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She reached for the matches, lit the cigarette, and drew in a long pull before she finally spoke.
    “No, Jen, it doesn’t sound strange. As a matter of fact, it sounds just about right…just about right.”
    Feeler and seer both looked out the window at the same time, peering at the sickly elm, their thoughts running along the same disturbing line.
     
    New York—June 1879
     
    Standing in the parlor, Joseph Luce stared at the painting of his mother that hung to the right of his own above the fireplace. His father’s portrait took space on the left. Below, lining the gilded mantel, sat various curios his father had collected on his many excursions around the world. Three silver monkeys, posed to see, speak, and hear no evil, sat next to an African mask made of rich ebony. This abutted a bronze statue of Buddha that hailed from the Orient. On the other end was a Navajo peace pipe. Center place among the assortment was the cherished miniature replica of Windsor Castle made entirely of gold, presented last year to his father by Queen Victoria during his tenure as honorary emissary for President Hayes. William Luce prided himself on acquiring things, including the woman who later became his wife, the beautiful and winsome debutante, Anne Spaulding, granddaughter of a shipping magnate. She had been displayed, as were his father’s other collectibles, as a testament to his extraordinariness.
    The triad of gilt-edged paintings hung also as a statement—of power, elegance, and privilege—his father and mother embodying the former, he, the latter. In her portrait, his mother holds her hands solemnly in her lap, her expression one she probably thought at the time was demure and noble. But the painter had caught a steel in her eyes, a hardness that Joseph had similarly observed occasionally in the eyes of felons just released back into the populace, a determination never to be confined again. Gone was the young girl whose vivacity had been dulled and whittled away by the time Joseph was born into this world.
    That his mother had enjoyed her life of splendor and luxury Joseph had ignorantly assumed. Yet, given the comforts that even her peers silently begrudged her, being tethered to a man who did not love her must have felt like a prison she could only escape through death. Ten years had passed this very day, ten years since he and his father had found her lying in her bed, the evidence of her departure an empty bottle of laudanum sitting on the bedstand beside her.
    The years of his mother’s barely expressed disappointments and frustrations sometimes came back to him in snatches, reminiscences that he quickly forced away. He and his father had entered their conspiracy of silence long ago, mentioning her only with reservation, and only when necessary. As for the rest of the world, thanks to his father’s station in society (as well as a few tactically greased palms), his mother’s death had been ruled a bad heart simply giving out. The word “suicide” would never be paired with her name.
    As horrible as finding her body had been, Joseph could not forget the look of peace on her face nor that small smile that had played at her lips. An escapee finally fleeing her prison—and its warden.
    William Luce stared down from his portrait, much like Zeus in an eternal frieze of displeasure. The cruelty in his face was unequivocal, the glint in his eyes reproof against a world that fell short of his measure—a world that included his own wife and son. Especially a son whom he considered a profligate unworthy of the family name.
    Joseph walked over to the liquor cabinet, reached for the decanter of brandy. He poured a full snifter, emptied it in three long swigs, refilled it to the brim. It was all of ten o’clock in the morning, too early for drink. Had his father been home, he would have lambasted his son for his self-indulgence. But his father was on a trip to New Jersey to settle some matter with one of his steel refineries.