Page 41 of The Lost Heiress
It wasn’t until Augustus had graduated from school and his father had grown ill that Augustus moved west to care for him. Doris didn’t immediately follow. But when Augustus’s wife died in childbirth, Doris stepped in to mother her grandchild. She doted on Charles and couldn’t bring herself to part with him. It was Charles’s arrival that finally satiated Doris’s appetite for building, the final piece that allowed her to proclaim—finally—that the house was indeed complete.
When Doris died at the age of seventy-eight, it was not something quick and dignified, as it should have been, but a cancer that drained her slowly.
Florence took leave from school to care for her, sitting stalwartly by her bed when Doris could no longer leave it. Florence read to her from her favorite gossip magazines, and she did the things that Doris was no longer able to do herself: pinning up her hair—which Doris still insisted must be done—putting on her lipstick in the morning, applying her Pond’s Cold Cream at night.
When, one morning, Florence found Doris in particularly bad shape, she begged her to let her call the doctor.
“Don’t you dare,” Doris said. “I’m in such a state. I’d rather die than have a stranger see me like this—my hair uncurled, my nose unpowdered.”
And so Florence was the only one in the room with her when Doris took her last rasping breath. Florence held on tightly to Doris’s cold hand, and she sat there long after she knew that Doris was gone, alone in the room with the weight of her grief. She felt the loss more keenly than she had that of her own mother.
Afterward, there was the funeral, which the whole family attended, the girls back from school and Charles home from DC. Florence sat in the front pew with the Towers family and, at the lectern, read a poem she had written. At the reading of the will, Florence learned that Doris had left her her favorite pendant necklace—a canary yellow diamond, surrounded by pearls. Astrid gasped aloud when she heard this.
“Why would Granny leave the necklace toher?” Astrid hissed under her breath. “She knew it was my favorite.”
In the privacy of her own room, Florence slipped the necklace on over her head and clasped it with both hands to her chest. She lay down on her bed and wept.
The house should have been in mourning. Florence wanted nothing more than to be left alone to wallow. To dress in all black, to sleep until noon, to have the space and quiet to feel her own wretchedness. But it was summer, and Astrid had just finished school and returned to Cliffhaven with all the destructive energy of a hurricane.
Astrid was nineteen now, wild as ever, and in single-minded pursuit of a husband. She refused to wear black, or hang her head and look dour, or sit out at parties, at such a crucial time as this. Instead, she paraded around in colorful couture dresses with full skirts and impossibly small waists. She had brought home with her a pair of cigarette pants and a knee-length pencil skirt that hugged her thighs so tightly that Florence wondered how she could walk in it. When Scarlet saw these, she ordered the maids to confiscate them and then burned them in her fireplace.They were too sinful to donate—why encourage a vice in someone else that one would not tolerate in their own house?
This, Astrid saw fit to mourn. She came to the breakfast table the next morning with red, swollen eyes and protested her mistreatment.
“I will not have a daughter of mine dressing like a hussy,” Scarlet said sternly, which put an end to it.
Astrid threw herself into her social calendar with abandon. She attended a string of parties in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs—doing Lord knows what when she was away from her mother’s prying eyes. At Cliffhaven, Astrid hosted an unending rotation of girls she’d met at school. They’d sit by the pool in their bikinis, lathered in baby oil, sipping tall glasses of Long Island iced tea and gossiping. Florence could hear them at night as she lay awake in bed—their rock albums played too loudly, their shrieks of laughter drifting through the wall. Florence would turn on her side and bury her head under her pillow so she could sleep, sending up a silent prayer that Astrid would find a husband soon so he would take her off their hands.
Perhaps God heard her prayers, because it did not take long for Astrid to snare a husband. She met him at a yacht party off the coast of Catalina. Two weeks later, they were engaged.
His name was Robert James Sinclair—RJ, to his friends. He was a wealthy banker from London, devastatingly handsome, with striking bright-blue eyes and brown hair, like a young Paul Newman. Somehow, Florence suspected the real reason Astrid had chosen RJ had nothing to do with his money or looks and everything to do with her wanting to get as far away from her mother as she could—to put a whole ocean between them.
Of course, Scarlet disliked RJ. He was too charming, too rich, too good looking to be trustworthy, but she knew the sort of pious man she would have preferred for her daughter was someone Astrid would never consent to. It was a whirlwind to pull the wedding off before RJ had to return home overseas, so that his young bride could accompany him,and Florence could hardly believe her good luck that barely a month after she’d sent up her silent prayer, she’d finally be rid of Astrid forever.
Then, the other shoe dropped.
One afternoon about a week before the wedding, Scarlet called Florence into her sitting room for tea. Scarlet looked harried, like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days.
“Florence, I have a great favor to ask you,” Scarlet said, cradling her cup and saucer. “I wondered if you wouldn’t want to accompany Astrid on her honeymoon and then settle with her in London for a while? You’re a very sensible girl, with a solid head on your shoulders, and I know Astrid could desperately use your influence.”
Florence couldn’t help it—she laughed. What influence could Scarlet possibly think Florence had over Astrid? It was preposterous. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“I’m sorry,” Florence said, feeling ashamed for having laughed. She put a hand to her lips. “It’s just that—well, Astrid—she doesn’t listen to me, ma’am. I don’t think my being there will have any effect on her.”
“But just your presence, your example, might ground her,” Scarlet said, grasping.
Florence opened her mouth to protest further, but before she could, Scarlet went on hurriedly.
“And if it wouldn’t be too much to ask ... perhaps you could write to me?” Scarlet said, looking down at the cup in her lap, slowly stirring her tea with her little spoon. “Keep me informed of Astrid’s well-being, the things she gets up to. It is very hard on a mother, you know, to be so far away from her daughter.”
Florence let out a breath. She knew now what Scarlet was really asking her. She didn’t have any delusions about Florence’s influence on Astrid. She just wanted Florence to spy on her. Anywhere Astrid went in the States, Scarlet knew people, Scarlet had eyes and ears. But across the pond, Scarlet had no one. It would be a big black vat of darkness, of not knowing.
Florence fiddled with the cup in her own lap. There was nothing she wanted less than to leave the only home she had ever known, a home she loved, to accompany a person she didn’t care for halfway across the world.
“I know it is a great favor,” Scarlet said, “and I wouldn’t ask it unless I truly found it necessary.” She looked at Florence with wide, desperate eyes. “Please, dear.”
It was not lost on Florence that this was the very room into which she’d been brought all those years ago as a young girl, newly orphaned. This was the same couch, even, where she had sat between Doris and Scarlet as Scarlet had shown her how to cross-stitch and then Doris had offered her a place at Cliffhaven, a chance to stay. They had shown her mercy in her darkest hour of need. They had rescued her, made Cliffhaven her home. How could Florence deny one of the women who had saved her, who had taken her in and raised her as practically her own?
Besides, there were other factors to consider. As a child, Florence’s place at Cliffhaven had always felt secure. She was an orphan, in need of looking after. But now, Florence was nearing eighteen, and when she came of age, what was to become of her? Things felt more tenuous, her place at Cliffhaven uncertain. Surely, she’d be expected to marry or to go off and make something of herself in the world—but what? Florence had no prospects, no special talents, no burning desires or ambitions. All she really wanted was to stay at Cliffhaven, but that was impossible. She could not expect to stay at Cliffhaven forever.
