I’ve always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we’ll have. I hope that I have imparted this belief to my children, though it is so hard to tell when they are still stubbornly becoming themselves.
— FROM THE DIARY OF EDWARD HOLLAND, DECEMBER 1898
IT WAS WELL PAST TWO, AND EVERY CORNER OF THE Holland house was dark. Elizabeth took the servants’ stairs one by one, mindful not to let them creak. Only that morning her mother had cautioned her to be especially careful of appearances, and so she heeded the warning even as she crept toward the carriage house. She held a candle in a brass holder in front of her to better see her way.
She stood in the hay, letting her eyes adjust. It was a little lighter in the carriage house, because Will’s window was high and let in some starlight. Elizabeth moved toward the ladder and reminded herself why she had come. Already it was tomorrow, and tomorrow was the day she had promised herself she would tell Will.
She put her slippered feet on one rung after the other, bringing herself slowly up to the loft. She paused there to admire Will, illuminated by her candle’s flickering light. It was a scene in warm browns and flesh tones and blacks. Will must have kicked his red quilt off in his sleep, because she could see that he was curled like a baby on the bed, without a blanket to cover him.
Elizabeth moved across the floor, ever careful of the old, creaky wood planks. She set her candle down on the milk crate beside his bed and paused to look at him the solid curve of his shoulders, the closed lids of his big, pretty eyes. The idea of hurting him was so awful to her that she couldn’t even begin to think about it. She lay down beside him, pressing herself against his body. He was relaxed in sleep, and his chest was soft, moving slowly up and down with his breathing. She looked at his face closely and tried to commit it to memory, in case she never saw him this intimately again.
Suddenly a taut wakefulness came back into his limbs, and he pulled her into an embrace. She almost cried out in surprise, but a smile broke out across his face and she laughed instead a quiet, happy laugh. She felt his hand move to the nape of her neck, where he ran his fingers through her hair. He cradled her head, and she felt the outside world fade as she came alive to what was right in front of her.
“I can’t believe you’re here again already,” he whispered.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she answered, keeping her eyes on him. His irises rolled back and forth as though he were searching her.
“How lucky for me.”
She wanted to kiss him, but she didn’t want to break their gaze even for a second. His hand moved from her neck down her spine and rested again at the small of her back. The way Will was looking at her made her feel like she had lain in the sun for a whole afternoon. For the first time all day she felt her lungs swell with air and her heart with happiness. She tried to remind herself, with a stern internal shake of a finger, that they had no kind of future. But as she gazed into the pure blue of his eyes, they confirmed what she had known about him more than half her life: that she could trust him with anything.
“You must really have missed me,” he went on.
“Who are you again?” She only managed to hold her straight face for a moment, however, before she broke out in ringing laughter.
He laughed back, grabbing her around the waist and rolling her over him and then pinning her to the mattress. He hovered above her with a broad smile on his face. She tried to sit up, but he grabbed her by the wrists and held her down. She shrieked with laughter, and then he bent down and quieted her with a kiss.
Sweet as it was, she couldn’t help feeling like a liar, and Will was the one person she never wanted to lie to. She pulled her face back gently and gave him a serious look. It would be cruel of her to wait, she told herself. It would only aggravate Will’s pain when the inevitable came out.
“What is it?” he asked.
She closed her mouth and opened it again, and then took a deep breath for courage. “Henry ” she began.
“Schoonmaker?” Will laughed, cutting her off and skewing his smile sideways as he did. “You’re not going to tease me about that again, are you? I saw him leaving the house this afternoon, and you don’t have to worry. I won’t harangue you with my jealousies anymore.”
He kissed her gently. She felt a tightness in her throat and wished that she could make this moment go on forever.
When he pulled away, he was smiling and there was light playing in his eyes. “I think everything is going to be all right,” he whispered after a long silence.
Elizabeth brought her lips back together in a kind of smile, and wondered if he could see how sad it was. “Everything is going to be all right,” she repeated in a voice that sounded almost convincing to herself.
Tomorrow she would tell him tomorrow. All she wanted was one last night when they weren’t angry or heartbroken about the way things had to be. Tomorrow, she repeated to herself. How much harm could be done saving the awful news for one more day?
When he pulled her nightgown over her head, she tried to tell herself not to think about how far her family had fallen, and how vulnerable they all were. She tried not to think of her responsibilities to them. Or how it was going to be just as impossible to tell Will tomorrow. Or the tomorrow after that. She told herself to concentrate on the way he was kissing her neck just under her chin, so that she could remember forever how it used to be.