“I’m afraid you misjudge me,” I said, feeling an ache of shame in my breast. “I stopped fighting long ago.”
Lafayette gestured at the school behind us. “Then what is this school? What is your orphanage? These things seek to expand the promise of America. To give opportunity to all as free citizens.”
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as my ache of shame melted into recognition. I’d not thought of my work as more than charity. But it always had been. Whatever I told myself, I never stopped trying to finish what we started when we were all so young and idealistic about what this nation could be.
“Would that my friend was here to help you.” Lafayette sighed. “Will you take me to see him? I wish, with your blessing, to lay a wreath upon Hamilton’s grave, but there is no ceremony planned for it.”
Of course, no ceremony had been planned. For years now, even I had shied away from the monument in Trinity Churchyard where my husband was buried. I made any number of excuses for my reticence. The distressing reminder of my losses; the spectacle of people looking at me when I knelt beside the stone. The fact that I’d suffered for a public life and didn’t wish my most private grief to be exposed. All these things were true, of course, but the real reason I didn’t go was because both Angelica and Alexander were buried there.
For ten years, I’d hid the festering wounds of my suspicions from everyone, in every way I could. My greatest failing in that endeavor had been with William, who was, I’d learned, never fooled by my facade. He’d seen his father’s letters to my sister and, worse, he’d seen me laid low. It’d changed something in him to have the heroic image of his father shattered. And we’d lost him over it. He’d withdrawn from West Point and gone west, as far as he could go from civilization, all because I couldn’t leave a matter alone. So I didn’t intend to reopen it now. “You have my blessing to go to the grave, of course, General, but I’ve already taken too much of your time. Your public is waiting.”
“Let them wait,” Lafayette said, offering me his arm. “Hamilton is more important.”
Having no way to refuse him without exposing myself, I took his arm, but anxiety seized me as we made the short carriage ride to Trinity Churchyard. “For your itinerary,” I said, hoping to distract myself from the clawing dread, “there are other benevolent societies you might visit, almshouses and the great hospital, too. You might take in the Trumbull painting at the Academy of Arts, and I’ve no doubt the Society of the Cincinnati would host you for—”
“Dear sister, is it so strange that I wish to visit graves?”
“Oh. No, of course not,” I said, swallowing down the nerves that had me rambling.
Lafayette’s shrewd gaze told me he sensed something amiss, and I was relieved he didn’t press the point. “As a young man, I would have thought so. But then, I did not expect to live this long.”
“Considering the way you’ve habitually thrown yourself into danger for the cause of liberty, it is rather a miracle that you’re still alive.”
“You are not the first to say so.” He chuckled, but then his smile faded. “Is it too painful for you to visit Hamilton’s graveside?”
“No.” I folded my gloved hands in my lap. Then, unable to withstand his scrutiny, I finally admitted, “Yes, it’s painful. But a duty too long neglected.”
“I understand,” Lafayette said with a sympathetic nod. He couldn’t possibly understand, but I smiled politely. “After all these years, I go too little to visit where my Adrienne sleeps her final sleep.”
I realized, almost with a start, that he’d been a widower nearly as long as I’d been a widow. “Is your wife buried far from where you now reside?”
Lafayette nodded, his eyes going to the window. “She wanted to be buried with her family. A mass grave in Paris, where, after being guillotined for the misfortune of noble blood and a relation to me, the bodies of her loved ones were dumped. It is sometimes too difficult for me to go where I must bear the weight of it upon my shoulders. Instead, I made a shrine of Adrienne’s room, still as she left it, and where it seems I am less separated from her than anywhere else.”
This sentiment was familiar to me, having myself sought in vain for the essence of Alexander in this world. And I was moved by the raw pain in his voice for a loss experienced nearly twenty years before.
Unfortunately, his embarrassment at having betrayed that pain was obvious and he pleaded, “S’il vous plaît, pardonnez-moi. It is only that I wished many times to show my wife this country, and now, here I am without her, welcomed in a manner that exceeds the power to express what I feel. Thus I cannot resist an opportunity to confide my anguish to a friend who can understand.”
I could understand. I once pored over my husband’s letters every night, trying to recall the inflections of his voice. And every morning, gazed upon his portraits and bust, trying to remember the lines of his face. “General, you must never ask forgiveness for confiding in me. I know this same unhappiness well.”
He let out a breath of relief. “It was worse in the beginning. Having married so young, I was so much accustomed to all that she was to me that I did not distinguish her from my own existence. I knew that I loved her and needed her. But it was only in losing her that I finally see the wreck of me that remains. Now, I am not unsatisfied with my excellent children or friends, but I recognize the impossibility of lifting the weight of this pain. This irreparable loss.”
“Yes,” I whispered, because
