“Oliver, what is this?”

“I believe it is what we call ‘clothing.’”

“Yes, but why is there a trunk of it?” Sitting just inside their entryway was a lovely cedar steamer trunk, freshly delivered from the department store they had gone to early the day before.

It was filled with much more than five dresses.

“I asked them to prepare a trousseau for you of everyday essentials since you had recently lost everything.”

Estella was speechless. Does this man ever do anything by half? He appeared so unbothered by how much he must have spent on her while she felt deeply ashamed.

It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable with money. Her family lived in gaudy opulence at Saint-Tourre, but that wealth came with a price and each of them knew it.

What was Oliver’s motive for spending his?

“Why?” Such a simple question, such an important answer she wasn’t sure she was ready for. The invisible string she felt tugging them together back home nudged her again. Remembering her last day with Oliver then, the way they clung together as if they both knew it was goodbye, she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

Maybe he didn’t remember her then, but what if she left an impression? The way he gravitated towards her …

“Are you ready?”

Estella snapped out of her thoughts, cheeks blazing. In the middle of her tangle of thoughts, Oliver had swept away the trunk and stared down at her from the top of the stairs.

Trailing after him, she followed Oliver into what had become her room where he set it down in an empty corner.

“We’ll, there you go.” And he was gone.

She couldn’t stop staring at the trunk. It wasn’t just a delivery crate. It was truly a nice cedar steamer trunk. He got her a traveling trunk, something she could use to store and move her things. Touched didn’t begin to describe the sharp feeling in her chest, threatening to overwhelm her. Shoving past those emotions, she opened it. A trousseau, to her, was old-fashioned and outdated, but she knew they traditionally went with a new bride. And with a new bride came a wedding night. Now endangered by a hot blush, she lifted the tissue paper covering the contents. Underneath were nearly arranged white paper boxes and a few cloth bags. It was ridiculous, truly. She had no doubt in Oliver’s intentions, but would the women at the department store know? What had he told them?

Preparing herself, she tentatively opened the first bag, her blush dissipating.

Inside was a boar bristle hair brush. In another were a few toiletries and personal care products. In the boxes were her dresses, carefully folded and wrapped. Beneath those were her under clothes and even, to her surprise, shoes. Of course she would need more appropriate shoes. They ditched her shoes back east and all the stolen and borrowed pairs she’s worn since fit poorly. She merely assumed she’d live with it.

Throat tight, Estella fought rising tears. There wasn’t a single uncomfortable item in the trunk. They were all something she needed or would need to make her time here more comfortable.

Overwhelmed, she gripped the lid and leaned her head against the opening. It was thoughtful and considerate and — and — and she couldn’t think. Her head filled with Oliver’s face. How much had he told them? Did it matter? The important thing was that he thought to have the trunk made at all.

He saw the bigger picture.

At Saint-Tourre, after their initial introduction — or reintroduction — he had always been attentive to her, seeking her out in the quiet moments, talking or working alongside her in the kitchen, or the library, or the Archives, or the garden on the rare moments she felt safe to go outside.

Is this where it started? Confusion, hope, and fear fought for supremacy in her heart.

She pushed herself up and away from the trunk. Oliver was in his room down the hall, studiously staring out the window, she could see his reflection on the hallway mirror across from his open door. At her approach, he turned and the look of apprehension on his face settled her emotions temporarily.

For the moment, she was glad. Happy, even, as she felt that she got the one thing she wanted with Oliver: time.

Finally overcome, she cried, “Thank you!” And launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

He received her willingly, if startled, his arms encasing her. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. The last time she would have been held like this was by her family — when they left her to find answers in Greece, when Jacques left to help Matthieu and Theodora.

And yet it wasn’t the same. Underneath the current of warmth, of safety, of care, was an extra undertow of unidentified emotions that increased the tempo of her heart.

Once again, she was painfully aware that this wasn’t a family member, was no Jacques stand-in. Estella extracted herself from Oliver’s embrace. He let her go, not even his hands lingering on her waist like she secretly wished they would.

She said another “thank you” as she fled from the room.

____

When she came down for breakfast in her brand new, properly fitted dress she tried not to smile too brightly at Oliver’s vieled attempt hide his admiring eyes.

She shouldn’t be happy that he seems to like her. This man barely knows her, even if he is incredibly kind to her. She would just end up breaking his heart anyway, aside from potentially endangering his body too. Besides, she hasn’t changed her ind about leaving him in Chicago. Take her money and run, so to speak, was the necessity of the day.

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Her stomach turned sour at these thoughts. The modest breakfast before her no longer appealed to her. Would she truly accept these gifts only to cut and run a few days later?

“I thought we could go to the university today. See what is in the library there for you. If we’re leaving to go to Georgia soon, then we probably shouldn’t check out anymore books but we can create a list. A bibliography, I think?”

Estella barely caught a word Oliver said. All the “we’s” bounced around her head, knocking any other information out.

He was still talking about the books, the research, and the learning. He looked so excited at the prospect of the puzzle before him.

What was it that he said back in New York? This is the most interesting thing to happen to him in three years? He had immediately apologized when he realized she didn’t share his perspective.

“Oliver, why?” She blurted out. She’s asked this question many times and wondered it even more.

The light in his eyes dulled with regret. Estella bit her lip, she almost wanted to apologize.

But she would never stop wondering. And maybe, secretly, just a little bit, she hoped his motive were mercenary.

It would make leaving him again easier.

“I told you, Estella, because I want to, because you’ll help my family when we need it.”

“And because it’s interesting?” She probed.

He pressed his mouth into a thin line. “It is interesting but that’s not why.” He snapped the newspaper open, obscuring his face again. “We should leave for the university this morning. That way we have time to look through the collections.” He said, his voice muffled behind the paper.

Estella couldn’t tell if she had offended him with her questions about his motives or there was something he didn’t want to acknowledge. It was not that she didn’t trust him but she needed to not trust him. To not like him. To not want him to stay with her. It would be easier if he gave her a reason to leave him.

Because she couldn’t stay, wouldn’t stay with him.

The conversation ended. Oliver feigned interest in the paper and Estella fermented with uncertainty.

Unable to stay uncomfortable with each other for long, however, they had regained their equilibrium by the time they stepped on the train to the university.

Oliver served as her ever-faithful tour guide, pointing out landmarks big and small and even personal, “That’s the theater they took me to our first Christmas together.”

By ‘they’ he meant John and Eva, who he never mentioned by name. This was the first time he had brought them up himself in conversation.

She worried her lower lip, afraid to somehow mes sup the moment. They were still walking past the theater, his face slightly turned from her as he gazed at it across the street.

He looked wistful, she thought.

“Maybe we could go? Before we leave?” She shouldn’t ask these things, shouldn’t engage in extra time with him.

But his face swiveled to her, then back to the theater now behind them.

“You said you’d take me to a show.” God, could she shut up?

She thought he’d be torn or uncertain, but Oliver looked positively delighted at her suggestion. Fantastic.

“We’ll go this weekend.”

It’s a date, she wanted to tease but finally her brain and her mouth were on the same page and she stopped herself from speaking. She needed to get a hold of herself if Oliver was going to make it through this relatively unscathed.

____

The Harper Memorial Library was magnificent. Like the city library, the university created an identity out of gothic architecture.

Standing inside it now, Estella felt as if the seams were set to bursting in the building from the endless books. She felt the mechanisms keeping such a complex system intact thrum under her skin. Even humans could work their own kind of magic.

After a brief stop at the front desk, Estella followed Oliver through the stacks. The plan was rather simple and not the most refined research methods. This younger Oliver, she is learning, didn’t have much intellectual experience outside of the basic education every young, middle-class man in the United States might expect in 1939 before going to college. Which Oliver did not do. But he was eager to take part in the pursuit now that it seems to have a purpose. She guided him through the card catalog, him jotting down references as they explored. In the stacks, they pulled titles and flipped through indices before taking over a worktable they slowly filled with books.

She had no reference point on how well university libraries in 1939 should be stocked but she was impressed — and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the selection of books. After their initial search, they separated. She started in physics, but wandered into science fiction, literature, and history. You never know if the human writing farfetched ideas was a witch. There were no laws preventing witches from playing the academic, after all, so long as they didn’t come out and say it.

By the time Oliver found her again after completing his own part of the project, she had a healthy stack. As they expected, there was a lot of crossover in their selections but Oliver had some books she hadn’t seen and vice versa. Estella felt fairly confident in the net they had cast.

“I was thinking, too, that your letter campaign could keep going. There’s no reason I couldn’t take up the mantle and contact some of these authors for more references while you start reading.”

“Oh. Uh.” He looked so earnest and eager with his bright eyes shining hope at her.

She nodded numbly, unable to break it to him that whatever references the authors had would likely already be in the books. Oliver did that to her sometimes, made her insides topsy-turvy and unwilling to break his enthusiasm.

The trip was just as Oliver had promised: reconnaissance and nothing more. He’d offered to check out a few of the books for her on their way out, but she declined. Better to wait for some guidance lest she muddle the road before she even walks down it.

They spent the rest of the day in quiet companionship at the house at the end of lane, both reading books they had picked out. For a moment, she could believe she was still home, still solving someone else’s crisis rather than her own.

Estella did her best to focus on the fiction books in front of her, but her mind raced, and her hands ached for some kind of release of energy.

Recalling the extra paper in the office, she retrieved it and returned to the sitting room, taking a seat beside Oliver’s knee to use the low coffee table as a work surface. If he had any thoughts about her actions, he did not share them.

At his knee, she strained at the blank page, begging for the words in her throat to reach her hand. Stubbornly, they stayed firmly lodged, suffocating her.

Never one to wallow, or at least to give attention to the feeling, she turned to a less emotionally intense task.

The room they were in was a simple subject but the act was soothing to her nerves. Oliver left her alone about it, quietly sitting beside her, not quite touching but near enough to constantly be aware of the other until she retired late in the evening, leaving a startling detailed graphite drawing behind.

____

The next day was much of the same as the evening before until seven that night, when Oliver came down the stairs dressed in a press shirt and pants, tugging an overcoat onto his shoulders.

Pointedly, she felt, he did not look at her as he left out the door. Estella tried to fight the pit forming in her stomach, that quietly uncomfortable feeling that rises when you know something is wrong but you let it happen anyway.

She knew what Oliver was doing --- being the monster he believes he ought to be --- and said nothing. Who will get hurt tonight? And how many?

He’s so kind but thinks he’s a demon. The Oliver she met at Saint Tourre flashed across her mind. So full of regret, of sadness, of a missing piece.

He’s only doing this because it’s who he thinks he should be, not who he wants to be.

She’s still learning this Oliver but the one she does know, the doting brother and devoted family man, hates the choices he made.

With that last thought, Estella threw on her new coat and headed out the door.