Vronsky was at the theater door, about to walk in, when he heard Alexander speak. “Wait.” He turned and walked back to the man that was at one time his greatest rival.

“Eleanor released the video,” Alexander said bluntly, his voice strangled with the atrocity of his sister’s misdeed. “I thought it was you, but I was wrong.”

Vronsky stared at Alexander, speechless. He had assumed it was Alexander, to get back at Anna for dumping him.

“I saw Anna leave. She didn’t look well.”

“Maybe she went home,” Vronsky said.

“If you love her, you should find her. She needs you,” Alexander said, even though the truth pained him. Alexander watched as Vronsky ran out the front doors into the dark Manhattan gloom. Alexander decided he no longer wanted to stay, either. He certainly couldn’t go back and take a seat next to Eleanor after what she had done. Alexander knew something that Eleanor didn’t know yet. His father was planning to divorce her mother. The news would devastate Eleanor, as it meant they would no longer share a home, and part of him wanted to go in and deliver the news, to hurt her the way she had unjustly hurt Anna, a girl he still loved. But Alexander made the moral choice not to act out of anger and, with the help of his cane, slowly hobbled across the lobby and exited the building. It was raining now, and he didn’t have an umbrella. But he didn’t care in the slightest.

Out in the New York streets, Anna was soaked to the bone, but after leaving Lincoln Center, she didn’t want to go home, and so she walked. Just like in the song that Lolly had sung so beautifully only fifteen minutes ago to a packed house, Anna stalked the same avenues as Alexander Hamilton once did over two centuries ago, grieving for her love, a golden object turned to dust in her hands as though she were a King Midas in reverse.

For the first twenty blocks she zigzagged with the lights, but as she walked through the eerily empty theater district, she realized there was only one place for her to go.

By the time she entered Grand Central, she was a half-crazed, bedraggled mess. She wiped her wet hair from her face and continued with purpose, passing everyone who couldn’t help but stop and stare at the beautiful girl, wearing a maroon silk dress that dragged a trail of inky water behind her like the residue of some phantom, or the trace of a wraith.

She took the escalator down to Track 27. This was where she’d met him for the first time. The platform was empty, and she walked to the far end where Johnson, the homeless man, lay on Valentine’s Day, grieving over his lost dogs.