“But it is,” I tell you softly. “We’ll just go away. Tomorrow. Now. All you have to do is say yes.”
When your eyes lift to mine, I see a glimmer of promise, of hope. “What about the big story you’re working on?”
“To hell with the story. Goldie can get someone else to finish it. By the time the thing goes to print, we’ll be long gone.”
“Where?”
“Who knows? Who cares? Just say yes.”
“Yes,” you say, and your smile makes my chest feel like it will burst. “Yes, I’ll run away with you and live in a tent.”
A week later, we’ve begun making plans. We set the date for our departure to coincide with a trip your father has planned to Boston, which will give you a few weeks to prepare. I’ve already arranged the tickets, a sleeper car on the Broadway Limited. We’ll stop in Chicago, find a justice of the peace, then spend a few days in the city, like proper honeymooners, before traveling on to California.
We talk about going to England when the war ends, back to where I grew up, but that’s not safe at the moment. There will be time for travel later, time for everything. For now, we’ll content ourselves with San Francisco, as far away from your father as I can get you for now.
It’s delicious, this secret of ours. We’re determined not to give the game away, each of us trying to carry on as if nothing has changed, but inside I’m fit to burst. I feel like a schoolboy, unable to concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes at a stretch, knowing we’ll be away soon, just the two of us, beginning a new life together.
I’ve said nothing to Goldie. She’ll be livid when I go. Without a word. Without a thank-you. She’s been good to me, giving me this opportunity to prove myself. But lately I’ve started to worry that she’s losing her objectivity, and I’m not sure I have the stomach for what comes next. The piece I’ve been working on has taken an unexpected turn in recent days. A somewhat disturbing turn, though our sources swear it’s true. Still, it could end up being an elaborate ruse, some enemy of your father’s looking to settle old business. No doubt he’s collected his share of adversaries over the years.
I have a few weeks yet to decide how to tell you—or if I’ll tell you at all. You’ve enough to deal with just now, and it may come to nothing. I almost hope it does.
It’s hard to know where my professional loyalties end and my personal loyalties begin. It’s precisely what Goldie warned me about the night we argued, and then again the next day, when I moved out. How careful we needed to be about personal entanglements getting in the way of the truth. We must always remember the greater good. Her constant mantra to me. But whose greater good?
Right now, I’m a man with one aim. To get you on that train and out of your father’s clutches. I know how hard all this secrecy is. I’m a deceptive man by trade. Artifice, pretense, even outright lying when the need arises. It’s part of the work I do. But you’re different. All your life, you’ve had loyalty—to your father, to the family—drilled into your head, and here you are, planning the ultimate betrayal. No note. No phone call. No word of any kind. Just gone—with me.
I’m not foolish enough to think your resolve never wavers. I’m keenly aware of how little I bring to the table, and that from time to time you must question the wisdom of what you’re about to do—what you’ll be giving up. But you assure me that you will give it up. And so I continue to count the days until we’re away from this city with its gritty streets and bankrupt glamour, when it will finally be just the two of us.
I don’t see you as often as I’d like. You’re busy with your fake wedding plans. Sometimes days go by without a call, and then you appear with a bag of things for the trip. You’ve been buying up what you’ll need, carefully, so as not to draw attention. Drugstore items, cosmetics, shoes, and simple clothes. Things you’ll need for the life we’ll have in California. That life won’t include operas or dinner parties or anything requiring a couture gown.
Will you miss it? I wonder.
The thought comes creeping late at night, when I’m lying alone in the dark, wondering where you are and who you’re with. I get up and turn on the lights, to chase away the doubts, and try to settle at my typewriter, reminding myself that you’ve promised to live in a tent if required.
How silly of me to have pinned all my hopes on a suitcase. You remember the one, don’t you? A large leather affair bought especially for the trip? I had your new initials stamped in gold on the top. You teared up when you saw it and traced your fingers over the letters. We talked about all the places we’d go, all the adventures we’d have when the war was over. Paris and Rome and Barcelona. Do you remember it, Belle? The plans and the promises?
Do you remember us?
Regretting Belle
（pgs. 73–86）
5 December 1941
New York, New York
Well, we’ve got here at last, the end of our story—or very nearly the end. It was always inevitable, I suppose, that the spell we wove during those brief blissful weeks would unravel, that the day would come when you would be forced to choose between loyalty to your family and a life with me, but I never imagined that having made it, you would be able to walk away so cleanly. But time does funny things to the memory, twisting it into something convenient and crooked. And so I’ll set the scene, in case the details have slipped your mind.
It’s the day before we’re set to leave, and I’ve taken a taxi to the Review building to do the thing I’m dreading. I’ve been wrestling with my conscience for some time but made the decision only last night. I was tempted to handle the business by phone, but bad news is always best delivered in person, and the news I have to deliver today will come as very bad news indeed.
Goldie is seated behind her desk, scanning a page of copy with a pencil caught between her teeth. She glances up, flashing me one of her too-wide smiles. “Well, if it isn’t my star reporter. Tell me you’re here to say it’s finished. I can’t wait to see that bastard twisting in the wind.” Her smile slips suddenly, replaced with a frown as she registers my stony expression. “Oh god. Please don’t tell me there’s a problem with the story.”
“The problem is with me, Goldie.”
She looks confused but a little relieved too. “Why? What’s happened?”
“I’m leaving the paper. Leaving New York, actually.”
She stares at me, stunned. “You’re . . . what?”
“This isn’t what I want to do. I don’t think it ever was. I wish I’d realized it sooner, but I realize it now.”
She pushes to her feet, her face like a storm cloud. “You can’t be serious!”
“But I am. I leave tomorrow. Chicago, then California.”
There’s a pause, a beat of confused silence as she glares at me. “If this is a shakedown for more money—”
“It’s not a shakedown, Goldie. I’m just finished.”
“You’re about to deliver the scoop of the decade. You can’t just bail! What about the story? Is it finished?”
“No. And it won’t be.”