benighted. (Even if Alex herself would have always thought the same. Before now, that is. Before now she would have . . .)
And anyway, hadn’t Alex lost all authority to argue such things when she’d come here to be with Libbie? When her Libbie had agreed to Harold Brookhants’s offer? (Or had agreed to enough of it, at any rate?) Here Alex was, after all, on Harold’s land in Harold’s Orangerie. She could hear Madame Verrett laughing all the way from France: I know what you’re thinking, Alex. And it’s not what you’re saying out loud.
What Alex the Liar had never confessed to Libbie, what she’d never been able to, was that after she had spent her remaining days in Chicago working to convince her that no matter how bleak her situation might seem, surely there were other, better, sounder options than Harold’s mad offer; and after they had sorted through these options together, discussed them and weighed them and tried to think of still more; and after Alex had watched from the window of her departing train as Libbie stood weeping on the platform watching her, watching her leave, Mr. Harold Brookhants had found her.
He’d found Alex, I mean.
Right away, Readers, he’d found her, there on the train, before it had even cleared the outskirts of Chicago. He and Madame Verrett had schemed it down to the minute. Alex hadn’t even been particularly surprised to see them coming up the aisle toward her. This trip had depleted her capacity for shock.
They had her trapped like a yellow jacket under a bowl. At least until the first station stop. (But even then, they could simply change their tickets, too. Harold Brookhants had the means to do whatever he liked. Except, it appeared, to convince Libbie to take his offer.)
For miles chugging across the country, Eastward Ho!, they worked to convince Alex that Harold’s option was the only option, and not just for Libbie but for her as well—if she wanted to be with Libbie, that is. Harold painted his imagined Brookhants School for Girls as a paradise awaiting its tenants. And owners. A place where she and Libbie could live as openly as the Ladies of Llangollen.*
If Harold sold Alex the dream, Madame Verrett sold the nightmare, the one she said would be sure to come true for Libbie if she refused Harold’s offer. If she, for instance, told her parents of her pregnancy, or sought out Simon Everett III—or any other suitor—or attempted some horrible method of ending her pregnancy herself: all of which were options Libbie and Alex had discussed. Anything but Harold’s offer, the Madame said, would seal her fate.
And what a wretched fate it would be. That much was certain. Madame Verrett enumerated a host of dreadful futures for Libbie Packard, all of them avoidable, of course, if she’d only marry rich old Harold and partake in a ceremony or two, in France, before delivering her child there.
Alex did try to argue with them, to counter their assurances with her own ample doubts and misgivings, but together, over those miles and miles, they wore her down.
After all, she did want to braid her own life to that of her Libbie. Was she so wrong for wanting this, Readers? Libbie herself didn’t seem to know what she wanted. Couldn’t Alex want enough for them both?
And if Harold was going to die soon, anyway—and both he and Madame Verrett were so adamant that he would—then so what if he tried a few more of his nonsense rituals before he did?
Because of course they would be nonsense! What else would they be?
From the train, Alex wrote Libbie a letter. In it, she explained that she’d perhaps been a notch too rash when she’d so stridently condemned Harold Brookhants and his plan, too motivated by her own stupor over Libbie’s distressing news. Alex didn’t perform an about-face on the matter—that would have been suspicious—but she did begin the process, one furthered by many more measured letters between them, of allowing room for the idea of the future Harold Brookhants had conjured.
Alex let that idea of future in the door, spun it around, and told Libbie, gently—ever so gently—to take a good look, to consider it fully. It did have an appeal, didn’t it?
She, Alex the Liar, had done that. She’d done it so they’d end up here.
And now here they were.
And Alex the Liar had work to do.
Typist’s Block
Merritt hadn’t spoken to Harper since the Hollywood Forever Cemetery the night