All the Pretty Places by Joy Callaway EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Joy Callaway
- Language: English
- Genre: Biographical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
April 1893
Rye, New York
Charles was leaving. At long last. Si longtemps, Charles! Abschied, dearest
brother! Tot ziens! I loved him fiercely—more than I loved anyone, really—
but I was glad to see him go.
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Come 11:14 p.m., the rail cars would screech and lurch and he’d wave
from the wrought iron caboose railing in his new champagne duster jacket,
his fist full of the Bells of Ireland sprigs I’d shove into his hand for good
luck. The clouds of his farewell shouts would mingle with thick rail steam
in the chilly evening air. By Tuesday he’d be standing 1,300 miles away in
the construction shadow of Mr. Flagler’s latest lavish hotel, boots sinking
into the veritable beach the structure was built upon. Charles would think,
of course, that he’d have no problem whatsoever transforming the
barrenness into a lush utopia of viburnums and palms and, most
importantly, royal poinciana—a scarlet flowering beauty for which the hotel
was named. Never mind that the royal poinciana was native to Madagascar
and had never been grown in Florida. Charles had achieved enough success
cultivating foreign species from Japan and Germany and Italy and Israel
with Father that he would believe the task an easy one. We all did.
I hoped he would love Florida. That he’d be so enraptured by the
aquamarine sea, the prestige of being Mr. Flagler’s premiere landscape
man, and the gorgeous fortune hunters—bless them—that he’d stay.
Perhaps he’d even find a suitable girl who wouldn’t mind the oppressive
heat akin to that of a boiler room or the way even the finest silks swallowed
the humidity and stuck to her limbs as though they’d been bathed in maple
sap. Surely a girl of that fortitude could persevere in her pursuit of Charles
despite his obsessive love of plants. Charles and I were afflicted with the
same curse—a curse that drove me to celebrate his going and that of my
younger brother, Freddie, two years ago when he went to work for Uncle
Teddy’s friend Mayor Carter Harrison in Chicago.
My brothers had been my greatest supporters and my greatest
obstructions. Until Mr. Flagler’s offer, I’d thought Charles would succumb
to Father’s plan to make him successor and never leave. But Charles had
been an adventurer from birth, always wanting the opportunity to travel, to
make his mark apart from Father’s accomplishments.
Mr. Flagler had kept us as the primary gardeners at his Mamaroneck
estate for nearly a decade. One day, when Charles was replacing a Countess
of Oxford in his rose garden, Mr. Flagler came downstairs from his office,
interrupted Charles, and asked him to take his talents to Florida. Before that
fateful day only a month ago, I’d considered my life all but lost to the doom
of a debutante’s marital duty—a practice I found altogether disgusting.
I was no commodity, no acquisition to be considered due to the success
of my parents and for the diversification of a gentleman’s holdings. Despite
my ardent study of horticulture, despite a mastery of it that exceeded both
Charles’s and Freddie’s, Father refused to see me as a viable successor.
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