Iron Cast(105)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO



The day after the Wells-Haversham wedding, which was the headline of all the society pages and the talk of all the country clubs, Phillip Wells followed the handwritten directions his sister had given him to a building between the South End and the theater district. Corinne met him at the door and let him inside. He didn’t say much, just stood in the empty club and stared at the lonely microphone on the stage.

“What did you tell Angela?” Corinne asked.

She moved behind the bar, still watching her brother as he walked the length of the Cast Iron, his hands shoved into his pockets. It was strange, having him here. Two parts of her life that were never supposed to meet had collided.

“I told her that my sister left me a mysterious urgent note to meet her at one of the most notorious hemopath clubs in town,” Phillip said. He had stepped between two tables to examine one of the framed photos hanging on the wall—Johnny shaking hands with his predecessor.

Corinne thought he was joking at first, but then he turned and she saw the frank expression on his features.

“Wait, you told her the truth?”

“Of course I did.”

“Did you tell her about going to Haversham too?”

“She’s my wife,” Phillip said, speaking slowly, as if Corinne might not understand otherwise. “I love her, and I trust her. So yes, I told her about the asylum.”

It had never occurred to Corinne before that her brother might love Angela. She had always guessed that the entire arrangement was some kind of political agenda. She felt the sudden need to apologize for thinking of him in such ungenerous terms. That urge confused her even more, so finally she gave up thinking about it and dug out the bottle of cognac to fix them each a sidecar.

“So what is it?” Phillip asked once he had come to sit across from her at the bar. He accepted the drink but eyed it doubtfully, swirling the amber liquid in the glass.

Corinne had considered a hundred different ways of approaching the subject with Phillip. She had talked through all of them with Ada the night before, weighing each argument, trying to decide which would convince him to help. In the end, Corinne knew that she just had to say it.

“I need you to talk to Mr. Haversham and get him to stop the experiments at the asylum.”

It sounded so simple leaving her lips. As if all it would take was a memo from Mr. Haversham, and Dr. Knox would pack up his work and give all his victims proper burials.

Corinne wasn’t a fool. She knew it wouldn’t be that easy. But she also recognized, possibly for the first time, that she and Ada couldn’t do it by themselves.

“I don’t think I can do that,” Phillip said.

He finally took a sip of his cocktail. Corinne could read all over his face that his brief foray into the basement had left him scarred. Yet still he wouldn’t help.

“I know you hate hemopaths,” Corinne said. “But what he’s doing down there—”

“I don’t hate hemopaths,” Phillip said, looking at her sharply. “Why would you say that?”

“Father always says your campaign platform is going to be—”

“Father says that,” Phillip said, interrupting her a second time. “I never have. Is that really what you’ve been thinking all these years?”

“You married into the family that’s made its fortune torturing hemopaths, so it’s not that much of a stretch.” Corinne slammed her glass down on the bar. Liquid sloshed onto her knuckles.

“I didn’t know any of that was happening,” Phillip said. “Neither did Angela.”

He grabbed a towel from farther down the bar and handed it to her. Corinne accepted it, keeping her eyes on her brother.

“And now that you do?” she asked.

Phillip tapped his finger against the glass. He was quiet for a long while.

“I want to help you,” he said. “I just don’t know what I can do. Angela’s father is a businessman, not a humanitarian. If I go to him about this, he’ll just tell me I have a bleeding heart.”

“What a lovely family you’ve hitched yourself to.”

Phillip shrugged. “Angela didn’t choose her family.”

“I guess none of us did.”

Phillip’s mouth curved into a bare smile, but there was sadness in it. “You remember the summers on Martha’s Vineyard?” he asked. “You used to follow me around like a puppy. We’d search for sea glass together.”

Corinne’s first impulse was a sarcastic reply, but it died in her throat. She could almost smell the salt spray again, feel the hot sand sticking to her skin as she knelt beside him at the edge of the surf. He was using a stick to gently nudge a starfish back into the oncoming tide. She’d thought for sure it was dead, but he assured her it wasn’t.

“Chin up, young man,” he’d said to the pale-yellow star, sounding so much like their father that she’d wanted to giggle. “You’ve got a second chance to get it right.”

The cool water had rushed over their hands and knees, and when it rushed back into the sea, the starfish was gone. Phillip had laughed and put his heavy hand on her shoulder. Farther up the beach, their mother was calling them back for lunch, radiant in a blue dress and a white sun hat. For just that moment, Corinne had thought her life was perfect.