I felt a brutal anger rise as I watched him with that girl, talking to her softly, offering the book. That my Christian should be spending his attention on so tawdry an object was humiliating and I told myself that when he returned I would have to make it clear exactly what would and would not be tolerated with regard to those people. But as I watched his posture, erect and proud, and saw the girl’s shyness dissolving before him, allowing her to reach out for the book and take it to her breast, I could see in that portrait all the sweet generosity in his soul and I realized that he indeed could be our redemption. The falsehoods that have been used against us might die, as we have so fervently prayed, precisely because his goodness will transcend the evil of those lies. His goodness, I can see now, will be the instrument of our salvation and take our family to a finer place than ever we had dared to hope before.

September 3, 1911

Today we took a long and glorious walk along the stream that surrounds our property, Christian and I, our hands clasped tightly as we face our separation. I don’t know how I will survive while Christian finishes out his final year in New Haven. We have become unbearably close, our souls are united as two trees whose trunks are trained to twist around each other. He confided in me for the first time about the acute dilemmas facing his family and his future and I couldn’t help but feel joy at his sharing of the whole of his life with me.

It is not just I who have become transfixed by my love’s goodness. He listens with exquisite patience to Hope’s performances on the piano. She is generally shy in public but delights in playing her most difficult pieces for Christian and he applauds heartily whenever she concludes, even though the length of her recitals tries the most for-bearing souls. And he has taken to tutoring Charity on his favorite poets, taking long walks as he recites for her. Even Mother seems to take a special joy at his compliments on her teas. He has added a grace to this family for which we all are painfully grateful.

In two days my love will be back in Connecticut. I can’t believe he’ll be away from me for such length, but his strength and our commitment will surely see me through the loneliness of winter’s despoliation. Together, I know, we can deal with whatever the fates hurl our way and after he left I thought hard about how his family problems could affect our possible future together. Perhaps I see a way, tentative though it may be, to ensure the future happiness I believe we both deserve. I pray only that I can somewhere find the strength I need to take us there.

December 11, 1911

Father remains in New York, on business, as we continue to prepare for the holidays. Christian is staying north to study and so it will be lonely and gray here. I miss him, I miss him, I miss him terribly, but still I will do what I must to maintain the gay facade. While searching for the ornaments for our tree, I found myself in Father’s library. I remembered then the secret hideaway in the paneling he showed us when we were girls and Father had just bought the house from the Ritters after they had lost all their money. I seemed to recall it was on one side or the other of the cast-iron fireplace. On a spur, I wondered if I could find it again. Behind which of the dark sheets of mahogany did the secret place lurk? It took almost an hour of rapping my knuckles on the wood and looking for imperfections in the lines, but I found it at last. My heart leaped when I slipped up the piece of wood trim and spun open the panel. Inside was not the ornaments I had sought, or even private treasures, only books, ledgers, old accounting journals. How very boring a discovery for such a secret place. Someday maybe I will look inside these books and see why Father has hidden them away, but for now I am still wondering about the ornaments.

January 12, 1912

My love’s letters become more desperate. All our hopes seem on the verge of collapse. He talks of using his engineering training and joining Mr. Goethals’s endeavor in Panama, hoping somehow to find in the wilds of Central America the fortune that will save his family. They are dying in droves from malaria and other foul diseases in Panama. The thought of my love suffering in that far-off wilderness drives a stake of fear through my heart. It is time, somehow, to bring to fruition the plans I made last fall and to forestall the coming tragedy. I don’t know if I am capable of doing what must be done, but what I have learned in the past weeks provides a peculiar strength that I had never felt before. I must keep reminding myself that I am my father’s daughter and whatever power it was he could muster in pursuit of his deepest desire, I can muster the same dark power in pursuit of my own.

January 20, 1912

My father was at his desk in the library, working on his figures, when I approached with my crucial errand. A fire was blazing in the cast-iron fireplace off to the side, but still the room was cold. All my life I had come into that room with the low bookshelves and mahogany paneling and the red flock wallpaper and asked him for things and always he had granted my requests, a new toy, a new dress, a party to liven up the spring. He had spoiled us, never denied us a thing, and I had always thought of that room as a generous place where dreams were fulfilled, but I realized now, for perhaps the first time, that in this room of business, where so many of my own shallow dreams had been made reality, others’ dreams had been crushed by the power of my father’s wealth. For the first time, this day, I knew what it was to fear my father. But from necessity I pushed that fear far from my heart and twisted my lips into a smile. I stopped perhaps ten feet from his desk and waited for him to raise his head and acknowledge me. Those few seconds seemed to me then to be an eternity. “Come here, daughter,” he said when he noticed me there. “How can I please you this evening?”

“I’ve come today, Father,” I said, “to talk of business.”

It did not take long to explain the dire situation facing the Shaw Brothers Company and when I finished my father stared out at me with eyes I had never seen in him before. They were cold, and black, and full of ugly calculation. Looking at those eyes, the business eyes of my father, and comparing them to the sweet blue lenses of my Christian, I fell, for the moment, though I am loath to admit it, out of love with my father. But we are blood and bone, my father and I, a match for one another. I know now all he was capable of in pursuit of his fortune; I am still learning the depths of my own formidable capabilities.

He didn’t reject the proposition right off. Instead he had questions, questions about the books, the assets and liabilities, the market and the market share, the equity positions of the varying parties, all questions I wouldn’t and couldn’t answer. Those questions, I told him, would have to be taken up with the principals. Finally, my father asked the last, most important, question.

“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” I responded.

My father’s cold ugly eyes didn’t so much as flinch.

“And without this money the banks will close the company and sell the store?” asked my father.