Samantha and Dr. Davenport, were players in a performance begun years before we had thought of it. Sometimes, you meet someone, and the connection between the two of you is so strong you both feel like you’ve known each other for a long time, if not all your life, or maybe even in a previous one. There’s that sense of destiny.
I certainly felt that way about Samantha Davenport the following day, and from the look on her face, the delight in her eyes, I sensed she did, too, when we confronted each other. We met at ten in the morning in Leo’s apartment, and as he had told me he would after he had introduced us, he left to do some shopping. He had made a pot of coffee and had some nice biscuits on the coffee table in his small, austere, but neat living room. Pictures of his wife, children, and grandchildren surrounded us, a proper setting for the discussion Samantha Davenport and I were about to begin.
Despite her being six years older than I was, she looked six years younger, her features perfect but childlike, as was her soft smile, full of an innocent trust, her laugh melodic but fragile. I saw immediately that she realized her own beauty and catered to it. Her makeup was subtle, with just enough eyeliner to highlight her soft blue eyes and with just a brush of lipstick on her full, perfectly shaped lips. She had a slight cleft in her chin that looked more like a perfect dimple. If my grandmum had set eyes on her, she would have told her what she had told me often: “Your perfect features should be captured in a cameo.”
It wasn’t only our dainty features that recommended us to each other. We had similarly willowy figures, our features diminutive but well proportioned. I imagined she was often teased about having no hips, just like I was. I could easily slip into what she was wearing at the moment. I had recognized it immediately as a Versace ruched mesh dress, because I had seen it in a storefront on Fifth Avenue. It was a popular spring-summer dress for those who could afford it.
Samantha had chosen a hairstyle for her light-brown hair that complemented her features. It was shoulder-length, sleekly cut, with layers and mid-length bangs. Her hair hid her modest diamond stud earrings, but her engagement and wedding rings made Clara’s look like a pebble.
“Thanks to Leo,” she began, “I feel like I’ve known you forever. I can’t wait to hear you sing.”
“Apparently, the rest of the world can,” I said dryly.
She smiled so softly at my sarcasm that I immediately felt bad sounding bitter.
“Where we live, you can burst into song at any time and let your voice carry over the hills and fields like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”
That made me laugh. I really liked her, and so quickly, perhaps because I saw my own earlier innocence in her. When you had a life that rivaled our royals’, most of the uglier things in life were unseen. Everything was viewed through rose-colored lenses, but what caught my interest and made me feel comfortable was how easily relaxed she was with me, a stranger, despite what we were here to do. I felt no tension, no embarrassment, and no prying eyes. We were like two long-lost friends eager to catch up with each other.
“I can just see my father’s reaction to that. Whenever I sang in the back of our house, he was horrified, afraid I would draw the ire of neighbors who wanted nothing more than silence at the end of a day’s work.”
“Oh, you must tell me everything about your family, your life in England, all of it. We’ll talk until we’re both hoarse, late into the night. And there must never be secrets between us. My house, Wyndemere, nurtures secrets, pounces on them, and quickly makes them part of the decor. Whispers echo down the long corridors, and the walls capture nasty thoughts like fishermen catch fish with nets. My in-laws can tell stories about the original inhabitants so accurately that you just know they put their ears to the walls and hear those words exactly as when they were spoken decades ago.
“I don’t. I don’t care to know anything unpleasant. I hate when my mother-in-law describes the dead as if they were standing in the room with us. I walk right out. I won’t even listen to the weather