a woman answered.
“Ellis? Oh, thank heavens you’re there.”
He hesitated, pleasantly surprised by the voice. “Lily…yeah. I just walked in.”
“I’ve been calling and calling—at work, then your apartment—but I couldn’t reach you.”
At her urgency, he brought the mouthpiece closer. “What’s happened? Are you all right?”
“She came to the Examiner to find you. I barely caught up to her, just leaving the building. There’s more you need to hear, but she wants to tell you herself.”
“Wait a sec. You’ve got to back up.” None of it was making sense. “Who is…she?”
Now Lily was the one who hesitated. After a breath over the line, she replied.
“Geraldine Dillard.”
Chapter 24
A passing glance shouldn’t have been enough to recognize her. After all, the only picture Lily had seen of Geraldine was grainy and gray from the press, half of her face obscured.
Lily wondered later what had sparked the revelation. Was it a hunch? Gut instinct, intuition? More likely, it was plain wishful thinking. No doubt, all week, she had been seeking Geraldine’s face among strangers in passing. She was too invested at that point, she supposed, to accept the finality of their findings.
In the end, those findings were wrong. At least those that had been relayed by the sanitarium’s director. There was no greater proof than the reemergence of Geraldine, lured to the Examiner by Lily’s inquiry on Ellis’s behalf. But with Ellis gone to New York, Lily welcomed Geraldine to speak in confidence, yearning to help.
And so, in the privacy of the darkroom—the location a true mark of coming full circle—Lily listened to her story and agreed. Ellis, too, needed to hear it straight from the source.
As Geraldine waited at a nearby diner, Lily juggled her work tasks with desperate attempts to reach Ellis. In the midst of her fourth try, Clayton appeared at her desk, back from lunch—their lunch—and her stomach dropped. She had completely forgotten.
Her face must have conveyed her horror because the apology was just forming on her lips when he leaned toward her and smiled.
“Done it myself. It happens. We’ll blame the chief.” He assumed that pressing duties for her boss had looped her back to the paper. “Anyway, I ran into some pals from the Bulletin, so it worked out fine. We’ll catch dinner soon?”
“My goodness, yes. Thank you for understanding, Clayton.”
After a wink, he went about his job. His sheer kindness over the slipup made her feel even worse.
Only the ringing in her ear reminded her of the receiver in her grip.
Another unanswered call.
Hours later, not giving up, she rang from her boardinghouse. She had brought Geraldine with her, having promised to summon Ellis.
Admittedly, visions of him rolling craps and swigging liquor in some gaming hall had flitted through her mind until at last he answered the phone, his voice stunned but clear.
She gave him few details.
He didn’t need them to decide.
“Tell me where you are,” he said.
• • •
It was a little after eight when the rattling of a car engine again drew Lily toward the foyer. The evening was slipping away.
Geraldine’s bus ride back to the sanitarium, in Bensalem Township, would leave at 9:32. Out of pride, despite the drive taking well over a half hour, she declined to stay until morning. Lily would have pressed the issue if the boardinghouse didn’t frown upon overnight guests. She was already pushing her limits.
The landlady, Miss Westin, had retired upstairs for the evening, same as the only other tenants in the brownstone who hadn’t ventured out to a movie palace or a vaudeville show. Lily had properly alerted Miss Westin that a second friend would be paying a visit—just without specifying gender. The prim British woman would have insisted upon chaperoning.
That certainty now sent Lily racing again to the heavy oak door to prevent a ring of the bell. Beneath a glowing streetlamp, there was Ellis, striding up to the entry. She tempered her volume despite her eagerness. “Come inside,” she said, and closed the door behind them. His concern and confusion, evident in his blue eyes, had surely amassed over the length of the drive.
Aware of the most glaring discrepancy, she didn’t wait for the question. “When I phoned the sanitarium, they did tell me Geraldine had passed.”
“It was a mix-up, then.”
“That’s what I thought too. But she’d simply asked them for privacy when she first arrived there. She was hoping to live out her final days without attention from anyone. Particularly the press.”
He shrugged his brows, acknowledging the sensibility in it. Then those features drew together. “How