in a silly romantic way. I was trying to cross Westminster Street, fool that I was, and my feet went out from under me, and I would have drowned if he hadn’t hauled me out. We laughed about it later, how I was swept off my feet. He took me to a friend’s office to dry out and wait out the worst of it, and that’s how it started up again. At the time I thought thank God it did, because I was dying without him. I didn’t go a day without thinking of him for ten long years. He got me that job with Rosemont and Loge. He helped our family and he made me happy. He made me happy, Kit. He made a world for us as though we were married, and for a while it was easy to believe it.”
I looked away, out at the yellow grass. “What about Billy?”
“I’m getting to that. I just have to explain how it was. When the war came and Nate got that apartment, I went, God help me.”
“You never had a job in Washington.”
“It was like we were living the life we were born to live, married. It was lovely, most of it.”
“So that was it? Moonlight and roses, tra-la? Lying to your brother, to us, violating the sacrament of matrimony, mortal sin, all of that?”
“I said it was lovely. I didn’t say it was easy. I didn’t say it was right. That summer we were together, it made us reckless. So that fall I started to see him in Providence.
I’d go to his office. One night, one Sunday night, it was snowing, and we were… together, and we saw Billy run past, down the alley by the house. We knew he’d seen us — he was probably looking in the back window.”
No, I thought. He was in the tree with the camera, looking.
“Then we saw someone else run by. Nate went after them, but it took a few minutes, because of course we had to —”
“— put your clothes on,” I supplied.
“And so I followed Nate, but I kept a bit away, you know, in case there was anyone around. But Sunday nights are quiet, and there was this snowfall, and it was bitter cold and everyone was home. I saw Nate’s car down the street, and Nate chasing it. He always left the keys in the car — nobody in Federal Hill would dare steal Nate Benedict’s car. It was like the world went still except for that car and Nate chasing it. The car was going so fast, like an airplane, like Billy wanted to just take off into the sky. It was like a dream, so white and quiet except suddenly I heard the tires spinning. And then it just… moved sideways, it spun like a toy and smashed sideways into a tree. I started to run. Nate got there first, and Billy was already getting out — he was driving. He had blood on his forehead and he was dazed, but he was all right.” Delia stopped talking. She placed her hands around her cup but didn’t drink from it.
“His cousin Michael,” I whispered.
“He was already dead.” Delia took a sip of tea. “A patrolman suddenly showed up, and he was kneeling in the snow over Michael. Nate pushed Billy toward me and said, ‘Take him away.’ So I did. I brought him back to the office and I cleaned his cut — it was under his hair. There wasn’t a mark on his face. He was crying — he was only fourteen, and his cousin was dead and he’d been driving and he thought his life was over. Nate came by an hour later and said, ‘It’s done.’ And it was. No one ever knew that Billy had been driving that car. Nate made it go away because that’s what he could do. He told Billy it was better that way. That one boy was dead, but if the other boy’s life was ruined, it would be even worse for the family. The family would fracture — how could his Aunt Laura ever look at her sister again, knowing that Billy had been driving the car? He said all this while he was hugging Billy. They were both crying.”
“When was this?”
“In 1945, in February.”
“When you took me to the play in New Haven —”
“I knew he’d be there with Angela. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. I’d gone down to the apartment like