He had asked her to come to the Copley. Now, he had said on the drive back from Concord. She had let him drive and the car was full of the feeling between them, as they followed the floating red lights back to town. He was crazy, she couldn’t possibly go then, and she was unsure she would ever go at all. It wasn’t simple. These were the phrases she spoke to him, but inside something else went on.

She thought of his face and was grateful that it was not triumphant, no, it was worn out and pained. How she loved that in him! She’d noticed a difference that first night at the Copley, the weariness she’d seen in some of the boys who had fought. How many bad things must have happened, she thought, for it to show on someone’s face. A lot of life must have crashed up against him. One starts off soft, not delivered into the world shelled over like a walnut — that happened over time.

And could her own heart be wrong if it had been feeling this way for so long?

She stood in the old wing, the chaise in the same place, the glow back in the hearth. What she had known as pain was lifted out of the room and it seemed inevitable that she be back inside.

And he? — she seemed to act as his touchstone, a place he checked in with now and then so he could feel — well, whatever it was she inspired in him. She didn’t know.

Perhaps she simply made him feel. But then, she thought, that was not something Walter Vail liked to do for very long.

56 • Who always knew

56 • Who always knew

I NEVER did like the sound of that one, Aunt Tizzy said with a sly smile. Her voice was more hoarse than usual. Around her shoulders was a turquoise silk scarf and her heavy black bangles clanged against the wheelchair arms. She wore a dressing gown shot through with pink; her knees behind the fabric were like wooden knobs. Her hair in the sun was a flame.

No, Lilian said. She looked down, but smiled too.

Difficult men are always more interesting, said Aunt Tizzy, striking a match.

They were in the sun room, a high-ceilinged hallway in the Maidstone House in Roxbury, which consisted of an arrangement of chairs facing three wide windows. Here Aunt Tizzy could smoke. She held her cigarette with elegance as if to say what does one need a holder for?