Page 23 of With a Vengeance

“I don’t care,” her mother snapped. “Go to your room.”

The focus of her mother’s wrath raised his hands in innocence. “I was just being friendly, Maggie.”

“That’s Mrs. Matheson to you. And nothing you do is friendly, Mr. Wentworth.”

Anna looked to Dante, noting the resemblance between him and the man being yelled at by her mother. Both were roguishly handsome. They even shared the same crooked smile. When Dante flashed his, Anna understood something she should have known all along. The man was his father—and neither of them had been invited.

Dante gave a blithe shrug and said, “I suppose I should have mentioned that earlier.”

Anna said nothing in response. She was too upset by her mother’s reaction to Kenneth Wentworth’s presence. MargaretMatheson never got angry. Ever. Yet Dante’s father made her absolutely livid. Anna searched the crowd for her father, finding him standing in the shadow of the staircase, watching the argument over the rim of a raised rocks glass.

“You need to go,” Anna told Dante. “Right now. Both of you.”

Dante bowed and said, “It was a pleasure, Miss Matheson. May our paths cross again soon.”

In the weeks that followed, Anna tried hard not to think about Dante. But then in late January, during the first scene of her final performance as Juliet, Anna spotted Dante in the front row. His presence threw her so much she momentarily forgot her entrance line and had to be prompted by the classmate playing the nurse. In those first, fraught moments of her performance, Dante was an unwanted distraction, and not just because she knew he was watching. It was the way he watched that Anna found disconcerting. Completely still, his attention rapt, yet always sporting that crooked grin. Like he was imagining Anna saying her lines directly to him. And when she took her final bow, no one in the audience applauded louder than Dante.

After the show, he appeared backstage with a bouquet of roses. Presenting them to her, he said, “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Despite all reservations, Anna was smitten.

Now she’s anything but as Dante continues to play the piano. “Are you going to do this all the way to Chicago?”

“Would you like me to, Annie?”

That nickname again. Her heart thrummed like a plucked piano string each time he said it.

“That’s Miss Matheson to you.”

“I remember when you used to call me Danny.”

“That was a long time ago,” Anna says, pausing to add a caustic “Mr. Wentworth.”

Dante beams, pleased by how easily they’ve fallen into that old familiar rhythm. While certainlynotpleased, Anna isn’t surprised. He always managed to coax out her sharp wit, no matter how serious she tried to be.

“I assume that, despite Jack Lapsford’s blustering efforts, this train won’t be stopping until we reach Chicago,” Dante says.

Anna looks out the window, seeing that the train is running parallel to a river, hugging the curve of the shoreline. Several houses sit on the other side of the water, their lit windows reflecting off the surface in golden shimmers. They’re smack-dab in the middle of Pennsylvania now, Anna knows, moving steadily northwest until they reach the Ohio border. From there the train will head due west, taking them across Ohio, through Indiana, into Illinois and, finally, Chicago.

“No,” she says. “It won’t.”

The wrong thing to say, because it allows Dante to continue playing. Anna sits, resigned, as he starts a new song. “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

“At first, I wondered why you were doing this,” Dante says. “It all seemed so complicated. The train. The journey. The—”

He pauses, searching for the right word, which prompts Anna to offer “Dramatics?”

“Exactly,” Dante says. “All the dramatics. When it would have been so much simpler to let the FBI do the work of tracking everyone down, rounding them up, and arresting them.”

“Like what will soon happen to your father? If it hasn’t happened already.”

Dante ignores the remark. “Instead, you chose to do this. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the effort. The fake conductor was an especially nice touch. What’s his name again?”

“Seamus.”

“That’s right. Seamus.” Dante’s playing softens until only thelightest of notes rise from the piano. It sounds intimate. Like a whisper. Talking over it, he adds, “Are the two of you lovers?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Dante shrugs, and Anna takes it to mean he assumes the answer to be yes.

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