The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati

still had what was lost, and so she kept the sting of Isaac’s words to herself.
    But Aunt Quinlan knew, because Isaac himself told her. He went to her, teary eyed, righteous in his indignation that Anna would try to take his grandmother from him. Anna never knew what Aunt Quinlan had said to him, how she had put his mind to rest, but that evening she called Anna into her little parlor, gave her a cup of hot chocolate, and waited while she sipped it. Then she simply pulled Anna into her lap and held her until the tears came and finally ended, leaving her boneless and trembling.
    Anna said, “I want Uncle Quinlan back.”
    “So do I,” said her aunt. “I still hear him coming up the stairs, and it’s always a terrible moment when I realize it was just wishful thinking. You know he would have come home to us if it had been in his power.”
    Come home to us. To us.
    Anna nodded, her throat too swollen with tears to allow even a single word.
    Then Aunt Quinlan had hugged her tighter. “You are my own dear little sister’s sweetest girl,” she said. “And you belong here with me. When we lost your ma and then your da, every one of us wanted you, all the brothers and sisters. But I was the lucky one, you came home with me. And you may call me anything you like, including Grandma. My ma, your grandma, would have wanted you to, and I would be honored.”
    But Anna couldn’t. After that summer the word wouldn’t come out of her mouth, whether Isaac was there or not. From then on the woman who was as good as a mother and grandmother to her was Aunt Quinlan, no more or less.
    The garden might have lost its magic for her then, but for Cap. He wouldn’t allow her to withdraw. Her friend, her schoolmate, another war orphan living with an aunt. Together they spent every minute in the garden planning adventures and launching schemes, reading stories out loud, playing croquet and checkers and Old Maid and eating, always eating whatever the garden had to offer: strawberries, persimmons, quince, apricots the color of the setting sun, blackberries that cascaded over the fence in late summer heat and stained fingers and lips and pinafores. When itrained they were in the pergola, which was outside and inside at the same time, a shadowy bower that smelled of lilac or heliotrope or roses, according to the season.
    And then Sophie had come from New Orleans, and together the three of them had made an island where Isaac held no sway. And so it had been long after they left childhood behind, until just two years ago.
    Mr. Lee broke into her daydreams by clearing his throat.
    “Do you mark me, Miss Anna?” He smiled at her, a lopsided curl to his mouth. “Don’t put away your winter things yet,” he said. “Spring’s in no rush this year, and neither should you be.”
    And now she had to go into the house and have tea and then dinner, and instead of going to bed she would have to dress in the costume Aunt Quinlan had arranged for her, and go out into the night with Cap, to the Vanderbilts’ fancy dress ball. Because Cap was her friend, and he needed her.

3
    A UNT Q UINLAN ’ S PARLOR was comfortable and completely out of fashion; no slick horsehair sofas or rock-hard bolsters encrusted with beadwork, no bulky, heavily carved furniture to collect dust and crowd them all together. Instead the walls were crowded with paintings and drawings and the chairs and sofas were agreeably deep and soft, covered in velvet the dusky blue of delphinium in July.
    Sitting together with her aunt and Sophie and her cousin Margaret, Anna was glad of the respite. For a few minutes there was no talk beyond the passing around of seedcake and scones, teacups and milk jugs.
    Her stomach growled loudly enough to be heard even by Margaret, who was bound by convention and simply refused to hear such things.
    She said, “You haven’t eaten at all today, have you.” Margaret was, strictly regarded, not a cousin at all. She was Aunt Quinlan’s stepdaughter,