Page 133 of The Ivory City
“Your uncle made them,” Nell said proudly.
“If anyone ever wondered why you married him, they won’t now,” Lillie said, nudging her.
“It’s almost as delicious as watching them eat their words.” Nell raised a glass of sparkling punch to Grace as she took to the dance floor with her husband. Grace’s parents had traveled to St. Louis to attend the party and visit Walt, who had decided the fête would be too much of a temptation for his tenuous sobriety.
Grace had asked for their help in planning, and they had executed their roles with resounding success, given how many guests stayed well into the morning hours.
Finally the last song played, goodbyes were said, and the final carriage departed. Grace saw her parents to bed, then took off her shoes and traipsed up the flower-draped stairwell.
“Mrs. Parker,” Theodore said, leading her outside, where the air was cold but his arms were warm. “As memory serves, momentous things seem to happen to us on balconies.”
He kissed her.
“Was it so torturous tonight?” she asked, nestling in closer to him.
He wrinkled his nose. “I largely married you because you claimed you don’t like parties.”
“I solemnly promise to only use them for good causes.”
“Your cousin is Lillie Carter,” he said dryly. “I hardly think we’ll want for good causes.”
She gave him an impertinent smile. “You may want to rip out your hair, but at least you won’t ever be bored.”
“Never,” he deadpanned. “My hair is my best feature.”
“That’s debatable.” She touched his handsome face. Kissed his birthmark. The scar on his arm. The parts of him that were the most beautiful to her.
“And now it’s all over,” she murmured as he led her in a private slow dance. She turned toward the fireworks that were beginning to explode over Forest Park, lighting up the sky. “How unbelievable, that for a few months, the entire world was encompassed in the span of a few blocks.”
“And yet I found my whole world there,” he whispered roughly against her temple, “encompassed in a single person.”
Grace was surprised by the sudden tears pricking her eyes. The fair had changed her life irrevocably, and she would never walk its paths again. There were things about its passing existence she would miss and return to often in her memory. Stories she would tell her future children, and some she would hold close to her own heart. Horrors she had witnessed and scars she would likely carry for the rest of her life. She would walk its paths in her dreams, and perhaps, a few nightmares.
She took Theodore to bed as the fireworks fell, the city darkened, and in the distance, the Ivory City shut its gates for the final time.
