I retrieved my lunch pail and pulled on a sweater before leaving the building. Margie was right. The weather had shed the heat and humidity of summer, allowing the first hint of autumn in the air, a crisp bite to the breeze that drifted from the park as I crossed Fifth Avenue. I felt marginally better when I found our bench empty and sat down, turning my face toward the sun. For a moment I could even forget the heaviness in my heart. But only for a moment.
From the corner of my eye I saw somebody approaching but didn’t turn my head, expecting them to pass by. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun, and didn’t open them even as I felt someone sit down on the other end of the bench. I’d grown up in the city and had learned to keep to myself, to not acknowledge strangers, even one sitting on the same bench.
I opened my eyes and focused on undoing the clasps on my lunch pail.
“Growin’ up in South Carolina I was told that Yankee women all fell from the ugly tree, hitting each branch on their way down. But then I met you and learned that couldn’t possibly be true.”
I stared hard at the smooth metal of my pail, wondering if I was dreaming and if I looked at the opposite end of the bench there would be no one there. But there was only one way to find out.
Slowly, I turned my head. Cooper, in civilian clothes, sat back on the bench, one long leg casually crossed over the other, an elbow propped on the bench’s back. His fedora was pushed back on his forehead so I could see his eyes. “Hello, Kate.”
Forgetting my lunch pail on my lap, I stood, barely noticing the clatter it made as it hit the ground, my apple rolling to my feet. He stood, too, leaving his fedora on the bench so I could see his dark hair, longer now, curling slightly around his ears.
“What are you doing here?” I didn’t like the way that sounded, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He grinned. “Margie told me you’d be here.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. Why are you here, in New York?”
“Because I read your letters. All of them. I would have come sooner but I had business to take care of.”
“Caroline?”
He nodded. “It’s over. It was over even before I received your first letter. I told her I couldn’t marry another woman knowing I loved someone else. Even if that woman said she didn’t love me and I thought I’d never see her again.”
He paused, allowing his words to sink in.
“I allowed her to end the engagement to save her dignity. She’s already seeing someone else.”
I took a step forward. “There’s so much I need to tell you.”
“Not yet,” he said, crossing the space between us and wrapping me in his arms. His kiss was new yet familiar, tender yet searching, and as my fingers threaded their way through his hair it was as if the past ceased to exist, the present shimmering at our feet along with the fallen leaves.
He held my head gently in his hands and pressed his forehead against mine. “I love you, Kate. I don’t want to live my life without you. We can live here or in Charleston or in Timbuktu; I don’t care as long as we’re together. You can be a doctor and I can own an art gallery anywhere. Just tell me that you want to be with me.”
“Yes,” I whispered. Then, “Yes!” I shouted. “I love you, Cooper Ravenel, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”
An elderly couple walked by, their hands clutched between them. The old man winked as they passed, giving his wife a peck on the cheek.
Cooper’s eyes became serious as he studied my face. “I figured out why our parents didn’t marry. There was something about that letter from my father to your mother that kept bothering me until I finally realized what it was. The date on the letter. He wrote it in 1920.”
I raised my eyebrows, wondering at the significance.
“My parents were married in 1917, and I was born in 1918.”
I felt my lips form a perfect O. “Well, that certainly explains . . .”
My words stilled in my mouth as Cooper took my left hand and slipped a ring on my third finger. It was the ring bought for my grandmother, Olive, by the love of her life, and then forgotten for more than fifty years, hidden in the dark where no light could reach the heart of the brilliant stone and make it shine. It glittered on my finger in the bright sunshine, filled with promises and possibilities.
Cooper kissed me again as a strong breeze rustled the leaves on the path, tumbling them around our feet and sending more raining down on us from the trees above. I looked up at the scuttling clouds in the autumn sky. “Do you believe in fate?” I asked.
“Maybe. Or perhaps the eternal persistence of love.” His lips smiled against mine. “Or maybe it was just Margie. She’s very persuasive.”
I laughed, then stood on my toes to kiss him this time, my grateful arms holding him tightly. The sounds of the city swarmed around us as life marched on in this corner of the world, where glorious old mansions peered down into the streets, where nothing and everything changed, and where star-crossed lovers had finally found each other in a house on Sixty-ninth Street, in a forgotten room at the top of the stairs.
Epilogue
NEW YEAR’S EVE 1893
Harry