Page 13 of With a Vengeance

She’d often wondered how it would feel to see them again. Long, sleepless nights in which every possible scenario from hurtto hate to rage stormed her thoughts. But nothing conjured up by her imagination came remotely close to the reality of finally laying eyes on the people who had destroyed her life.

That hollow thudding in her chest? A surprise. As is the heat coursing through her veins. A fiery burn hotter than any fever. But the real shock is the memories that suddenly appear, many of them not unpleasant. She knows these people, some better than others. A few are practically strangers, met once or twice. Others she had considered family. After years of rage, Anna assumed any trace of fondness she’d once felt for them was long gone. Yet a small bit apparently remains, and now it rises to the surface, bubbling up among the anger and grief.

When she spots Edith Gerhardt, for instance, all Anna can think about is how, when she was younger, Edith had called her Schatzi.

Her little treasure.

Spoken when she woke Anna in the mornings and when she kissed her forehead at bedtime. Edith, who had fed Anna, doted on her, put Band-Aids on her skinned knees, and once even threatened to break the arm of Matty Bernard, who had been picking on her at school. A sign, Anna now knows, that despite her grandmotherly appearance, a darkness lurked within Edith.

As for Sally Lawrence, who in Anna’s mind will always remain Sal, there was no such darkness. Not even a hint of it. In her view, Sal was perfect from the moment she became her father’s secretary at age eighteen. As a girl, Anna had loved visiting her father at the office because it meant spending time with Sal. When she grew older, precariously walking that tightrope between child and teenager, Anna considered Sal a surrogate older sister, confiding in her about things she’d never tell her mother. Boys, puberty, bras.

To young Anna, Sal was everything her mother was not. Independent, opinionated, seemingly in no hurry to settle down orsettle for less. Even though Anna had adored her mother, Sal proved to her there was more to life than gowns and glamour and being a perfect hostess. If there was any darkness evident in Sal’s behavior, Anna had completely missed it.

She assumes that’s why Sal’s and Edith’s betrayals hurt more than the others. She had once loved both women, which makes her subsequent hatred all the more acute.

Make no mistake, though. Anna hates everyone in that lounge, even those she doesn’t know well or only in passing. Her experiences with Judd Dodge and Herb Pulaski, for instance, were limited to the annual Christmas party her father threw for employees. God, he loved those parties. Anna did, too, because it brought out the best in her parents. Her father spent weeks planning them, going all out to make sure everyone got into the holiday spirit. He’d spike the punch bowl and hang mistletoe and hire a big band to play jazzed-up versions of carols.

Each year, Anna’s mother bought a new dress for the occasion. Something satiny and sparkling that caught the light when she inevitably got up to dance. Anna would watch, rapt, as she put on lipstick, rouged her cheeks, applied perfume to her neck and wrists. She’d then offer Anna a single spritz before taking her and her brother downstairs for the festivities. Some of Anna’s fondest memories were of Edith tucking her into bed as the party continued downstairs. Snug under the covers, she’d fall asleep to the sounds of swing music and clinking champagne glasses, the lingering scent of Chanel No. 5 still on her wrist.

When Anna first met Judd Dodge at one such party, he proclaimed he was a bit of an amateur magician and proceeded to make a candy cane suddenly appear in his previously empty right hand. A dazzled Anna accepted it in awe. From that point on, Judd insisted on calling her Candy Cane whenever they met, and Anna insisted on seeing another magic trick, even after she shouldhave outgrown such things. Judd always obliged. His last trick, at the final Christmas party, was to turn a sprig of holly into a rose at full bloom, which he presented to Anna with a chivalrous bow.

Herb Pulaski was equally memorable—for all the wrong reasons. Anna always felt a shiver of apprehension when he entered the party, brought on by the way he took in the surroundings with envy so palpable it bordered on disgust.

At that last-but-no-one-knew-it-yet party, Herb had backed Anna into a corner, his breath hot and stinking of scotch. “You have no idea how lucky you are,” he said. “No idea at all. Nice house. Nice clothes. But without your rich daddy, you’d have nothing. Just like me.” It was Tommy who’d eventually come to the rescue, guiding Herb away with delicate tact.

As for Lt. Col. Jack Lapsford, Anna knows him the least, having only met the man once. When he came to dinner to discuss the railroad’s importance to the war effort with her father, she had found him haughty, self-important, and dreadfully dull. Ironic, considering how that dinner set the stage for everything that came after.

Then again, maybe it didn’t. Anna suspects that, had that dinner not taken place, her family’s downfall would have happened anyway.

Kenneth Wentworth would have seen to it.

His father’s chief competitor was, after all, the man behind everything. The one who made all the plans and pulled all the strings. It’s why, of all the people involved, Anna hates him the most. And it’s why she’s relieved that Kenneth Wentworth, still seated at the piano behind the others, is the one person she can’t yet see. She fears what she might do once he comes into view.

The cluster of five starts to break up. Sal moves to one of the plush chairs near the bar, looking startlingly different than Anna remembers. The unadorned realness she had admired as a girl hasbeen replaced by cool elegance. Fancy dress, blond updo. Sal wears neither comfortably, looking instead like someone hiding behind a disguise.

Edith, on the other hand, hasn’t changed a bit. Watching her drift to the opposite side of the car, Anna is struck by a memory from her childhood. Shopping at Gimbels and getting lost in the holiday crowd, prompting several minutes of panic. But then she heard her name being called, turned around, and saw Edith across the sales floor. Anna beamed, then, because she knew she was lost no more.

Anna pushes the memory aside, focusing on the three men whose backs had been turned to the door. Lapsford, Pulaski, and Dodge. They part, finally revealing the man at the piano.

Anna freezes at the sight of him. In that stillness, she chokes out a gasp.

Instead of Kenneth Wentworth, the man idly playing the piano is his son.

Dante.

Even though Anna despises the others, she had at least prepared to face them. Dante is a different story. She never thought she’d see him again, nor did she have any desire to. Yet here he is, his unexpected presence more than a wrinkle, which is how Seamus had put it. This is a goddamn fold.

“What’s he doing here?” Anna hisses to Seamus.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he says. “I thought you invited him.”

Anna hears a hint of distrust in his voice, as if he suspects her of diverting from their plan. His tone holds other notes as well, including anger on her behalf. Seamus knows everything about her history with Dante Wentworth, and judges him accordingly. But running alongside the anger is a thin streak of something else.Anna can’t be sure, but it sounds like jealousy. Unwarranted. Seamus has no need to be jealous of Dante, for a multitude of reasons.

“I invited his father,” she says. “Where is he?”

“Beats me,” Seamus says. “All I know is that he’s not on this train.”

Anna curses under her breath. This is a terrible development. Their whole plan hinges on Kenneth Wentworth being here. Not his son, for whom Anna harbors a different kind of contempt. Dante’s crimes weren’t nearly as heinous as those of his father or the others. In fact, he had committed no crime at all, unless you consider breaking a girl’s heart criminal, which Anna certainly does.

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