When things were rough at home, Frank and his wife, Tiny, had provided a place to come after school, to have a snack and do her homework or just curl up on the sofa and watch Dark Shadows. When Tiny suffered an aneurism and died suddenly, Ashlyn had done everything in her power to fill the hole left by her absence. In return, Frank left her everything when he died six years later. The daughter I was never blessed with, the will had said. A joy and a comfort in my time of sorrow.
She missed him terribly. His unfailing kindness, his quiet wisdom, his love of all things written. But he was still here, in the old ormolu clock that remained on the mantel, the weary leather wingback near the window, his cherished collection of Victorian classics, each brimming with echoes of a life well lived. She’d done some updating before moving in, resulting in an eclectic mix of Victorian, contemporary, and arts and crafts that worked surprisingly well with the apartment’s high windows and exposed brick walls.
In the kitchen, she popped last night’s leftover kung pao in the microwave and ate it straight from the carton, standing over the sink. She was itching to dive into Regretting Belle, but she had strict rules about food and books—one or the other, never both together.
Finally, after swapping her jeans for sweats, she retrieved the book from her tote, flicked on the funky arts and crafts reading lamp she’d discovered at a yard sale last summer, and settled into the old wingback near the window. She sat a moment with the book balanced on her knees, steeling herself for the emotional storm she knew was coming. Then she pulled in a breath and opened to the first page.
Regretting Belle
（pgs. 1–13）
27 March 1953
New York, New York
You will perhaps wonder why I’ve gone to this trouble. Why, after so many years, I should endeavor to undertake such a project. A book. But in the beginning, it wasn’t meant to be a book. It began as a letter. One of those cathartic outpourings one never really intends to send. But as my pen began to move, I found I had too much to say. Too much regret to fit on a single page—or even several pages. And so I have moved to my desk, to my typewriter—my father’s old Underwood No. 5—where I now sit, pounding out the words I have swallowed for a dozen years, the question that continues to haunt me.
How? How, Belle?
Because even now, after all the mistakes I’ve made with my life—and I’ve made many—you are the one I regret most. You have been the capital error of my life, the one regret for which there can be no absolution, no peace. For you or for me.
In this life, there are losses that can never be anticipated. Grief that comes at you out of the darkness. Blows that land so swiftly and deftly that there’s simply no way to prepare for them. But sometimes you do see the blow coming. You see it and you stand there and let it knock you down. And later—years later—you’re still asking yourself how you could have been such a fool. You were that kind of blow. Because I saw you coming that very first night. And I let you knock me down anyway.
The memory of that meeting is still caught in my craw, a cancer no amount of living has managed to cut out, and while reliving it now gives me no pleasure, doing so may yet bring me some peace. And so I must begin it and step back in time. Back to the night it all began.
27 August 1941
New York, New York
I run my eyes around the ballroom of the St. Regis Hotel, trying not to fidget in my hired suit. Nothing marks one out as an impostor quite like fidgeting, and an impostor I most certainly am.
While studying the assembled company—men of industry and their pampered society wives, washing down crab puffs with chilled Veuve Clicquot—it’s almost possible to forget there was ever such a thing as the Great Depression. Perhaps because it touched this shiny, silky set more lightly than the rest, reserving its worst for those of more modest means.
It’s hardly surprising. Deserved or not, the affluent will always enjoy a soft landing. But to add insult to injury, many of those whose fortunes remained intact now seem determined to flaunt their survival with blatant exhibitions of wealth—like the one I’m witnessing tonight.
The party is in full swing, awash in excess and good taste, the champagne flowing, the dance floor a sea of white-tie and designer gowns that will never be worn again. There’s a full orchestra, tables groaning with prawns and cut-crystal bowls of caviar, ice sculptures of plump-cheeked cherubs, and champagne cocktails endlessly circulating on gleaming silver trays. The opulence is breathtaking. And utterly unapologetic. But then nothing less is to be expected on such a night. One of its princesses has gotten herself engaged to one of its princes, and I’m here to witness the well-wishing—and to get a look at the princess in her natural habitat.
I’m here not as an invitee but as the guest of a friend, on a mission to rub elbows, if I can manage it, with the tastemakers of America’s great city. Those esteemed descendants of New York’s renowned “Four Hundred,” whose name arose from the number of guests Caroline Astor’s ballroom was said to have held. And like Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, only the crème de la crème of New York society has made the cut tonight. I, of course, would never have made such a list. I’ve not the pedigree for it. Or any pedigree. Rather, I am a clever and well-placed hanger-on, a social climber on a mission.
I’ve spotted two of the Cushing sisters among the crowd, Minnie and the newly married Babe, along with their marriage-broker mother, Kate, known to her friends as “Gogsie” of all things. Also represented are the Whitneys, the Mortimers, the Winthrops, the Ripleys, the Jaffrays, and the Schermerhorns. Conspicuously absent from this evening’s festivities—though not unexpectedly—is any member of the Roosevelt clan, who are reportedly out of favor with our host. No one seems to mind. There’s plenty of quality on hand to make it up. Pretty people doing pretty things in pretty clothes. And there, a few feet away, looking like an impeccable bulldog in his evening clothes, is the man who’s paying for it all—the Great Man himself—surrounded by his powerful new friends.
And not far off—never far off—the Great Man’s daughter. I speak not of Cee-Cee, who was auctioned off some years back to the son and heir of the Aluminum King. I refer to the younger daughter, the one whose engagement party I’ve been roped into attending tonight. To you, dear Belle, whose photograph recently appeared in the Sunday News, along with that of your polo-playing fiancé—Theodore. The third descendant of his original namesake.
I spent an uncomfortable few moments watching the two of you dance when I first arrived, totting up his qualities and comparing them with mine—as one tends to do. The flawless cut of his jacket, the breadth of his shoulders, the shining gold waves combed back from his brow. And his face, chiseled like a good piece of marble, tan and square, and faintly bored as he steered you about the parquet, as if he’d much rather be in one of the rooms upstairs, smoking cigars and betting away chunks of his father’s fortune on a bad hand of cards. （Assuming the gossip is to be believed, of course.）
I thought the two of you suited then, your arms loosely linked as you moved around the floor with mechanical precision. I came to the same conclusion when I saw your engagement photo in the paper: a pair of beautiful, empty specimens. Equally privileged. Equally bored. But now, as I study you from across the room, separated from him at last, you look nothing like the woman in the paper, and for a moment, as I stand taking you in, I lose my train of thought entirely.