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When she was lowered to the ground, I stared at the hole in the earth. I stared at the glossy sheen of the wood of her casket. I could not keep it in. I could not keep my true self from coming out.
“I need a minute,” I said to Robert and Connor and then I turned away.
I walked. Farther and farther up the winding hillside roads of the cemetery, until I found what I was looking for.
Harry Cameron.
I sat down at his tombstone, and I cried out everything within me. I cried until I felt depleted. I did not say a single thing. I did not feel any need. I had talked to Harry in my head and my heart for so long, for so many years, that it felt as if we transcended words.
He had been the one to help me, to support me, through everything in my life. And now I needed him more than ever. So I went to him the only way I knew how. I let him heal me as only he could. And then I stood up, dusted off my skirt, and turned around.
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There, in the trees, were two paparazzi taking my photo. I was neither angry nor flattered. I simply didn’t care. It cost so much, caring. I didn’t have any currency to spend on it.
Instead, I walked away.
Two weeks later, after Robert and I had gone home to Aldiz, Connor sent me a magazine with the image of me at Harry’s grave on the cover. She had attached a note to the front. It said, simply, “I love you.”
I pulled off the note and read the headline: “Legend Evelyn Hugo Weeps at Harry Cameron’s Grave Years Later.”
Even long past my prime, people were still easily distracted from seeing how I felt about Celia St. James. But this time was different. Because I wasn’t hiding anything.
The truth had been there for them to grab if they’d paid attention. I had been my truest self, searching for the help of my best friend to ease the pain of the loss of my lover.
But of course, they got it wrong. They never did care about getting it right. The media are going to tell whatever story they want to tell. They always have. They always will.
It was then that I knew that the only time anyone would know anything true about my life was when I told them directly.
In a book.
I saved Connor’s note and threw the magazine in the trash.
WITH CELIA’S PASSING AND HARRY gone and myself finally in a marriage that, while chaste, was stable, my life officially became entirely void of scandal.
Me. Evelyn Hugo. A boring old lady.
Robert and I lived a friendly marriage for the next eleven years. We moved back to Manhattan in the mid-2000s to be closer to Connor. We refinished this apartment. We donated some of Celia’s money to LGBTQ+ organizations and lung disease research.
Every Christmas, we threw a benefit for homeless youth organizations in New York City. After years on a quiet beach, it was nice to be members of society again in some ways.
But all I really cared about was Connor.
She had worked her way up the ladder at Merrill Lynch, and then, shortly after Robert and I moved back to New York, she admitted to him that she hated the culture of finance. She told him she had to leave. He was disappointed that she hadn’t been happy with what had made him happy; that was obvious. But he was never disappointed in her.
And he was the first person to congratulate her when she took a job teaching at Wharton. She never knew that he had made a few calls on her behalf. He never wanted her to know. He merely wanted to help her, in any and all ways that he could. And he did that, lovingly, until he died at age eighty-one.
Connor gave the eulogy. Her boyfriend, Greg, was one of the pallbearers. Afterward, she and Greg came to stay with me for a while.
“Mom, after seven husbands, I’m not sure you’ve had any practice living on your own,” she said as she sat at my dining room table, the same table she used to sit at in a high chair with Harry, Celia, John, and me.
“I lived a very full life before you were born,” I told her. “I lived alone once, and I can do it again. You and Greg should go live your lives. Really.”
But the moment I shut the door behind them, I realized just how huge this apartment was, just how quiet.
That’s when I hired Grace.
I had inherited multiple millions from Harry, Celia, and now Robert. And I had only Connor to spoil. So I also spoiled Grace and her family. It gave me happiness to give them happiness, to give them just a little bit of the luxury I’d had for most of my life.
