Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

“I saw Christine Dana yesterday,” Mother said after a long drink, beginning her weekly rundown of the best gossip. “Do you know she was at a luncheon with your father and several of his business associates? She said they were just discussing the possibility of her investing in some of the Landry lumber industries, but it galls me that Alexander allows her at business luncheons. Whenever I want to come, he insists on my staying away. As if he’s embarrassed by me.”

I’d opened a book and was reading while picking at a plate of fried dumplings and coconut sweets, but I paused. I was reminded of my own thoughts about David and Cara.

“Nasty bit of business about Philip Wilder losing his temper during a boxing match. Why they claim it is a gentleman’s sport is beyond me.”

“Who was he fighting?” I asked idly, still trying to read and not to think about David.

“Your cousin Tarleton. Philip is taller, but Tarleton is quicker. All of us Lawrences are.”

“Tarleton probably cheated.”

Mother agreed and closed her eyes. “How my young cousins can be so wild when my uncle is so genteel, I will never know. Could be Aunt Lacey. She’s a Lyons, and they made their money smuggling from the East. They are natural thieves.”

I rolled my eyes. “Half the families in America make money from smuggling or from investing in smuggling.”

“Well, you just know everything, don’t you?” Mother adjusted herself to get more sun, then continued. “The constables are out in force after the Rootless ration station was robbed last night. Our driver could hardly see the road for all the Cherenkov lights. And now that the mayor is sick…”

“The mayor is sick?”

“Madeline,” Mother chided. “Don’t you read your wall screens or your tablet? He has been sick for over a week. Everyone says cancer, but I do not know how his doctor wouldn’t have caught it before now if it was. I would say food poisoning. He was visiting Lake Chicago, you know, and they have all sorts of strange food there… .”

I didn’t see how his doctor wouldn’t have caught it either, but before I could probe it further, I saw a black car pull to the front of the house. The Danas’ car. Had David come to visit?

I quickly finger-combed the loose waves that tangled over my shoulders and tried to adjust my dress so that it looked less like I’d been crumpled up in a chair all day. I set down the book and then picked it up again. A servant walked out onto the terrace with another silver platter—this time with an envelope—and then I heard the car start and drive away. I slumped back in my chair.

The servant approached me. “Mr. Dana came by to hand deliver this to Miss Landry.”

My mother’s mouth hung open. I took the envelope off the tray and politely excused myself, not wanting her to see whatever was inside, a knot weaving itself in my chest as I walked across the terrace and into the house. I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor, trying to convince myself it wasn’t anything important and trying not to dwell on the fact that David didn’t come find me to give it to me himself. Was he still angry about what I’d said last week?

I opened the envelope with trembling fingers in the privacy of the observatory, surrounded by glass and sunshine. It was an invitation to a ball. A ball in his honor.

Because, in less than six weeks, he was leaving.

In all my ruminating about his strange act of kindness, in all my obsessing over his strange questions and mood swings, I hadn’t given much thought to him leaving. Even though he had referenced it in the car, even though I had known since he arrived that his visit was a temporary stop on his way to the mountain forts, it had just seemed inconceivable that he could really, actually leave before I had a chance to untangle my impressions of him.

The next day did nothing to alleviate the confusion that pulled at me.

“David has asked Cara to be his partner at the ball,” Mother said over breakfast.

My stomach tensed, and I had the sudden, stupid urge to cry.

“I have heard they are combining his going-away ball with Cara’s debut.” The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable.

“Maybe he’s just taken pity on her because her prospects are slimmer since her attack,” Father suggested.

“Oh, I do not think her prospects are dimmed at all,” my great-aunt Lacey said in a chirping voice as she used silver tongs to load more toast on her plate. She was a rare breakfast guest, but she was planning on going shopping with Mother later, and so she’d invited herself over for food and gossip. She talked and ate as much as three great-aunts. “I hear all sorts of boys are asking her to dances, and Addison says that she expects Cara will have an offer within a month of her debut.”

“Well, I heard Addison saying that come hell or high water, Cara would make a good match, and if you knew Addison like I do, you would not doubt it,” Mother said.

“My dear niece, I do know Addison like you do, and believe me, I do not doubt it!”

My father took a drink of coffee. “That is unfortunate about David,” he said, looking at me.

I shrugged. “I don’t care,” I told them. “He and Cara deserve each other.”

“Unfortunate,” Father repeated. “Because David could have brought a considerable sum to the estate.”

I bit my lip. When I was little, my father had often twirled me out on the lawn. I wondered if now all he could see in me was a way to ransom his land. To carry on the Landry line.

“At any rate, he will be in town a couple weeks after the ball.” Mother pointed a finger at me. “A debut isn’t necessarily a proposal. You will still have time to make an impression before he leaves.”

“I don’t care,” I said again.

Father, having clearly decided that the conversation was over, picked up his tablet and stylus. Outside, another laborer was at work on the stone, trying to bleach the vandalized portion back to its original smoky gray.

The Westoffs emptied their coffers for Cara’s debut. Invitations edged with gold lace and hand-penned in gold ink were sent out to every family in the city, regardless of whether they had received David’s first invitation or not. Rumors of smuggled cherry trees, aged wine, and European seamstresses began to float around at tea parties and dinners. In just a few short weeks, Kansas City would see the most lavish debut in its history.

And in just a few short weeks, David Dana would leave.

I hid from the usual summer parties—barge trips atop the muddy Missouri and picnics on the surrounding river bluffs. I wouldn’t have been able to bear watching David and Cara together, laughing and kissing, the couple that the city had its eyes on. No matter how many times I told myself I didn’t care, that I only cared about his connection to the Rootless, and that it was inevitable that he singled out Cara from the very beginning, it still stung. I still had to force myself to remember to breathe when I thought of his blue eyes and his quick laugh.

Addison taxed my mother with her gloating, making sure to anguish over every minute detail of the party, fawning over the idea of David as her future son-in-law. After two days of this, servants packed several suitcases and Mother went on an impromptu retreat to some mineral springs north of the city.

This meant that I no longer had to spend my meals listening to her grieved denouncements of the selfish Westoffs, or long and venomous outbursts where she ranted about Christine and her whorehound son. But even her grating rants couldn’t penetrate my misery. My thoughts chased themselves in constant circles.

I want him to go.

I want him to stay.