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By Root 710 0

have been like this: Catherine would have stood up, her mouth slightly parted, one silk-gloved hand pressed flat against her bosom. Cote, feigning curiosity, would have bent to the telescope and then would have righted himself, seemingly shocked by what he had just seen. My dear, he might have said. I am so sorry. How dreadful for you. Which might have penetrated the shock, might have made Catherine look up at Cote’s face and see the concerned frown about the brow that could not entirely hide the sly smile at the lips. And perhaps she flinched and then drew away and had the wherewithal to slap the man. Olympia hopes that she did.

• • •

By the time Olympia reaches the center hallway, holding her dress closed at the waist where it has torn, it seems that all about her is a screeching, the sound of all the clocks of the world out of sync. Have she and Haskell caused this, this chaos, this pandemonium? Around her, people and objects are swirling, moving very fast. Haskell has gone before her, and she looks for him, for Catherine.

Her mother’s face is white and frozen, and she cannot speak. Her father comes to her, a question in his eyes. Is this true, Olympia? he asks. She answers him, but it is as though she speaks a foreign tongue; he seems not to be able to comprehend her words. And then she sees the moment of recognition in his face, that slight shiver, and watches as the knowledge finally sets in: the ruin, the loss of everything he values — his daughter, her reputation, the possibility of ever coming to Fortune’s Rocks again, the house that he loves so, the life that he loves so. And she thinks the saddest moment of the entire night is the brave manner in which her father then draws himself up and tries to maintain his poise even as the awful knowledge is seeping into his pores, the way he tries to speak to his guests, to reassure them, to remain ever the able and affable captain, even as the hull is cracking and the sea is pouring through the bulkheads.

Her father tries to take her hand, but she pulls away. She runs from room to room. Guests are leaving, calling for their carriages. She has to see Haskell. She has to find Catherine. She has to say something to Catherine.

Olympia comes upon them finally in the passageway that leads to the kitchen. Catherine has been crying and will not let her husband touch her, even though he is trying to. He looks at Olympia and does not speak. His face is ravaged.

We cannot have done this, she wants to cry out to him. We cannot have done this.

They go out the back entrance together. Husband and wife. He has to go with his wife. He has to see her to their new home, does he not? But what horrors will await them there? Olympia wonders. What cries will sound in the night as Catherine sleeps and then wakes and then sleeps and then wakes again, a cruel and relentless pattern?

Olympia watches Haskell leave her house, leave her standing in the passageway. The orchestra has long since stopped playing. She goes down onto her knees. She sees the back of Haskell’s coat as he moves through an open door. And it is only then that she truly understands what she was meant to have known from the very beginning. He is not hers. He was never hers.

• II •

In Exile

OLYMPIA AND her parents depart Fortune’s Rocks on the morning of August 11 by train, leaving Josiah and Lisette, who have not, after all, been given time to make their personal announcement to her father, in charge of an army of temporary servants whose mission it is to rid the house of any trace of the disastrous gala. Her mother is tight-lipped during the journey and needs to be revived with salts from time to time by the nurse who accompanies her. Her father does not speak to Olympia until they reach the privacy of the sitting room in their house in Boston, which is not yet overly peopled with help. With barely controlled fury, he announces that Olympia has ruined the family and destroyed any chance of happiness for any of its members. Furthermore, her foolish disregard of consequences has thoroughly shredded her own