The glass knob is cool against my palm. I glance once more toward the end of the hall. No light, no sound. I let my breath out slowly and push inside. The smell of him is suddenly all around me, limey and clean and male, and for a moment his presence is so palpable, it feels as if I might reach out and find him in the dark.
I wait for the ache of it to subside, my back pressed against the closed door. Moonlight seeps through the sheer curtains behind the bed, washing the room in cool, angular shadows. There are no blackout curtains—probably because the room hasn’t been used since Anson left for Paris, long before the Americans joined the war.
I move to the window and draw down the shade, then flick on the small bedside lamp. It’s a simple room, not much larger than my own, decorated in shades of pewter and sand. There’s a double bed covered in pale-gray brocade, a heavy chest of drawers, and a small desk and chair tucked into one corner. It suits him. Simple and neat, unfussy.
I feel like a prowler as I tiptoe about the room, opening drawers and peering in his closet, peeling back the layers of the life Anson lived before I met him. Being here, touching the things he used every day, is the worst possible torture, and yet I can’t seem to stop myself. I’m hungry for him, desperate to connect with his memories if that is all I’m to have of him now.
I move on to the desk. The surface is bare except for a small lamp and a scarred leather blotter. I run my hand over the back of the chair, imagining him in it, studying or writing letters, then slide the center drawer open. A framed photograph stares up at me, the glass cracked down the middle. It’s of Anson and Thia, smartly dressed in matching white sweaters, posed with their mother in front of a large sailboat. All three are squinting against the sun, grinning for the camera. Thia is missing a front tooth.
My heart tears as I try to guess Anson’s age. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. He’s thin, almost gangly, but he already towers over his mother. A tear slides down my cheek. I catch it with the back of my hand before it falls. It isn’t exactly what I’d hoped to find—it was taken years ago—but it’s more than I have of him now. I could cut it to fit the locket. But as I stand there staring at the three smiling faces, I can’t bear the thought of cutting Anson out of a photograph with his mother and sister.
I ease the drawer open a little farther, preparing to return the photograph, then notice a book shoved toward the back. I tease it forward, then lift it out. The cover is coarse blue cloth decorated with a gold crest of some kind. The lettering on the spine reads: HISTORY OF THE CLASS OF 1941, YALE UNIVERSITY.
I carry the book to the bed and lay it open on my lap. I turn the pages slowly at first, scanning face after unfamiliar face, until they all begin to look alike. And then suddenly he’s there, staring up at me from the heavy white page. Anson William Purcell. Sophomore.
I nearly smile as I trace the image with my finger. He looks so handsome in his suit and tie, his unruly blond waves carefully tamed for the occasion. The boyish softness in the earlier photo is gone, replaced with a brash, almost stubborn sense of purpose, a resolve to make his own way in the world, to be his own man.
A wave of rage shudders through me, a sob surging up from a well I thought emptied. For promises that will never be kept and good that will never be done. For a child who will never know its father.
My eyes are already raw from weeping. I close them and lie back against the spread, the yearbook hugged to my chest. I’m so tired suddenly. The baby, I think muzzily. The baby is making me tired. Anson’s baby.
I come awake with a start, a bright light suddenly searing through my closed lids. I’m dimly aware of something thumping to the floor as I sit up, and that I’m not in my room. My eyes won’t focus properly, but Owen’s shape at the foot of the bed is unmistakable.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he snarls.
I blink heavily, fumbling for a response. He has switched on the overhead light, and the glare hurts my eyes. “I’m sorry.” My throat is thick from crying, my words a mere rasp. “I only wanted to see his room, to be near his things.”
He moves to the desk, where I’ve left the drawer open, and picks up the broken frame, examining it. He has shaved since I last saw him, but he’s wearing the same rumpled cardigan as yesterday, the cuffs rolled to his elbows. I push to my feet, watching as he bends down and retrieves Anson’s yearbook from the floor. His hand hovers over the cover a moment, as if he might flip it open. Instead, he rounds on me, his face so close to mine that I can smell his stale hair tonic and unwashed clothes.