“Jane and I have struggled to name it. Perhaps that’s because we lack the expertise. Perhaps because it wishes not to be named.”
“Because it’s nature is evil?”
“I couldn’t say what its nature is.”
“Then what could you say about it?”
Franklin took his time, gave his secretary the benefit of his clearest thoughts. “It seeks chaos,” he said. “It hates humankind. It is a spirit that has bodily reality. A malignancy we must remove.”
Webster took in a breath so heaving and long Franklin wondered if the man would pop. “How should I prepare for tonight?” he asked finally, exhaling.
“Bring only your strength and your faith.”
“Then I will summon all I possess of both,” Webster said. “I believe this is the opportunity we spoke of earlier, sir. And I am ready for it.”
Jane asked Hany to stay behind after bringing afternoon tea to the First Lady’s chambers. She planned on telling her dresser only as much as necessary, as she struck Jane as a practical woman who would hear only the foolishness in what was being asked of her. Yet Hany’s unreadable expression after Jane’s initial statements—“I would ask your presence at a private event this evening”—prompted her to go on, explaining not only how she blamed herself for bringing Splitfoot here, but the dark bargain that saw Bennie return as a vacant shade, the trouble it would mean for all in the residence if they were permitted to stay.
The First Lady was exhausted when she finished. Only then did Hany move. The older woman came to sit next to Jane on the bed.
“I have children too,” Hany said. “I’ve lost two of my own.”
“So you know what it is to miss them.”
“And I know what it is to blame God for taking them.”
“It was wrong of me.”
“Maybe. Or maybe God needs blaming now and again,” Hany said, patting Jane’s cheeks hard enough to waken her. “Right now we have to try to set things right, because the Lord doesn’t seem inclined to do it on his own.”
Jane put her arms around her. She hadn’t planned to, but her gratitude, her need, overwhelmed her.
“I wish we had more time to share what we know of this place,” Jane said into Hany’s shoulder. “What we know as mothers.”
“There’ll be time on the other side for that.”
“We live in different worlds, you and I. How I wish we shared only one.”
“One day,” Hany said as Jane released her. “Until then never mind the world. Let’s do our best to share the same country.”
Abby was approached last. There was no event on the president’s calendar for that evening, so when Jane sent a messenger to ask her to come to the White House, Abby rushed there from her apartment straightaway, thinking her cousin had fallen ill once more.
“A sensible assumption.” Jane grimly smiled once Abby had taken off her coat and found a chair in the Crimson Parlor where the First Lady was waiting for her. “It’s strange, but I’m feeling as well in body as I have in some time. My trouble is of a different kind.”
“The boy,” Abby said. “The thing.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Glimpses. He always runs off, like he’s playing a game. Hide-and-seek.”
Jane sighed and her entire body trembled. “I suspect we will all soon be the ones hiding from him.”
Abby got up and joined Jane on the settee. Their hands found each other in a sisterly reflex.
“He looks like Bennie,” Abby said.
“But you know he’s not?”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish to know how he came here?”
“Not now. Perhaps when we have put this behind us. Because you didn’t ask me to come so you could tell me a story, did you?”
“No.”
“You asked me because you’re in need of help.”
Jane felt the tightening of the throat that usually preceded her tears, but none came.
“Thank you, cousin,” she said.
“What is it you’d like me to do?”
Jane tried to think of a way to say it that might be simply understood. The problem was she didn’t entirely understand it herself.
“Hold my hand as you’re holding it now,” she said, squeezing hard as Abby did the same. “Hold it and don’t let go until we bring light back to this place.”
* * *
Jane and Franklin ate dinner alone. Kate Fox chose to remain in her room at the Willard. Abby, Webster, and Hany would meet them in the East Room at nine o’clock, an hour chosen to ensure the darkness of night, as well as the absence of all but the minimal overnight staff.
“It seems they already knew,” Franklin said after he and Jane had shared their conversations with Hany and Webster.
“Do you remember, as a child? When your mother or father would take you to visit some cousin or friend or colleague of theirs?” Jane said. “How some houses don’t feel right the moment you enter them?”
“Yes.”
“This is one of them. That’s how they know.”
They lingered in the dining room long after the bowls and loaf had been cleared. Jane spoke softly about their marriage. While the turning points of the story were familiar to Franklin, some of the details were new. The heat she felt the length of her spine the first time she saw him in the Amherst house. How sorry she was that he stayed with her over their intermittent courtship, particularly given there was likely a spell of some kind that led him to her.
“That was no spell,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Falling in love feels the same to all who succumb to it. It’s a choice where there is no choice.”
“My goodness, Frank. I believe that is the most frightening, most wonderful thing you’ve ever said.”
“And you are the most frightening, wonderful thing to happen to me.”
They looked at each other across the polished teak, the candlelight flickering their faces between old and young, dead and alive.
Jane laughed.
Outside, in the kitchen, the cook and the steward heard it and wondered what the gloomy president’s wife could possibly have found so funny.
33
When they assembled at the East Room’s double doors Kate Fox was already inside, standing behind the table within the candelabra’s circle of yellow. Because its five candles were the only source of light in the enormous space, she looked like she was stranded on an island in an ocean of tar.
“You may have questions,” she announced before anyone else could speak. “But I ask that you keep them to yourselves. I will explain all that need be known. My voice alone.”
She gestured for them to come in. None of them moved at first. Some, like Abby, hesitated because of the apprehension at what was about to happen. Others, like Franklin, because the girl had a touch of the holy about her—a light that seemed not to reflect her but come from her—and he had always been bashful when entering a church.
Jane threaded through them and stepped into the black sea. It was only when she arrived on the shore of the island of candlelight and looked back at the others that they ventured after her, one by one.