Three Words for Goodbye Read online

  Dedication

  For each other, and for the journeys yet to come

  Epigraph

  I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.

  —NELLIE BLY

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Violet

  Part One: Au Revoir

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Part Two: Arrivederci

  Violet

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Part Three: Auf Wiedersehen

  Violet

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Violet

  Clara

  Maddie

  Clara

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Authors

  About the Book

  Praise

  Also by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Violet

  Veneto Estate, East Hampton, New York

  January 1937

  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I know it to be true. I have never loved my home more than when I return to it after a trip away. I find a special joy in sleeping in my own bed again, or settling into the time-worn contours of a favorite armchair. It’s why I look so fondly on everything now, as the snow settles in drifts against the windowpanes, knowing that the next time I leave my beloved Veneto, I will not return. There’s a profound sadness in that knowledge, but there is also a sense of peace, of letting go. Mostly, there is a desire to have one last adventure before I take my final bow.

  I smile as I push aside the velvet drapes, rest my palms against the cold glass, and recall the words of my dear friend Nellie Bly. She’d told me we must sometimes leave the places and people we love the most, so that we can return to them and love them all the more. “Why stare at the same four walls when there’s a whole world to be seen? We have to leave, Violet, so we can come back.” And she—more than most—knew a thing or two about leaving, about travel and the way it changes a person.

  It had all started with a question to her newspaper editor: Was it possible to travel around the world in less than eighty days, and—more importantly—could a woman undertake such a challenge alone? Not only did she ask the question, she proved the answer was a resounding yes, on both counts. I didn’t know her then of course, but oh how I admired her bravery and sense of adventure. She was a breath of fresh air, so carefree and alive as she waved to the crowds from the deck of the steamship Augusta Victoria in her now-famous checkered coat. How I longed to share that feeling of anticipation, of departure and setting sail into the unknown. Along with thousands of others who looked for the latest update on her progress in the newspapers over the following weeks, I studied every detail of her race around the world. Somehow, I knew our paths would, one day, intersect, but I didn’t know then just how much Miss Bly’s life-changing trip would change my life, too.

  I return to the desk and run my hands over the embossed date on the front of my new appointment book. 1937. It’s hard to believe nearly fifty years have passed since I watched Nellie’s triumphant return at a New Jersey train station. I’d guessed her exact arrival time—seventy-two days, six hours, eleven minutes, and fourteen seconds—and won the New York World’s coveted competition prize of two tickets to Europe. There was never a question about whom I would travel with. I would go with Margaret, my sister, two young women in search of life’s answers. If Miss Bly could travel alone, so could we. Our steamship tickets to France were arranged for that spring. I can still remember those elegant paper tickets, how they, and the luggage labels that decorated our trunks, held a sense of so much possibility. The same luggage is gathering dust in the attic now. All that possibility abandoned with it.

  Beyond the window, the graceful sweep of lawn is already dusted with snow. Sun glistens on the blinding white and sparkles like chips of polished glass. The gardener has cleared a pathway from the porch to the little stone fence, through the hedges, and around the dormant flowerbeds I’ve spent years tending with care. Time is a precious gift now. Suddenly, I can’t bear to be inside a moment longer.

  I call my nurse, who promptly arrives in the parlor with a smile. I’m grateful for her sunny disposition. She’s made the last few months of my illness far more bearable.

  “I’d like to take a walk through the garden, Henrietta.”

  “In this cold? But your lungs, Violet.”

  “My lungs belonged to me the last time I checked, and they’d like some fresh air,” I reply.

  Henrietta is used to my stubbornness.

  “What will Mrs. Sommers say?” she asks, hands on her hips.

  “Mrs. Sommers is volunteering at a soup kitchen in Manhattan. She doesn’t need to know.” I make my way to the door. “And you’ve been with us long enough now to refer to my daughter as Celestine. We can dispense with the formalities.”

  “Of course.”

  We both feel the question circling around us: How much longer will I need a nurse? How much longer do I really have?

  “Well,” I prompt. “Are we going or not?”

  Henrietta throws her hands in the air and, after bundling us both in scarves and hats, escorts me and my walking cane to the garden.

  It is wonderful to be outside, even as the sharp air steals my breath away. I laugh as I slip and grip Henrietta’s arm to steady myself.

  “You’re full of mischief today,” she says. “It’s nice to see you smile.”

  “I’m excited,” I reply. “Clara and Madeleine will arrive soon, and I have a surprise for them.” I don’t tell Henrietta it is a surprise neither of my granddaughters will particularly like, but one that will change their lives for the better—I hope.

  As we walk on, treading carefully over the frozen ground, I contemplate the impenetrable parts of my past, the secrets I’ve hidden from my daughter and granddaughters. Secrets I no longer want to hide. I only hope there’s still time to set things right.

  Henrietta steadies me as I slip again on a patch of ice. “Maybe we should go back to the house?” she says, her voice full of concern. “I’d hate for you to fall.”

  I look toward the ocean, steady myself, and take another stubborn step forward.

  “I’d like to go on,” I say. “The more interesting path always lies ahead.”

  Part One

  Au revoir

  Clara

  Veneto Estate, East Hampton, New York

  January 1937

  My grandmother didn’t often arrange luncheons in the middle of winter. She disliked entertaining in the colder months almost as much as she disliked the many
pills and medicines Henrietta made her take every night, so I was surprised when she’d asked me to be home for noon, “on the dot.” Violet was very precise about time. “Seconds matter” was one of her favorite reprimands when one or the other of us dawdled. She’d said there was something important she wanted to discuss with me, and from the brightness in her voice I could tell she was up to something. Violet was often up to something, or about to be.

  I drove the familiar ocean road toward Veneto, our Long Island home. The golden beaches were shrouded in sea mist, the salty tang heavy in the air beneath moody clouds. It was a seascape begging to be captured in oils—or watercolor, perhaps—but the prospect of sitting down to paint didn’t appeal to me as it usually would. All I could think about was how empty our home would be without Violet tending her beloved rose garden, or listening to jazz on her old gramophone, the clink of ice in her glass at five o’clock. Violet was a force of nature, but the doctor said the cancer had spread to her lungs and time was running out. To see her fade away was unbearable.

  I drove on, more heartsick with every bend in the road until I slowed the Lincoln, turned through the elaborate filigree gates and up the driveway, past the sprawling lawns toward the pink stucco walls. I killed the engine and took a moment to quietly reflect, to remember happier times before the complicated business of death and illness had arrived. Veneto was always a house full of love and laughter. Madeleine and I had enjoyed a privileged childhood there, attending our mother’s legendary summer lawn parties and Violet’s afternoon teas, with a private beach to play on with our friends, and lazy Sunday sailing trips around the bay with Father. Madeleine had first broken the spell, abandoning us for the city to be closer to her beloved Newspaper Row. The rooms and corridors had become quieter still with our father’s sudden passing last year. Soon, it would be a house without Violet, too. Veneto would become a house of ghosts and memories.

  I stepped out of the car, walked up the driveway, and entered through the terrace door. I made my way toward the parlor, stopping to brush my fingertips against the velvety petals of a spray of Christmas roses as I passed. I pulled my silk scarf from my head and called out a hello as I pushed open the parlor door.

  “Oh good. You’re early,” Violet announced, smiling approvingly as she checked her wristwatch.

  I bent to kiss her cheek, and told her she looked nice.

  She was sitting on the chaise, beside the window with the ocean view. It was her favorite seat in the house. Mine, too. She patted the seat beside her. She’d long since dispensed with the effort to stand up to greet people.

  “It’s wild out,” I continued. “The Lincoln was almost blown off the highway.” I checked my reflection in the mirror above the mantel as I took off my gloves and hat. My hair was woefully untidy. I pinned a few loose strands back into the chignon at the nape of my neck.

  “But it wasn’t blown off the highway was it, dear,” Violet replied. “So stop worrying about things that didn’t happen, and sit down.”

  Violet was used to my cautious outlook on life and had long since stopped indulging it.

  I sat beside her and took her hand in mine as we admired the view beyond the window. I’d painted the scene so many times, forever trying to capture the light, the shifting tones of the sky and the ocean as the weather and the seasons changed. I’d never quite gotten it right, perpetually frustrated by my limitations.

  “You’ll get it just right one of these days,” Violet whispered, instinctively understanding my thoughts as she squeezed my hand. “You can still come and sit here when you’re a married woman.”

  My heart sank a little at the mention of my impending wedding. I would miss Veneto terribly when I married Charles Hancock in the summer. Even though I would have a successful husband and a Hamptons home of my own, with new ocean views to paint, now that it was so close, I was nervous about what it meant: becoming a wife, a woman, eventually a mother. It was all happening so quickly, and I felt increasingly unprepared.

  “I wish we could live here after the wedding,” I said. “At least for a little while, until I get used to things.”

  Violet nudged me gently with her shoulder. “All brides have their doubts,” she said. “It’s perfectly natural.”

  “What was it you wanted to talk to me about anyway?” I asked, eager to change the subject. “You don’t usually host luncheons until you come out of hibernation at Easter.”

  “I have a surprise for you. Two surprises, actually.”

  I groaned. “You know I hate surprises.”

  She waved my comment away. “Don’t be such a bore. You could at least pretend to be intrigued.”

  Her enthusiasm was infectious. Her faded gray eyes looked brighter than they had for a long time, and her lips brimmed with a mischievous smile. Despite her illness, the sense of adventure she’d carried with her as a younger woman still lingered like one of her fine French perfumes.

  “Well, whatever’s gotten into you, you’re like a child on Christmas morning!” I laughed as I smoothed my skirt, the cold air lifting from the folds in the fabric and lending a freshness to the room.

  Violet couldn’t contain herself a moment longer. “I’m sending you on an adventure! To Europe!”

  “You’re what?”

  She wrapped her hands around mine and squeezed them tightly. “I’m dying, Clara, and there are some things I need you to do for me.”

  “Oh, Violet. Don’t say it.” My grandmother had always been honest—painfully so at times—and her insistence on talking about her death, while terribly upsetting, was typical of her practical attitude. Admirable, in a way.

  “There’s no point pretending it isn’t going to happen,” she pressed, sensing my reluctance to discuss it. “And at least this way I have a chance to put things in order.”

  “What sort of things?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t matter for now. First, you need to agree whether or not you’ll go.”

  “But I can’t just go dashing off to Europe. I have the wedding to organize.”

  She looked at me, her gray eyes searching mine. “Charles’s mother will deal with the wedding preparations. You know how she likes to interfere.”

  “Which is precisely why I should be around to keep an eye on her.” I picked at a loose thread on the hem of my skirt. “And I promised to help Edward with the new collection at the gallery.”

  Violet turned to look at me. “How is he?”

  “He’s very well.”

  I stood up and walked to the window.

  Edward Arnold, my art tutor, owned a small gallery in the West Village. Were it not for him, I would have packed away my easel and oils long ago. Charles didn’t show much interest, being a man of commerce rather than art, so I spent as much time at the gallery as I could. More time than I should, perhaps.

  “I’m sorry to let you down, Violet, but it really isn’t good timing for me. Can’t you send Madeleine instead? With a one-way ticket, preferably.”

  Beyond the parlor door, I heard footsteps approaching.

  Violet clapped her hands together. “Good. Now you’re both here.”

  “Both?”

  “That’s the second surprise, dear. I invited your sister. You’ll take the trip together.”

  “Madeleine? Here? You invited her?”

  “Yes, she invited her. And she’s delighted to see you, too, Sis.”

  I stiffened at the familiar voice behind me and glanced over my shoulder. I hadn’t seen or spoken to my sister since Father’s funeral a year ago, and here she was, back in the family home as if she’d only stepped outside for a moment to fetch something or other. I studied her face, hair, outfit. She hadn’t changed in the slightest, still all angles and terrible posture and clothes that looked more suited to a man than a woman. But for all our differences, and for all the simmering resentment between us, I felt a flicker of a smile at my lips.

  Madeleine raised an eyebrow in return, and laughed.

  Really, she was so an
noying.

  Maddie

  I never could resist Clara’s smile. I hadn’t as a child when she laughed at my silly antics, and I couldn’t now. I laughed and returned her grin, even as hers faded.

  Breezing past her, I bent to kiss Violet’s cheek. “I’m sorry I’m late. A man was blocking the train platform for a stage performance of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ A stirring rendition, I assure you. Piercing even.”

  Clara rolled her eyes. She’d never understood why I chose to ride the trains when I could take a car, but I liked the predictability of the schedule and the unpredictable nature of the other passengers. It was good fodder for my writing.

  “You’re right on time,” Violet insisted. “Sit, my pet. We have something to discuss, the three of us.”

  “What’s this all about? You have me intrigued!” I took off my hat, tossed my coat over a chair, and dropped onto the sofa across from her in a very unladylike manner, as Mother would say. Since slacks and socks had come into fashion, I’d shoved my hosiery to the back of the drawer. If I never wore a skirt again, it would be too soon. Clara eyed my slacks and saddle oxford shoes, and though she said nothing, I knew she wouldn’t be caught dead in something so ordinary, or so masculine. Clara had an artistic eye and dressed like a carefully curated gallery exhibition. Look and admire, but don’t touch. I, on the other hand, found beauty in words.

  “Violet wants to send us to Europe together,” Clara blurted out.

  She always had to be the one to announce important news.

  I sat up, perched on the edge of the seat as if ready to leave immediately. “To Europe? Really?” Violet nodded with a smile. “Well, this is great news! But . . . together?”

  While I instantly liked the idea of a trip to Europe, barreling down the tracks on some foreign train into the exciting unknown, Clara was the last person I could imagine beside me. We hadn’t seen eye to eye on anything since our teenage years, and not much had changed since. In fact, things had only gotten worse. Charles Hancock had taken the last pieces of the Clara I’d actually liked and swept them under the rug for good. I glanced at her then, noticing the dark circles under her eyes, and I wondered if everything between them maybe wasn’t so perfect after all.