Chapter 9

Thanksgiving 1954

“So that’s what happened?” the detective asks.

Former FBI agent Harland Adams nods once, and the house sags in such relief that the floorboards of the sitting room creak under everyone’s boots. “That’s what happened, sir.”

The detective grunts, grudgingly pleased to finally have a cooperative witness. “Go through it one more time for me, Mr.Adams.”

Harland lays it out again, crisp, no hesitation, and the house has to admire his composure. He’s tense, but he’s giving the story his all: Thanksgiving preparation in full swing, the party newly joined by Mr. and Mrs.Sutherland. “Family friends of the Ortons,” he explains, “through the wives, you know, both of them being English, of course they know each other.” The stranger bursting in, clearly drunk, waving a sickle from the garden shed, trying to rob them all. An altercation—poor Barrett Sutherland had picked up a bat to defend Mrs.Felicity Orton, look at that cut on her neck, he’d undoubtedly saved her life stepping in like that, though he’d had the bat turned against him. The stranger, panicked at killing him, had fled to the top of the house.

“And you were the one to follow, Mr.Adams?”

“Yes. There was a struggle.” Indicating the bruise under his eye, the lump on the back of his head, the blood spray dried across his front. “I managed to get hold of the sickle and turn it against him, sir. A handful of the women were behind me, I couldn’t let them come to harm.”

“The others will corroborate your version of events? The ladies have been mostly hysterical—”

“Feminine nerves,” Harland says, not batting an eyelash. “Naturally they’re all in shock.”

The more shocked we act, the better , the Briar Club women had all agreed as they put the story together. Cry as much as possible. And had they ever, the house thought in admiration, having watched them called in one at a time for questioning. Nora oozed ladylike tears into a lace-edged hankie, Claire bawled and sniveled, Reka lapsed into incoherent Hungarian babble. Fliss played the distressed Englishwoman to the hilt, all gentle fluttering; Sydney worked up a completely sincere fit of hysterics. Bea couldn’t quite get herself to cry, but she played up her reinjured knee until she was nearly swooning in agony. By comparison to the sobbing ladies of the house Pete looks like a model of responsible young manhood, Dr.Dan a clear-eyed army veteran, Mr.Nilsson a concerned father, and Harland a stalwart all-American patriot.

What’s more important? They all tell the same story.

“Am I the last one you’ve got to interview, Detective?” Grace asks—by now the man looks exhausted by all the tears and drama, not to mention the hour. “It must be nearly four in the morning,” Grace says with a sympathetic glance at the clock.

“One more after you—” Consulting his notes. “A MissArlene Hupp?”

“I’ll see if I can pry her out of bed. She was having such dreadful hysterics, Dr.Dan gave her a pill.”

The thought of another woman having hysterics across this table is clearly making the detective’s head throb. “We’ll follow up with her tomorrow if we need clarification,” he decides. “You’ve been very helpful, Mrs.March.”

Very helpful , Briarwood House echoes, giving Grace the closest thing to a hug it can manage: a certain warm folding of the house’s atmosphere around her like a soft blanket, a place to shelter. At the beginning of the fracas when Grace’s secrets came out, the house had thought I won’t let them take you, I promise —had sent the thought like an arrow toward its favorite resident as she sat there shaking, her past laid bare for all to see. Because Briarwood House doesn’t care if Grace is a Communist or a spy or a woman entirely capable of opening a man’s throat with a sickle. Grace is the one who brought the house to life. Grace belongs.

I won’t let them take you. I’ll protect you —but Grace has protected herself. Has protected Briarwood House as well. And the house is grateful.

Things are, probably, going to be all right. The house even manages a certain cautious optimism about the prospect of ending up a furniture showroom. If Grace and the rest of this household can head off two murder charges and a Red spy attack, surely a bill of sale won’t be too hard to scupper.

“I’m so sorry you were dragged away from your Thanksgiving, Detective.” Grace’s eyes are so warmly sympathetic, the detective clearly can’t help smiling back. “You must be exhausted— and parched, talking half the night. Can I offer you some sun tea?”

Grace spent a great deal of time, during the weeks that followed, in the sitting room with Arlene. Arlene had quit her job at HUAC, she wouldn’t sit alone in her room, she trembled if she had to go into the parlor or the kitchen, but the front sitting room where Grace had scattered comfortable squashy cushions and put big bunches of sunflowers in the broad windows overlooking the square—that was safe. She’d sit there doing a puzzle or staring at a magazine, and Grace sat with her and listened. Not just to Arlene, since Arlene rarely rose from her daze, but to everything else.

“You’re always listening. I guess that comes with your old job,” Pete said, aiming for a joke. He was still trying to fit what he now knew about her into some context of ordinary life, and Grace was sorry about that.

“Pete,” she said simply, “I always listen because I was raised in a police state. When you live in fear, you’re always listening.”

“Guess I never really thought about that.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “We’re— We’re pretty lucky to live here, aren’t we?”

“We are,” Grace agreed. She was going to miss this place. So while she could, she sat in the sunny windowsill and soaked it all in.

She watched Xavier Byrne come and ring the bell for Nora, the Great Dane named Duke on a leash. The three of them sat on the top of the stoop outside—it was a reflexive instinct, Grace knew, to discuss dangerous matters outside where your words could disappear into the sky rather than hover around the lamps, which might possibly be bugged. (If you’d grown up in the Soviet Union, you always assumed the lamps were bugged.) Through the blowing curtains Grace could hear Nora’s quiet voice, speaking very carefully. “How long do you think the case will... drag out?”

“We’ll see.” Xavier sounded as calm as ever. “The police like Harland for the hero of the piece.”

“I heard Senator Sutherland’s kicking up a fuss. Insists it can’t have been just a simple robbery, insists there’s more to Bob McDowell than meets the eye.” Even here, Nora didn’t say the name Kirill . Grace approved of her caution. You’d have made a good spy, Tipperary.

“Let the senator bluster. He’s thinking political enemies, but we both know that line won’t lead anywhere.”

Nora exhaled, sounding shaky. Xavier took her hand, thumb rubbing across her knuckles. Grace smiled to see Nora grip back, hard. “I heard they brought you in for more questioning.”

“Didn’t get them anywhere,” Xavier said, unconcerned. “I didn’t have a drop of blood on me, and I had every reason to be there that night. Just a guy visiting his girl.”

Nora sounded wary. “Is that what you are?”

“It is now. I spent two years after I got out of Lorton extricating myself. I’m a businessman now, Nora.”

“That’s what you always called yourself before.”

“Now it’s all I am. I even laid off playing poker—the club’s just a jazz club these days.”

“Did you do it to get me back?” Voice flaring, defensive. “Because I didn’t ask it of you. And I sure as hell didn’t promise I’d come back if you did.”

“No. I did it for me. Spend a year locked up, you get time to think. I’m not going back to a cell. Not ever. I missed my house too much, I missed my dog too much. It’s not worth it.”

“So you’re someone who follows the law just to stay out of jail? Xavier, I don’t know what that’s worth if you’re still the man who will kill in cold blood if you can find a way to get away with it.”

“I’m not. I’m done with that. And you can give me all the skeptical looks you like, you know I don’t lie to you.”

A pause. “What did your family say when you...”

“They get it. Most of them get out at some point; it’s expected.”

Grace leaned closer to the window, listening. She remembered Nora saying once, near despair: Jesus Christ on a crutch, he’s worse than opium. Can’t get him out of my veins for anything.

“It’s what I came to talk to you about, on Thanksgiving. Before we got interrupted.” Xavier leaned down, tousling Duke’s ears where the dog’s huge head lay on Nora’s T-strap pumps. He spoke for a while, voice too low to hear, and Nora’s answer was inaudible. At least speak up so I can eavesdrop , Grace urged silently, but Xavier went away soon after, and Nora’s thoughtful face gave away nothing.

The newly widowed Sydney Sutherland dropped by a few days later, exquisite in black chiffon and a big-brimmed black hat, and she pulled Grace aside without a hint of the discomfort the others still showed. “I owe you,” she said simply, slipping the loops of her black patent-leather handbag from her own wrist over Grace’s. “And I owe Arlene, though I know she didn’t exactly intend to do me any favors.”

Grace peeked into the handbag. Banded rolls of cash, and a great deal of it. She blinked. “I didn’t think you had access to these sorts of funds.”

“Not as a wife.” Sydney’s eyes were hidden behind her big black sunglasses. “As a widow, hmm, not exactly, either... But it’s amazing, the effect a widow’s tears can have on bank clerks.”

“How is your son?”

“Heartbroken. He loved his father.” The glasses came off then, snapped shut with a click like a switchblade. “When the investigation and the funeral are over, I’m taking Bear to see his grandmother in Hamilton. Warm beaches and lemonade and family picnics...”

“Hmm. Senator Sutherland won’t object?” Grace didn’t think an old bigot who had just lost his son would be very keen on letting his only grandson be carried off to Bermuda.

“I’m not worried about my father-in-law.” For the first time, the widowed Mrs. Sutherland smiled. “I know some things about his son. If he doesn’t want them revealed to the press and ruining the family legacy, he won’t fight me for Bear.”

Grace smiled. “Enjoy Bermuda, Stretch.”

Sydney kissed her cheek in a waft of Joy perfume and bounded upstairs to see Claire, leaving Grace looking into the cash-stuffed patent-leather bag over her arm. It certainly did open a few things up...

She was watching a few days later when Claire came up the steps with a glow in her cheeks, slipping what looked like a passport application into her pocketbook. She watched when Fliss and Dr.Dan went off to get the stitches removed from the cut on Fliss’s neck. And Grace certainly made sure to watch when John Nilsson came back from New York to talk to his kids. He took them out to the Crispy Biscuit for hot fudge sundaes, but first he approached Grace—moving warily, unblinking, like you’d approach a threat.

“Heavens,” Grace quipped, “you’re not stalking a bear.”

“A Russian bear,” he shot back.

Grace couldn’t help a laugh. “Touché. Though my mother always said that where she grew up, the symbol was a nightingale. A humble, harmless, singing nightingale.”

“You sang a pretty good song the other night.” Mr.Nilsson cleared his throat. “My son’s been singing, too—singing your praises, telling me everything you did for him and Lina since you moved in. So...”

“So,” Grace echoed. “Why on earth did you never visit those marvelous children of yours these past few years?”

He was silent a long moment. “I was in Saipan during the war,” he said at last, one hand reflexively opening and closing. “Marines. Saw the Japanese women and children jumping off Banzai Cliff to avoid being taken prisoner... I came back a mess. My wife said I was a bad influence, the docs agreed, so I left. Thought the kids were better off without me.”

Excuses , Grace thought, if not entirely without sympathy. “Well, your children couldn’t have a worse parent right now than your wife. Think about that?”

She didn’t know what he said to his children at the Crispy Biscuit, but Lina came back with a cautious smile and fudge sauce on her chin, and Pete looked about a decade younger, like an actual kid again. “He says he never got any of the letters I wrote him—he was stunned , hearing I’d been writing to him up until a few years ago. And—” Pete gulped a little as if he were trying not to cry. “And he says he won’t let Mom sell the house.”

“She wants to what ?” Grace reared back.

“Mom said she had an offer, from some—I don’t know, who cares? Dad told me the house is in his name, and if Lina and I want to stay here there’s no way in hell he’ll sign off on a sale.” Pete’s hand stole out, patting the staircase newel post like it was a dog. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Dodged a bullet there , Grace thought. Imagine no more Briarwood House! The entire Briar Club made sure to eavesdrop when Mr.Nilsson took his former wife off to the parlor for some choice words—it felt like even the house was leaning in to listen, not that it was difficult the way Mrs.Nilsson was shrieking. “He’s letting her have it,” Nora whispered to Reka, gleeful. “He says he’s moving back to D.C. so he can visit the kids every weekend—”

“Apparently he’s been sending money for years , and she’s been cashing the checks while telling us all he never contributed a cent—”

“—and he says Pete’s going back to school next semester and what was she thinking making him drop out...”

“Looks like things are changing around here,” Joe said the next afternoon when he slipped over during Mrs.Nilsson’s daily shopping trip. “I didn’t have to sneak in—Pete said I could just go on up.”

“I’m glad you wanted to.” Grace opened the door to her apartment a little wider, smiling. “Thought you might be in a tizzy about having slept with a Red spy.”

“I always knew you had an edge about you.” He reached out, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Just didn’t know how much of an edge.”

Grace gave him a lingering kiss and pulled him inside.

Another week drifted by, and Grace found herself in the sitting room feeding the ginger cat (no longer forbidden from the premises; Doilies had lost ground on a great many things lately) when Harland came to call. His jacket was thrown over one shoulder, his sharply drawn face unsmiling as Grace waved him in. “You look like you’re not sleeping,” she observed.

“I’m not,” he said briefly, rotating his hat between his hands.

“Don’t waste your nightmares, Harland.” Herself, she wasn’t going to lose one minute’s sleep over the fact that Kirill had been removed from this world, or Barrett Sutherland. Sometimes she woke up in the night and had to check that her hands weren’t covered in blood, that a sickle with a reddened blade wasn’t lying on the floor... But after that, she switched off her light and went right back to dreamland.

She’d never killed anyone back home, despite all the desperate violence of Leningrad’s shattered, icy streets during the war. Never killed anyone as a spy, either. Now she had, but she could not be sorry. Kirill could have run with her, could have let her go, could have targeted her without targeting the people in this house... A million chances to live some version of the American dream, and that stupid bastard somehow muffed all of them.

But Harland still looked troubled and Grace was sorry for that, even if she couldn’t regret that he’d taken the official credit for dispatching Kirill. It had been the best move they had; everyone knew a former FBI agent would be treated differently at a murder scene. And he had been, and they were all reaping the benefit: they were, she thought, going to get away with it. She’d painted her hands red with an enemy’s blood, but she was going to walk away.

“I thought you might want to know about the... the file,” Harland went on. Grace nodded, her fingertips still remembering that embossed Lockheed Martin logo. “I got rid of it. Scrubbed every page back and front three times over to get rid of prints, packaged it anonymously, mailed it back where it came from. Triple layered, marked eyes-only—took every precaution I could think of. Hopefully it’s enough.”

Grace thought it would be. What a weight, to have that file off her hands. The whole house felt lighter, sunnier, as though a cloud had slid away from the sun. “Thank you, Harland.”

His eyes flickered to hers, holding them with an effort. As if he were looking all the way through her irises like through a window, to see if he could catch a glimpse of Leningrad. “Hoover would’ve pinned a damned halo on me if I’d told the truth. Forget commendations—it was my job to tell.” Voice almost inaudible: “Why couldn’t I do it, Grace?”

Because you’re a human being , Grace wanted to say. Because you realized that it’s a more complicated question than people like McCarthy or Hoover like to think.

Who deserved to live here. Who deserved a second chance. Who deserved to call themselves a citizen of this big, flawed, complicated country.

Her friends had decided she deserved it. How she deserved them , she’d never know.

Harland let himself out and later Grace saw him wandering toward Prospect Park with Bea, hand in hand, probably off to play some catch at the sandlot with the glove under Bea’s arm. Ball popping crisply against mitt in the lowering twilight sky... Grace sat in the window awhile longer, thinking of her friends. Thinking of what happened when you stopped drifting in the moment; when you had to think past Will we get away with it? and move on to What comes now?

She already knew.

Thursday night. The first Briar Club dinner since they’d gotten the news that the case was closed and no one (despite the rumblings of a certain senator from Virginia) was being sought in connection to the deaths of Barrett Sutherland and a drifter named Bob McDowell. Any minute now, Grace knew, the Briar Club would be coming upstairs to her green-walled room. She’d left them a pot of chicken soup on the hot plate, and a bouquet of sunflowers.

The cab was already waiting outside; Grace passed her suitcase over and went back for her last box. Hoisting it under one arm, she found herself pausing on the stoop and looking up at the front door. “Well,” she said aloud, looking up at Briarwood House, “I suppose this is goodbye.”

The house didn’t answer, of course. But Grace had always talked to it, anyway, right from the beginning—from the day she arrived in the same camel coat and red beret she was wearing now.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Grace told the house. But hers was a big secret for so many people to keep, and it would keep easier if she was out of sight. It had to keep, because they were all neck-deep in it now.

And if there were any more consequences from Moscow—if Kirill had reported anything up the chain before coming here and meeting his death—she wasn’t going to have it land on her friends. She was going to disappear all over again. She was good at that, after all.

“Where to, ma’am?” the cabdriver called from the street.

“Union Station,” Grace called back. Arlene was already sitting in the back seat, passive as a child. Looking disheveled as she so often did these days, hair uncombed, staring out the window. Grace couldn’t say she liked Arlene Hupp, but if Arlene cracked under the weight of what she’d done and spilled her guts to anyone, it was going to make life very uncomfortable for everybody at Briarwood House. And she very much had the look of someone who was going to crack, so Grace reckoned she’d take the wretch along, give her a fresh start, and make sure she stayed patched together. It shouldn’t be too difficult. “That girl is so desperate for a friend, I could take her under my wing and have her saluting the hammer and sickle inside a month,” Grace told the house. “Good thing all I want to force-feed her is a little empathy.”

The curtains fluttered, almost like the house was laughing. Grace smiled, laying her hand on the front door.

The cardboard box in her arms thumped indignantly from the inside. “Hush, you,” she scolded. Red hadn’t been too pleased to find himself lured into a box and the lid crammed over his head, but there was no way Grace was leaving him behind.

The cabdriver loaded her into the taxi, cat box and all, and the door slammed. Arlene looked over at Grace, dull-eyed, but with something desperate behind her silent stare. We’ll fix that , Grace thought. She didn’t think she’d ever have a family of her own—burying an entire family in Leningrad had killed the urge in her for children, for a husband, for anything more permanent than lovers and friends and the easy warmth of companionship—but she still had her urge to feed and to fix. Why not start with miserable, nasty, broken Arlene? “Let’s get ourselves a really delicious dinner at Union Station,” she suggested. Arlene Hupp needed a lot of things, but what she needed first was feeding .

A faint spark lit those dulled, lonely eyes. “I’m on a diet—”

“Do not ever say that again, Arlene.”

The cab pulled away from the curb, down Briar Street toward Wood. Grace looked out the back window, remembering the day she’d come here. Hoping desperately not to be found, hoping for a place to lay her head. Coming up those steps with a bag in her hand and a lifetime of secrets on her back, hoping for...

Hoping. Just hoping.

“Good night,” Grace March said aloud as Briarwood House slid into the past.

The house answers: And good luck.

Briarwood House’s Good Night and Good Luck

Champagne or prosecco St.Germain or other elderflower liqueur Vodka Lemon juice

Fill a flute half full of champagne or prosecco. Add one shot of St.Germain and one shot of vodka. Add a dash of lemon juice, adjusting sweetness to taste. Garnish with a twist and drink to celebrate the departure of old friends or the arrival of new ones, while listening to “Come On-a My House” by Rosemary Clooney.