Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

The twenty-first-century people we passed were curious, but didn’t seem surprised. Tour guides in colonial garb often wandered the streets of Annapolis; we were three among many. Tourist cameras captured our cheerful little parade up East Street to State Circle – there’d be images of us all over Facebook in half an hour.

Halfway down Cornhill Street, I pulled Amy aside. ‘I probably missed this email, Amy, but what are we doing about these people, exactly? Do we pretend like it’s 1774 and they haven’t been born yet?’

‘What people?’ Amy quipped.

‘I get it,’ I said, as we continued on our way. ‘Invisible.’

Our destination was a little house near Hyde Alley. A sign hung on an iron bar by the door: Mrs Hamilton. Dressmaker. By Appointment Only . We knocked and went inside, setting a bell attached to the door frame jangling.

‘Oh!’ Melody’s gloved hands flew to her mouth.

LynxE had gone to a lot of trouble to turn someone’s narrow, colonial-era home into a proper dressmaker’s shop. A long table stood to our right, with bolts of cloth stacked up on the end nearest the fireplace. Shelves built along the opposite wall held fabric, too, and hat boxes were stacked in a colorful jumble on top. Bins on a smaller table held buttons and beads, and spools of ribbon – grosgrain and silk – were stored in a corner on upright pegs. In the opposite corner, a beautiful coromandel screen shielded the dressing area from the prying eyes of other customers.

‘Welcome, ladies!’ A woman I took to be Mrs Hamilton smiled broadly, trying to concentrate on greeting us, but her eyes kept darting nervously toward the camera. ‘The moppets are here,’ she said. ‘Just wait until you see the latest styles from Paris!’

Melody’s brow furrowed. ‘Muppets? No way. Kermit? Miss Piggy?’

‘Moppets, sweetheart. They’re fashion dolls, dressed in the most beautiful dresses you’ve ever seen.’ Mrs Hamilton unlocked the door of a glass-fronted cabinet and removed two bisque-faced dolls, one wearing a forest-green gown trimmed in gold braid, the other in a creamy vanilla silk confection with hundreds of miniature rosebuds decorating the bodice, hem and sleeves. Two other dolls, one dressed in red the other in a peach and green stripe, remained standing at attention inside the cabinet.

‘I want this one,’ Melody said, choosing the doll in the creamy gown, picking it up by the waist and dancing it gently along the tabletop. Her eyes sparkled like a ten-year-old on Christmas morning. ‘I collect dolls, Mrs Hamilton. I started out with Barbies and American Girls. I’ve got a whole lot of Madame Alexanders, too.’ She flipped up the doll’s skirt, examining its underclothing. ‘My specialty is Snow White. I’ve got her by Madame Alexander, Effanbee, Applause and Disney,’ she said, smiling, ticking them off on her fingers.

Mrs Hamilton chuckled. ‘Oh, the dolls aren’t for sale, sweetheart. They’re just models for the dresses. Samples, if you will.’ She removed the delicate figure gently from Melody’s hands. ‘But you can have a gown made exactly like this one if you like.’

Wide-eyed, Melody simply nodded.

‘Why don’t you measure Melody first,’ I suggested. ‘Is there someplace my maid and I can sit while I wait for you to finish measuring Melody?’

‘Of course,’ Mrs Hamilton said, rubbing her hands together briskly, clearly flustered by my request. ‘It’s a lovely day. Would you like to sit out in the garden?’

‘That would be splendid,’ I said.

Mrs Hamilton plucked a silver hand bell off the table and gave it a jingle. A young girl appeared from the back of the house – her daughter, I guessed – her head bowed, smiling shyly. ‘Amanda, will you show Mrs Ives and her maid to the garden, please? And see if they want some tea.’

‘That’s very kind, but we’ve only just eaten breakfast,’ I said, as Amanda led us into the (twenty-first century!) kitchen and out through a back door.

I looked nervously behind me, expecting Chad to be trotting along in our wake, but he’d made an executive decision: viewers would be much more interested in watching a sixteen-year-old strip behind a screen and get measured for a dress than a shop-worn old specimen like me. Besides, LynxE had probably dropped a bundle on decorating the shop, so not one thimble, button or pin could be wasted.

Mrs Hamilton’s backyard was enclosed by a high fence. From the back door, a winding path led to a miniature rose garden. Amy and I found a green Chippendale bench between a pink hybrid tea and an orangey floribunda and sat down on it. I removed my hat, closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun. ‘Ah, bliss. Why do I feel as if I’ve been cooped up for ages?’

Amy laughed. ‘Because you have, if you count Williamsburg.’

‘But, look on the bright side, Amy. I now know how to milk a cow.’

‘French’s job, or Karen’s, but I guess you’ll do in a pinch. Gabe asked for chocolate milk this morning, by the way, but I had to disappoint him.’

I opened one eye and looked at her. ‘Don’t we have chocolate?’

‘Karen didn’t think so.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’ll put that on the list for when I go to market. Anything else we need?’

‘Diet Coke.’

‘Ha!’ I said. We sat quietly for a while, enjoying the sun. I think I may even have dozed off, when the familiar tri-tone chime of an iPhone brought me out of my coma. ‘What was that?’

Next to me, Amy’s skirts rustled. She thrust a hand through the slit in her skirt and into her pocket. It came out holding an iPhone. Amy stared at the phone for a few seconds, then, to my astonishment, started to sob. Deep, shuddering, tearless sobs.

‘Amy! What is it?’ I asked stupidly, forgetting for the moment that we weren’t even supposed to have cell phones.

‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, her eyes still glued to the tiny screen. ‘It’s not possible! Oh, Hannah, somebody’s fucking with my mind!’

‘What?’

Amy seemed frozen. I pried the iPhone out of her hand. Written in a green text balloon was this message: Alive. Coming 4 U soon. F U tell anyone, they’ll kill me.

I wrapped my arm around the shivering girl. ‘Your husband?’

‘It can’t be. Drew’s dead. The Navy said so.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Hannah, the helo was brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade. It was incinerated. I haven’t seen anything so horrible in my whole life, and CNN ran the footage over and over and over again, interviewed every top military advisor, active duty and retired, as they tried to sort out exactly what happened.’ She drew a jittery breath. ‘Drew’s dead. I’m just waiting for the official paperwork.’

‘Screw CNN, Amy. Did the Navy tell you what happened?’

She nodded miserably. ‘Nazari was supposed to be extracted, but he got shot instead. His people weren’t very happy.’

‘Oh, God. I remember.’ I stared at her screensaver for a few moments, a stock photo of the Earth taken from outer space. Swosa was on the other side of that globe, yet we were still feeling the impact of events that happened there months and months ago.

Amy nudged my arm. ‘Maybe it’s the same goddamn creeps who were harassing me in Virginia Beach.’

‘Look, here’s an idea. Why don’t you reply to the text?’ I slipped the phone back into her hand, but she hardly seemed to notice. ‘Ask whoever sent that text message a question that only Drew would know the answer to.’

Amy considered my suggestion for a moment, her lower lip caught between her teeth. ‘Like what?’

I thought about the break-in at Amy’s condo and wondered if it and the message she’d just received were related. A few seconds later, I said, ‘Nicknames, pet names, place of birth, mother’s maiden name… security questions like that aren’t any good because anybody who’s really motivated can find out that information by simply walking around your living room.’ As I leaned closer our arms touched and I felt her shiver. ‘Ask him this: where was the first place the two of you had sex?’