The Lady in Residence - Allison Pittman Page 0,101

falling into an easy rhythm of family stories (from Quin) and theme park shenanigans (from Dini). They had the entire second level to themselves, which limited the number of times the staff would make the journey to check on their needs. Finally, their dishes cleared and drinks refreshed, Quin handed their waitress a twenty-dollar bill and promised he would holler down if they needed anything else.

“It’s like the night we met,” Dini said, taking in their solitude. “But I’ve been lugging bags around all day, so I don’t have any cards to do a trick.”

“I don’t want you to do a trick,” he said, his voice suddenly taking a turn that transformed their table into an island that stranded them in the midst of all that kept them apart. All of the distance, all of the days—whoosh, like a coin up a sleeve.

“Why are you here?” It was the first question she’d ever asked him, and now it came with a tiny tug of fear. There had been no mutual agreement to fall into a relationship. But the intimacies they had shared—not physical, of course, but the dreams and memories and silly moments—would call for a mutual ending. She hadn’t given the possibility even a thought until now. What she knew of Quin, what she loved about Quin, pointed to a guy who would not break up via text. “Why did you come all this way?”

“So—” He took a sip of his drink and adjusted his glasses, his one nervous tell. “I found all of that stuff cleaning out my great-great-grandfather’s house, remember?”

“Do I remember the ‘stuff’ that led me to find my ancestry linked to the actress who gaslighted Hedda Krause into thinking she was robbed by the ghost of Sallie White? Vaguely.”

Quin took a deep breath before continuing. “Anyway, I gave a bunch of clothes to my school’s drama department for costumes and such. Stuff from all decades and in really great shape.”

“I would have loved to have gotten my hands on some of that,” Dini said, imagining the accessories.

“Right. Well, the department is putting on a production of Our Town, and a couple of weeks ago the drama teacher comes to my room and says she feels guilty keeping some of the items.” He took out his phone and opened it to his photo gallery. “Look,” he said, bringing her to sit beside him.

She did, wondering about the grim set to his features.

Quin held the phone between them. She saw a small leather case, and when he scrolled to the next picture, saw that it held a detective’s badge. He scrolled and narrated: “His cuff links, an FDR campaign pin, a pocket watch, a wrist watch, an ornate fountain pen. And then, this.”

Quin scrolled one more time, and Dini gasped, tears pooling instantly as her throat burned beyond speech. It was sitting on a folded white square—a handkerchief with the initials IC monogrammed in the corner. The stone was a deep, rich purple, set in gold, with three gold beads clustered at the top. The amethyst earring. “He kept it,” she said at last.

“He did.”

“I always pictured them as teardrop,” she said, speaking more to the image. Then she looked over to see Quin studying her in a way he never had before, like he was holding her up the way he did when he first greeted her downstairs, and to look away would be to drop her and lose her forever. “You came all this way to show me?”

“I wanted to see the look on your face.”

She smiled, the tears now free and harmless. “Was it worth it?”

As an answer, he kissed her. “Let’s go.” Dropping his phone in his jacket pocket, he stood then descended the steps, remembering her preference for who led who down narrow stairways. He called out his room number to Gil to charge the food and drinks, then took her hand as they walked, not stopping until they were in front of the black marble fireplace, surrounded by the glass-enclosed antiquities of the Menger Hotel. Quin gestured for Dini to sit on one of the leath-eresque sofas, but he did not follow suit. It was like they were moving through some sort of fog, like they were the ghosts projected in this room, because the air had gone out of it the moment Quin’s knee hit the floor.

They’d had countless conversations about the fate of the earring Sallie White returned. It was never accounted for in any of the writings about