His vision blurred. It had been so long since tears had come to his eyes he was astonished by the physical consequences.
He stepped away from her quickly. Her arm lifted into the air behind him as if she thought she could draw him back merely with a gesture. She was still reaching out to him when he shot a shameful glance in her direction.
"It truly is a fearsome thing, isn't it?" Alex asked. "To unguard one's heart. One can't know the terror of it until one fully does it, I imagine. They tell me she was a madwoman, you see. Some old friend of Mr. Ramsey's. But she was...Well, I'd never met anyone like her, and I doubt I ever will again."
"But what's become of her, Alex?" Edith laid a hand gently on his shoulder.
"She was in a terrible accident. We had all gone to the opera and it had been an enchanting evening until then. Just enchanting. I had told her everything about me. Everything. That I had a title but none of the money to go with it." Edith winced and bowed her head, as if the family's financial troubles were a terrible personal failing of her own. "But these things, they didn't matter to her, Mother. Not in the slightest. What she had for me, it was a kind of adoration. And it was instant. And powerful. So very powerful."
"And you had such feelings for her," Edith replied.
It was not a question, and there was pity in her voice.
"And then she simply drove off into the night, and I could do nothing to stop her," he continued. "The car, it became stuck on train tracks, and she wouldn't get out. I kept begging her to get out. Pulling on her, even. But it was as if she had undergone some terrible transformation. She seemed so confused. So confused, by so many things. But what she felt for me. She was sure of that, Mother. She seemed absolutely sure of that."
"Oh, Alex. Why didn't you tell me any of this before now?"
"Because to do so would be to do...this."
Surely he could maintain some gentlemanly pose while he wiped tears from his eyes.
His mother, ever the American, ran her hand up and down the back of his jacket until he relented and leaned into her half embrace again.
"I blame myself for this," Edith finally said.
"Oh, but that's absurd, Mother."
"It may seem so, yes. But it's not. What your father and I have, what we've always had, it's a fine friendship, but it isn't much else. To describe anything that's ever happened between us as passion or a great romance? It would be misleading at best, a fallacy at worst. It was an arrangement of convenience and finance, much as your marriage to Julie was to be. And when you consider those things, it's turned out rather well, I feel. But nothing we've ever had, nothing we've ever done, has prepared you, our son, for feelings of this magnitude. And so yes, even though it may sound absurd, I blame myself."
"Well, you mustn't," he replied. "Besides, what could you have done to prepare me for the passion of a madwoman?"
"If she truly was mad," Edith answered.
He was stricken by her tone, which sounded both distracted and calculating. She gazed off into the distance.
"You believe she was something else?" Alex asked.
"I wasn't there." She met his stare and then averted her eyes quickly. Did she regret her words? "But it seems that if she were truly mad, some signs would have presented themselves before the accident."
"But there were signs. Don't you see?"
"I'm afraid I don't, darling. I haven't met her."
"Her desire, the speed of it. The passion. It was all out of sorts."
"You consider those who experience an instant attraction to you insane? My dear Alex. Tell me we raised you to have a higher self-regard than that."
"Be serious, Mother."
"I'm being quite so."
"Well, it doesn't matter, really. None of it. Nothing will reverse the accident and all those terrible flames."
"This is true. What matters is that you get beyond this, Alex."
"I am trying. I promise you. I am trying with all I have."
"Listen to the recording," his mother said suddenly. "I encourage you to find your strength and listen to it. Don't let all your memories of that night be poisoned by its tragic end. Savor of it what you can. Cherish those things about it that were precious to you. Maybe not now, or right away. But soon, Alex." She embraced him now. "Soon, promise me."