The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan Read Free Book Online Page B

gas. Twenty dollars had barely moved the gauge. Valerie was broke, too.
    â€œIf you ask me,” Valerie said, “a little fat looks good on an old woman. Who wants to hug a brittle bag of bones?”
    Lee glanced at her mother and they both erupted in laughter. Esther Adell was the personification of a brittle bag of bones.
    â€œNot many brake lights on Sunset,” Valerie chirped in the blistering car as the canyon drive spilled onto the main artery to the freeway. “Things are looking up!”

CHAPTER 9

    Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association
    SOUTH FORK FISHING AND HUNTING CLUB
    The previous summer
    1888
    M other dislikes summer as much as I adore it. The heat seeps through my skin and warms my bones. When I tilt my head back and let the sun bathe my face, all the cares in the world melt away. It’s as deliciously forbidden as an extra slice of Battenberg cake.
    On this particular day, Lake Conemaugh twinkles in thelate-morning sunlight. There isn’t a cloud in the Tiffany-blue sky. At this elevation, high above the grit of Johnstown, the ordinary world and its troubles feel blessedly far away. My friends, Julia and Addie, join me on the clubhouse veranda, pretending to inhale nature.
    â€œShall we go for a sail?” Addie asks me.
    I laugh. We all do. Addie wears her best sporting dress—a burgundy pleated frock of silk and cotton. Despite the warmth of the day, she has buttoned the matching jacket to her neck and placed a satin-edged hat over her painstakingly frazzled fringe. Julia’s corseted shirtwaist and ankle skirt are more appropriate for the casual atmosphere of the club, but they are clearly her finest activity clothes. I, too, am wearing my best and newest. The lavender cotton of my underskirt is patterned in paisley swirls; the swag is striped in glorious cobalt. Earlier, I had Nettie take extra care to secure my hair with the amethyst-tipped clips I bought on my last trip to New York. None of us would even consider the risk of soiling today’s clothes by venturing onto the lake in a wobbly sailboat. Or worse, a canoe. Last summer, with Julian at oars, the canoe capsized us into the water. Thank heavens we were mere feet from the dock.
    â€œThey should arrive any moment,” Julia says, excitedly. “I hear their family’s bloodline can be traced back to a relative of Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf, grandmother of Queen Victoria herself.”
    â€œI hear their London home has two grand staircases in the entry hall, curving upward to the central master suite,” Addie says, adding, “ Three water closets. With a built-in bath. One on the second floor.”
    My heart is pounding, though I adopt an air of indifference. We have all heard so much about the fetching Mr. James Tottinger from Great Britain. But, fawning over a man is unbecoming. I am nearly a woman. It’s time to act like one.
    Still.
    Before any of us arrived at South Fork for the summer, the whole of Pittsburgh society was abuzz with anticipation at the arrival of our British visitors. The elder Mr. Tottinger had sent Mr. Carnegie a telegram seeking advice on expanding his textile empire to the United States. True to form, Mr. Carnegie invited the entire Tottinger family to Lake Conemaugh. A generous offer, to say the least. But one that anyone who knew Andrew Carnegie would expect. He was renowned as an altruistic man who went out of his way to be helpful. Why, he postponed his own wedding to please his mother! Mr. Carnegie never forgot his modest roots in Scotland, unlike Mr. Vanderhoff, whose bluster was as loud as the machinery at Cambria Iron.
    â€œNothing fancy,” Mr. Carnegie surely said of the clubhouse rooms in our rustic retreat. “Though you’ll have all you need.”
    As soon as word got out that the Tottinger family—the elder Mr. Tottinger and his wife; James, their son; and Ivy, their teenage