them: the type who did gay things late at night and smoked cigarettes in mixed company, those who would have most certainly scandalized her own mother. These predilections, however, were not lost on Virginia’s third husband, Harrison Marsh II, who was himself no saint and who had also been married twice before, but who shared some of his ancestors’ disdain for publicity. Astrid couldn’t help but agree with him a little—there was nothing so odious to her as seeing her own mother in the morning, washed up after some all-night revel and demanding to hear the gossip of the younger generation over strong coffee.

  But the third Mrs. Marsh had, in truth, been rather well behaved since she’d returned to Marsh Hall following a bad marital spat a month ago and an ill-advised stay at the St. Regis. There was an almost healthy light to her green eyes now and Astrid couldn’t—even after trying—remember the last time her mother had done something truly shaming.

  “But I haven’t got anything to wear,” Astrid groaned, which earned her a skeptical glance from her mother, for this particular protest was too absurd to have any teeth.

  “Nonsense. You’ll wear the black silk from Worth, the sleeveless one with the complicated turquoise and peach pinwheel beadwork, and those little black high-heeled slippers.”

  This was, in fact, precisely what Astrid would have picked for herself, even though she couldn’t help but notice that the prescribed outfit would make her look rather like her mother’s twin. The older lady wore a get-up of billowy black chiffon that left her shoulders naked; it was slightly gathered below the hips, and shining here and there with curlicues of jet.

  “Oh, all right.” Astrid went into the closet, where she kicked off her suit and pulled a black slip over her head. Her skin was dry from lying in the sun, and it smelled slightly of pool water. But there was no time to take a shower, and she secretly liked the idea of wearing such an expensive dress when her skin still bore the dust of the day. Her cheeks and shoulders glowed naturally, and her tousled hair looked much better than anything she could have done sitting in front of her mirror with sprays and tonics.

  “Here you go.” Her mother appeared in the closet’s doorway and pulled the dress from a wall full of frocks.

  “Thanks, darling,” Astrid said, and then thrust her arms in the air so that her mother could put it on over her head the way she had when Astrid was a child.

  “So,” her mother continued, as the dark silk fell over Astrid’s face, “you’ve been spending quite a lot of days at Dogwood, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” The dress slithered down her body, swinging loosely from her collarbone and skimming the skin just below her knees. When Astrid’s eyes were no longer covered, she gave her mother a crooked glance and then proceeded to the dressing table, lowering herself onto the little round chair in front of the vanity. “Of course I am,” she went on blithely. “Cordelia Grey is my best friend—and as you yourself often say, a very fascinating creature—and Charlie is my fiancé.”

  “Of course, darling, it’s always a party there, why wouldn’t you spend your days at Dogwood?” Virginia followed her daughter, taking one step and then another until their eyes met in the big, round mirror. “I’m only wondering because—”

  “Oh, don’t start that again,” Astrid interrupted as she plucked a lipstick from the several gold tubes that occupied her dressing table. At the beginning of the summer, when it had seemed altogether likely that Harrison might demand a divorce, and Virginia had been despairing of what would become of them if they were thrown out of Marsh Hall, she had suggested that Astrid might do well to marry Charlie, whose family was plenty wealthy from the booze trade. Of course, that was
before Charlie had proposed to her, when marriage had seemed like something she might do in a hundred years. “We’ve only just got engaged, and I won’t be hurried into anything just because you are worried about who’s going to pay for our next trip to Worth’s—”

  But her mother surprised her by interrupting with a quiet “Oh, good.”

  Astrid watched her mother’s lips soften into a smile in the reflection. The younger girl narrowed her eyes. “Good?”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Virginia replied carefully. “You see, I’ve been feeling guilty about pressuring you at all, and though I think it a fine thing that Charlie is so devoted, I also want to impart to you my belief that there really is no hurry.” Virginia pulled an upholstered stool from the corner and dragged it so that she could sit down beside Astrid and take her hand. “In my day, if you so much as kissed a boy, you had to marry him immediately lest you be ruined—barbaric time that was. But we live in a more enlightened era, and you have so much of your life before you, and it seems a shame to shackle yourself to one man so soon.”

  Astrid widened her eyes and fixed them on her own expression as she used her free hand to dab a poppy tint on her full lips. “Everything is all right between you and Harrison, then?”

  “Oh, yes!” Virginia let go of Astrid’s hand and took the lipstick to darken her own mouth. “I married too young, that was my problem, when I was still so curious about the world and wanted to see so many things and have a good time and not be weighed down by the keeping of a house and the raising of children. Harrison and I have made our mistakes, of course, but we can be honest with each other in a way we never could have been in our early years. Both of us can admit when we are wrong and forgive one another. That is the difference.”

  Astrid opened her mouth without any idea of what to say, but before her throat could produce sound, they heard the quick blaring of a car horn trumpeting someone’s arrival, and her mother stood up and crossed the room to see who it was.