by Tamara Allen
"Thanks, Theo, not just now. Jack--" Sutton moved nearer, lowering his voice. "Come with me so we can talk? I want to tell you about the concert--well, mostly about after the concert."
"So go ahead. Tell." Jack waved a careless hand. "We all want to know, right?"
The others murmured agreement, Theo most encouragingly. Sutton acquiesced for the moment, his earlier excitement coming back. "I have an invitation to play with the symphony orchestra. What do you think of that? And to tour with them in Europe next year."
Jack raised his nearly empty glass. "Sutton Albright, gentlemen. Soon to be loved the whole world 'round."
A note of regret tinged the toast, but Sutton understood where it came from. Jack felt a little left out of things, that was all. "There's more, Jack. Much more. You'll never guess."
"Bet I could--" Jack avoided his gaze, instead grinning at Theo and the others. "Oh, hell, I've forgotten introductions. Sutton, this is Fielding, that's Henry and--Henry's brother, Elliot."
Dark-haired and handsome despite the spectacles that sat crooked on his nose, Elliot slipped an arm from around Jack's shoulders and shook Sutton's hand. "You're the fellow on the radio? Say, you're swell."
"Swell," Jack echoed. He held out his glass. "Any gin left?"
"Jack, what are you doing?"
Theo sat up straight and almost slid off the table. Standing, he tried to pull himself together. "We've got to go. Time to dress. Hurry, hurry."
Sutton recognized the other three as the men who'd sung with Theo the night before. Elliot started to stand, then looked at Theo in confusion. "We've got another hour yet."
"Time to rehearse, then." Theo got hold of his lapel and hauled him away from Jack. The four of them made it as far as the bar and Sutton knew they were not too surreptitiously listening from that vantage point, but at least now he had Jack's full attention.
Jack lifted eyes not as clouded by gin as they'd first seemed. "I thought I'd come to the station tomorrow to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?"
"Well, yeah." A tired smile formed, then faded. "Seems like as good a time as any to call it a day. Don't you think? Back in your family's good graces. You've got your music again. The old emporium will stagger on a while longer." He stood. "You can go your own way, I can go mine, no hard feelings."
Sutton stared at the offered hand, then into Jack's calm face. He'd seen no sign of this coming, no distance in their conversations, no hesitancy in the way Jack kissed. "Have my parents said something? Has Phillip--"
Jack cut him off with a shake of the head. "I'm being sensible, that's all." He laughed. "Fellows like us, we have to know when to call it quits. You said, yourself--it's only a bit of fun. And you and me, we're not exactly two of a kind. Wouldn't be long before we're bickering like an old married couple."
Jack stared at the empty glass cradled in his hand. He seemed to be waiting for Sutton to curse or swing at him or--something.
If anything Jack had said made sense, he might have replied. But the blow still reverberated and the words from Jack's lips fell, meaningless, around him. Sutton struggled from the muddle of his own thoughts. Jack wanted him to walk away.
In that, he could oblige.
- Fifty -
Sutton went out into a cold, stinging rain, refusing to let himself wish for a penitent Jack in pursuit. When a lantern shining through the dark signaled an approaching cab, he hailed it and fell into the musty interior, grateful for the enveloping night around him. What had been a tiring but grand evening a little while ago felt hollow and shut off from every lovely vision of things to come. Worse, he couldn't escape the feeling he deserved a share of the blame. He'd meant to be smart--but once again, his heart had gone readily ahead, without ever giving him a say in the matter. Lewis had warned him Jack's feelings didn't run deep. Sutton still balked at the notion, but he couldn't deny he'd had a clear understanding of what Jack was like--and it hadn't stopped him from falling headlong just the same.
He supposed he ought to consider it an improvement that fellows were throwing him over face-to-face instead of sending a typewritten notice to that effect. Yet he would have preferred a letter, rather than live with the memory of Jack's remote expression and matter-of-fact manner. That indifference, after everything they'd been through, bewildered him. He could have demanded an explanation--but he shrank at the thought of Jack laying out in pitying terms just how much of a fool he'd been.
An impatient tap from the cab driver woke him. He looked out blearily at the polished brightness of the Plaza and considered telling the driver to keep going, somewhere, anywhere. Instead, he paid the fare and crept back out into the night. The park was a dim green swath, the distant lights from apartment windows little beacons that spoke of warm, safe rooms.
When he reached his own room, he didn't put on the light but stumbled to the bed and huddled somewhere on it. He had done what Jack wanted, he'd walked away, but his mind would not leave Jack alone and his heart refused to.
With no intention of sleeping, he discovered he had when Mary's voice filtered into his awareness and he opened his eyes to see her hovering with a little frown of concern. "Dearest, what's wrong?" she whispered. "Jack never came to the hotel?"
Sutton struggled to sit up and she helped him with an arm around his shoulders. He felt weary, despite the sleep, and strangely dazed and lost, as though he'd wakened to a life that wasn't his. "We had something of a falling out. I want to keep on as we are and he--doesn't."
She shook her head. "That simply can't be. Jack adores you. You were just out of sorts, that's all. He was disappointed to miss your concert and you were tired, and it all came out wrong. Have lunch with us and, after, go talk to him. I'm sure he feels as dreadfully as you do."
Sutton looked at her, struck by her determination to right what couldn't be righted. He understood, in a way he hadn't before, how she'd been hurt by losing John. "I'm sorry, Mary."
Her smile overflowed with affection. "A sweet fellow just recently told me not to give up hope, so I won't and neither will you. Tidy up and come downstairs. We'll wait for you."
He hadn't succeeded in entirely pulling himself together, judging by his mother's face when he came down to lunch. She concluded the strain of performing again was too much, when he hadn't yet recovered from his time overseas, and Sutton didn't have the heart to explain or disagree. When his father suggested he continue piano as a hobby and reconsider the career to be made with the railroad, he let that go, too. Buried in dull paperwork for the rest of his life seemed a tolerable alternative, when every note he played would make him think of Jack.
"Sutton's well enough to play again," Mary said. "He's meant to play. How can you shut him in an office full of time-tables and ledgers and stuffy old books?"
"He does seem to be working rather hard at it," Phillip said. "It would be a pity to let his progress fall by the way."
Surprised, Sutton caught his eye and Phillip shrugged. Mary smiled. "There, you see? Good advice from Dr. Albright."
"Of course," Phillip went on, "a little rest of a few months would do him good."
"I don't need a rest," Sutton said. "If you want me to come into the business--" He pushed forward with a ruthless desire to have everything decided right away, for better or worse. "I'll start Monday morning."
To his amazement, his father chuckled. "Decide nothing in haste, my boy. We'll discuss it further when we're home. In the meantime, I've a meeting at two and your brother is escorting the ladies to the shops. I suggest you go with them and let the tailor fit you for a suit." He eyed Sutton. "Perhaps two."
His mother had more in mind, it was clear, with the initial purchase of a trunk which was sent on to his hotel room to await packing.
"You can't travel without a trunk," Mary teased as he stood before the tailor's mirror. "It's unseemly." She tried to cheer him up, while his mother hovered with a worried eye. But she didn't know what troubled him and he couldn't talk about it, not with anyone.
; Back at the hotel, he tore apart the boxes of new shirts until he found the paper-wrapped bundle bearing the shirt he had borrowed from Jack. White cotton, soft-collared, worn into a comfortable state by many washings, it still had Jack's scent about it. Shabby, his mother had called it. Sutton supposed it was, though he hadn't noticed before. He tried to convince himself that it wouldn't be foolish and regrettable to stop by the shop on the pretext of returning the shirt. It was surely wiser to wait and, in a week or two, send it. Maybe Jack would write him a note in return and not find it too painful to keep up a correspondence...
A soft knock wakened hope he could not suppress. He hesitated only a moment before he opened the door, to find Mary on the other side. She looked at him a moment in mute sympathy before plunging in. "I thought you might need some help with the packing. Father wants to send the trunks on, so we can have dinner before the train." She caught his arm as he turned away. "I'm sorry, dear. You thought it was him."
"No, not really." He rolled the shirt into a smaller shape in his hands, but she saw it. "I should send it back by post--don't you think?"
As he sat on the bed, she sat beside him and, taking the shirt, smoothed it out. "We might drop it by."
"It's no use, you know. He was straightforward. We're done." He just wished he knew why. Maybe he was too inexperienced to make sense of it. War had taken Paul from him in the first stirrings of something more than friendship. As for David, he understood now how one-sided their affair had been. He'd thrown in with David so passionately, so certain David felt the same--and he'd kept David safe when the trustees had demanded his name. It hurt yet to think David wouldn't have protected him, had their positions been reversed.
Maybe Jack had never confessed to loving him, but Sutton had never missed the words--because everything else had convinced him. And he wasn't the only one. Harry, Esther, and Ox had all noticed. Even Mary seemed sure of it. But if Jack did loved him, then why...
Even now, stumbling madly about in his thoughts to question every look, every smile, every conversation with Jack, one answer came back and refused to surrender to all the nonsense Jack had thrown at him last night. Jack's feelings hadn't changed. Sutton remembered asking him what he thought he would lose, in some destined trade for all his success. Though the answer had been in Jack's eyes, Sutton had lost the chance to think it through at the time. Now he wondered if Jack had decided to break his own heart before someone else beat him to it.
Voices pulled him from his thoughts and he raised his head to see Mary at the door, letting his parents and Phillip in. He hadn't heard the knock, if there'd been one. His brother snorted in exasperation. "For heaven's sake. Stop dreaming and finish packing or we'll miss our train."
Stop dreaming--how was that done? A sensible soul might know. A sensible soul might not go on offering his heart so foolishly after it had been cast aside. But even the most sensible soul could have fallen for Jack. Heedless, headstrong Jack--all bounce and go, as Miss Doolittle would have said. Impossible, tender-hearted Jack, generous to a fault and exasperating to an endless degree. If a sensible soul could fall for him, what hope was there for someone not quite so sensible?
Suspended again between heartache and hope, Sutton let a rueful smile come. It would be so much easier if life provided sheet music to help him make sense of its dynamics--or even a few notations for finding the most harmonious chords. But life refused to oblige. He could only improvise.
"I'm done with packing. I'm staying here."
In the stillness that followed, it became desperately necessary for him to say something before anyone else did. "I know how it seems. Impetuous. Foolish. Well, can't a fellow be foolish in love?"
"Love?" Despite the question in her voice, his mother did not look as surprised as he thought she might. Maybe she and Mary had talked. Or maybe he was more transparent than he knew.
His father was the implacable one, eyes reproachful, arms folded, lips drawn tight. Phillip and Mary seemed to hold their breaths.
Sutton's own breath had caught somewhere in his throat. But he couldn't yield now. "I know what you think. That there's something wrong with my mind. That the war did things to me--but--" He hesitated, half-formed explanations falling away. There was just one word for it. "I love him. I want you to understand, but whether or not you do, I'm going to find out if this is what is meant for me. I wish--"
His father interrupted. "Before you make a choice you'll regret, you may want to think about what will remain for you when you come to your senses and find you've lost everything that matters."
Sutton wondered if there was any hope. Everything he wanted to say with firm and intelligent clarity seemed doomed to tumble out a mishmash. "You're so certain of how I should live. Don't you think I could be as certain of my own life?"
"I think you're young enough to decide impetuously, as you yourself admitted, and think nothing of what it will mean a month from now, a year--if you get into trouble over it, the matter will be yours to resolve. A scandal might mean the end of any concert career. Worse might mean the end of your freedom."
"If I give up New York and come home, I've already lost my freedom."
The curve of his father's mouth was slight and sardonic. "So much like your grandfather. Always with your heart on your sleeve and your head God knows where. You do remember believing for months you would never play piano again? Now you have that back in your grasp and you'd throw away the whole world just like that?"
Sutton did not know how to make him see. "The whole world..." He caught his mother's contemplative gaze and broke from it to face his father's skeptical one. "Would you have the whole world if you didn't have her?"
No answer came to deny or refute. For the first time that Sutton could remember, Phillip Albright, Sr. seemed at a loss.
In the silence, his mother spoke gently. "Are you sure, my dear?"
"I'm sure. I don't know if Jack is as sure, but I can't go. It may come to nothing but I have to talk to him--and even if he means to end it, I don't know that I can go back to Topeka and just go on as if I'd never left."
"But where--"
"I don't know. I just know I'd feel like a butterfly pinned for everyone's curiosity and it would hurt you as much as me. Maybe more. Mother, please understand." He hated to see her tears, to be the cause of them, but he was all out of alternatives. He had a sense of what it had taken for her to let him go when he'd left for France. He could only wish that would make it easier for her now. "I will do anything you want me to do. If you want me to see a doctor--"
"I think that would be an excellent idea." His father had recovered for further argument--but to Sutton's surprise, his mother interrupted.
"You've been happy." It sounded like a question to which she already knew the answer. He nodded and she cradled his face in her hands and returned his small smile with a thankful one of her own. "I was afraid for the longest time after you came home--I thought I wouldn't see my boy again--the boy who had gone to war. Oh my dear, you were so lost. But I don't believe you are anymore. I've never heard you play as you played last night. Now I see..." She wrapped him in a hug he sensed she meant to live on for a while. "You mustn't forget your family."
"I won't." He looked past her shoulder and met his father's troubled stare. "I will be discreet. And careful. And sensible, if I can," he added, unable to keep back a full-fledged smile despite the reproval in the blue eyes.
"If you were sensible, you would choose to come home with us. But it appears you've your mother's blessing, so for the time being, you will remain in New York. The rest of us have a train to catch--" He checked his pocketwatch. "We will have to bid you a rather hasty farewell. For now."
When his mother reluctantly let go of him, Mary hugged him as hard. "I knew you were already home," she whispered. "You'll write to me, horrid boy. You promise."
"I promise." There was no way to say good-bye without tears. "I've got to tell you something someone told me once, Mary. Find your balance and keep pedaling.
For him, too, until he's going right along with you." Sutton turned to his brother, who frowned at him. Sutton could hug him, for the Lancet article, anyway. "You'll forgive me sometime, Phillip."
Phillip looked dubious. "Just stay out of trouble. You still share our name, you know."
Hope, fragile but persistent, had come back to him. Not that doubt didn't hang on the edges of hope, and tug and pull as soon as his family had gone and he was alone again. His father's good-bye had been no more than an admonishment to keep the suits and trunk in case he changed his mind. But Sutton took it, too, as a gesture. No one had given up on him altogether.
No one except Jack. And yet, as he left the hotel, he still couldn't think Jack meant a word of what he'd said. After last night, Sutton dreaded more indifference. But if he didn't go, he would forever live with the feeling he'd lost Jack only because he'd given up. Some things a fellow needed to fight for, after all. War hadn't taught him that, but love had--the love Jack had shown him. It stayed with him, filled every corner of him, and he couldn't let himself believe--not yet--that Jack wanted to be free of him.
Whatever happened, whatever the days ahead brought, one thing he knew. He would never be free of Jack. And if he couldn't stop his heart from taking the lead, this time he wouldn't let it go down without a fight.
- Coda -
Jack lay awake as early light brightened the window shades. Mornings had become a habit, but one he could break if he wanted to. Just not today. Not with the raging headache and the certainty he was going to feel like hell for a long time to come. He couldn't stay in bed and he dreaded going down to the shop. He briefly considered hauling Theo up for breakfast, but Theo would be reproachful. Jack, having wallowed all night in his own reproaches, didn't want to hear more.
Of the night before, he could recall just ten minutes. What he had done in those minutes--every time he thought of it, he had to remind himself why he'd done it. He had to lay it all out like commandments from above. When it was done, he had filled his glass and refilled it to dull the hurt trying to turn him inside out. Despite the inevitable sick headache, he would have to fill that glass every night, until morning came without memory and without pain. He figured it would only take a few dozen years.