Chapter 7: The Number

I showed him the photograph in the cloakroom, with my back to the furs.

Carlisle read the three words, and the whole easy line of his body changed.

"Who has this number?"

"Nobody. The lawyer. Tavy."

"Tavy didn't send this."

"No."

He took out his own phone and said four quiet sentences to someone who answered on the first ring.

Then he put it away.

"My security man will have the carrier by morning."

"It'll be a prepaid. It always is."

His eyes found mine.

"Come to Tradd Street. Not to hide. To think."

"Is that a line?"

"It's a kitchen."

His house was narrow and old and tall, with a garden behind iron gates.

The kitchen smelled of coffee and cedar.

He made tea.

I sat at his table in a ruined gown with my shoes in my hand, and I told him everything.

The nursing school I'd quit at twenty-two.

The quarry ledge, and the phone call at two in the morning.

My mother's name on the old hospital bills that were still being paid.

The lawyer's folder, and the Sponsor nobody had met.

The Night Heron.

He did not interrupt once.

When I finished, he looked at his hands.

"Beall," he said.

"Jessamyn Beall."

"Rosamond Cabell was never a real girl."

"Rosamond Cabell was eighteen thousand dollars a month and a hall that sold in ninety-four."

I let my head fall back.

"I'm a fraud, Carlisle. I'm lying to two hundred people."

"You're a woman paying for a bed."

"Those can be the same woman."

"They are." He said it flatly. "I knew a name was false at the conservatory. Private people don't have a hall."

"Then why didn't you say?"

"Because I didn't need you to be anyone but you." He stood and came around the table. "Jess."

"Nobody calls me Jess but Tenny and Tavy."

"Do you mind?"

"No," I said, and meant it, and that was the problem.

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