Europe, Newport, Palm Beach, and the like. I certainly didn’t predict such an ignominious end.
I pull out my change purse, counting the money there again, the mouse long gone. There’s barely enough for food and lodging; adding train fare will likely erase my remaining budget for this trip. Then what? Only one person I know has funds to spare, and I doubt he’ll help me once he learns I’ve run off.
I rummage through my bag, my fingers grazing the diamond ring, searching for my handkerchief—
“Can I help you?” someone asks.
“I’m fine, I—” I glance up, and the man in the gray suit from the train is standing in front of me, peering down at me from an unfairly high perch.
Bother.
My fingers curl around my old handkerchief, and I rub the fabric beneath my eyes, praying my makeup isn’t smearing, my cheeks burning from the indignity of it all.
Of all the people to see me so low, why did it have to be him?
“I’m fine,” I repeat more forcefully this time. “Thank you,” I add, because Mother always taught me that good girls are polite girls, even if my interest in being “polite” is only marginally more than my interest in being “good.”
At best, hopefully, it will see him on his way.
“You don’t look fine,” he points out rather inelegantly.
“Thank you for that observation. But I am.”
I wait for him to excuse himself.
He doesn’t.
“You can leave,” I say, “polite” and “good” firmly abandoned.
“You weren’t so eager to be rid of me earlier.”
Is that a smirk on his face?
“I was bored,” I reply. “A long train ride will do that to you. Everyone goes a little crazy when they’re cooped up for so long.”
“Bored? Hardly. You had your fair share of admirers.”
“You can hardly call them a fitting conquest.”
“So you had to collect more?”
“Why is it that when men approach women as conquests to be won they are lauded, but when women decide to go on a hunt of their own, they’re branded as too aggressive, too eager, too greedy? Your sex didn’t corner the market on ambition. Or a love of the chase.”
He laughs, surprising us both, I think.
“You have a point there. Speaking of conquests, where’s your friend from the train? Still mesmerized by the fish in the ocean?”
So he was paying attention earlier.
“He’s elsewhere. Now please go. We’ve made the requisite small talk; we’ve danced around insulting each other. I don’t have time for this, and as much as it pains me to disabuse you of any illusions you had, I really wasn’t interested in you for anything other than an opportunity to pass the time.”
But he doesn’t go. Instead he leans against the porch railing next to me, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“Well, then, now that we’ve established you aren’t hopelessly in love with me, you can satisfy my curiosity as to why you’re standing out here at one of the hottest times of day, wearing the same dress you had on earlier on the train, your bags beside you, looking utterly lost. Are you waiting for someone?”
“No, I’m not waiting on anyone. I came here alone.”
Why won’t he go away?
“You’re joking. I assumed you were visiting family . . . friends . . .”
“I came down here to find someone,” I answer after a beat. “I thought he’d be here, and he isn’t. So now I’m leaving. You should do the same.”
“So if he isn’t here, where is he?” he asks.
I consider lying or refusing to answer altogether, but I’m too tired to be bothered, so the truth comes out instead.
“Lower Matecumbe Key, I think. Or Windley Key. I—I don’t know, exactly. We lost touch. But I’ve come to understand that’s where the veterans’ camps are.”
“He fought in the war?”
“Yes.”
“Those camps—that’s no place for someone like you.”
“I can take care of myself,” I repeat for the second time today.
If they only knew what my life was like back home; Key West is no match for New York City. A girl doesn’t survive these days without learning to keep her wits about her.
“I’m sure you can take care of yourself, but Matecumbe is hours away. You have a journey ahead of you.”
“I am aware of that. I’ve made it this far from New York. What’s a few more hours?”
“A great deal down here. How do you propose to get there? The train won’t run anymore tonight.”
A sharp stab of disappointment fills me. “Are you sure?”
“Last train left the station an hour ago.”
“There’s always tomorrow, then,”