Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) by Cate Campbell

November morning. She was due at the hospital, but she had just time to see him onto his train, then hurry back up the hill. The car would have made the whole thing much easier, but she was used to its absence now. She knew the streetcar schedule, knew which taxicabs were best and which should be avoided. On this day she had walked, meaning to savor the crispness of the end of autumn. She met Frank at his boardinghouse, and they strolled down Cherry together, turning toward the campanile that towered above the train yard. The giant clock warned them they had only a quarter of an hour. Frank, handsome in his Stetson and his camel’s hair coat, carried his valise in his left hand and a bulging briefcase in his right. Margot carried her medical bag. The breeze from the Sound had a bite to it, but her coat was buttoned up the front, the fur collar pulled high under her chin. She glanced up from beneath the brim of her hat and saw that Frank’s mouth was as set as her own must be.
    She stopped when they reached the entrance to the station. Automobiles rattled up in a continuous stream, their passengers disembarking with cries of farewell, calls to the porters, a great fuss of trunks and suitcases and hatboxes. Frank paused with her, and the two of them stood facing each other just under the awning, a little island of tense silence amid the flood of activity.
    “Frank.” Margot spoke through a throat aching with the pain of approaching separation. “I wish we could talk about what’s happened between us. I still don’t quite understand.”
    He looked down at her, his blue eyes flinty with distress. “I think you do, Margot,” he said. The pain in his voice matched her own. “You should. It’s a matter of principle.”
    “It’s no less a matter of principle for me.”
    A porter approached them, touching the brim of his flat cap. “Luggage, sir?”
    Frank shook his head without taking his eyes from Margot’s face. A woman in a long fur coat, just being helped out of a touring car, called to the porter, and he wheeled away toward her. Frank set his valise down and switched his briefcase to his left hand so he could put out his right to Margot. “Nothing more to say just now,” he said, a little roughly.
    “I suppose not,” she whispered. She put out her own right hand. Their fingers met, intertwined, and held. She felt the warmth of his skin through her glove, the pressure of his fingers gripping hers, pressing them more tightly than was necessary, and she understood he loathed this public farewell as much as she did. She wanted to lean forward, to press against him, to kiss the lines around his mouth that had become so dear to her, to feel his firm lips on hers, but of course she couldn’t. Not here. And, perhaps, not now. “Frank, I—” she stammered, with an uncharacteristic loss of composure.
    “We’ll think about it,” he said tightly. “We’ll both think about it.”
    The whistle of the train, a blast of steam-powered noise that made Margot’s ears ache, reminded them of the time. Frank released her hand, his fingers sliding away, parting from hers with reluctance. She wanted to seize them back, but of course she couldn’t do that, either.
    He bent to pick up his valise again. “Watch the glazier,” he said unexpectedly. “The seals.”
    She could only nod. At that moment she didn’t give a damn about the clinic’s new windows.
    “I’ll write,” he said, and then, swiftly, he turned, the hem of his coat flaring, and strode away. She watched his back, following the tilt of his hat, the set of his shoulders, until he disappeared through the glass doors of the station. There she lost him in the crowd, too many other hats and coats and raised arms for her to follow his progress. Her hand felt cold where it had just moments before been warmed by his. Her eyes stung embarrassingly as she turned away from the station and started up toward Fifth Avenue and Seattle General Hospital.
    Margot Benedict