There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Sixty-one


Evie stood for a moment in the arched doorway of the Great Hall at Five-Boroughs Historical Society. Waiters and waitresses glided among the guests, carrying silver trays of champagne and canapés. Evie took a moment to, as her father would have put it, “take a victory lap,” greeting guests as she threaded her way past the eighteenth-century steam-powered pumper that could have been used to fight the Great Fire of 1776, through the displays for the Civil War Draft Riots and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and finally to the Empire State Building plane crash. Evie was wearing a killer outfit, a white silk shirt with the collar turned up and billowing sleeves, with a black taffeta circle skirt from the ’50s that rustled when she moved. At the waist, she wore a cinch belt she’d made using a vintage brass buckle in the shape of an eagle’s head and wings.

Mrs. Yetner was there, too, seated on a little platform alongside the jet engine whose plummet down the elevator shaft had almost killed her. She had on an elegant black beaded dress that Evie guessed was from the 1940s. Her face glowed as cameras snapped her picture and she answered questions from a reporter.

Evie stepped closer and picked up snippets of what she was saying, “Her name was Betty Lou Oliver . . . ,” “Eightieth floor . . . ,” and “ . . . terrifying. I thought I was going to die.”

Across the room, Connor was talking to another journalist. Evie caught his eye, and he flashed her a covert thumbs-up. She smiled. This was the kind of publicity they’d only dreamed of getting for the exhibit opening.

Next week, Evie was returning to a regular work schedule and moving back to her apartment. There was still plenty of work to be done, preparing her mother’s house to go on the market. Finn had gotten Frank Cutler to officially nullify the life estate deed that her mother had indeed signed. Finn had left the canceled document at the house for her along with a handwritten letter. He was truly sorry, Finn had written. He only wanted to preserve Higgs Point and save it from further development. He had no idea that Cousin Frank had gone off on his own and made a deal with developers whose vision was a gated community of high-rise apartments with fabulous views and an exclusive water shuttle to Wall Street.

Above all, Finn wrote, he’d never meant for Evie’s mother or Mrs. Yetner or anyone else to get hurt. He went on to say that he stood by his offer to donate the remains of Snakapins Park to the Historical Society, or as much of it as Evie felt was worth saving.

He’d ended the letter with, “I can’t tell you how deeply I regret what happened. I only hope you can forgive my naive stupidity, and I’ll keep hoping that you might one day be willing to consider me your friend. At least keep this letter and think about it.”

Evie had kept it.

Ginger came up behind her and linked her arm in Evie’s. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Daddy would have loved this so much. Mom, too. Here.” She slipped Evie the sapphire earrings that their dad had given their mother on their twentieth wedding anniversary. “Put these on.”

Evie clipped the earrings on, and she and Ginger hugged.

“I just wish I could have told her that I loved her,” Evie said. She tried not to tear up and run her eye makeup.

“You didn’t have to. She knew.”

“Do you think so? Because I’ve been so angry with her for so long. And all these years I blamed her for starting that fire when it was us. We nearly got ourselves killed, and the dogs, too.”

The room quieted. Connor was up on the dais. He stepped to the microphone, tapped on it, then cleared his throat. “Welcome, everyone, to the gala opening of Seared in Memory. First of all, I’d like to thank our generous donors. Without your support, none of this would have been possible.” Applause rippled through the room.

“We are especially delighted,” he went on, “to have Wilhelmina Yetner here today, who was on the eightieth floor in the Empire State Building when a B-25 bomber crashed into it on a foggy day at the end of World War Two. She survived the fire. She survived a fall . . .”

As Connor went on, Evie watched Mrs. Yetner. She sat in her chair, her hand to her mouth, her head nodding ever so slightly as she listened. This, Evie thought, was what healing looked like. She understood now that this exhibit, her idea from start to finish, was her way of taking her anger and fear and putting them in a safe place, the way Mrs. Yetner had set her melted souvenir of the Empire State Building on the marble mantel and gotten on with her life.

“And now I’d like to introduce you to Evie Ferrante, who conceived this installation and assembled this compelling story.” Connor gestured to Evie to join him.

Evie squeezed Ginger’s hand and started up to the dais, the crowd parting for her. She walked past Connor to the microphone. She looked out at the crowd. “Fire,” she began, “has shaped this city and changed the lives of so many people in it. When I was a little girl, it changed mine.”





About the Author


HALLIE EPHRON is the award-winning author of Never Tell a Lie and Come and Find Me and the mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe. She lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

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