Work Text:
October, 1921
Angela didn’t look back as she walked out of the Commodore’s mansion, but she could feel Gillian staring a hole into the back of her head.
She’d only been inside the place for fifteen minutes, but it was all she needed to say goodbye to her mother in law. Or was she her former mother in law? If your husband is dead, and she wishes that you were instead, is she still considered your mother in law?
"You would just give up on him?" Gillian said, when she told what she planned to do. There was a trembling pain in her voice, but her tone was all condemnation.
"He’s gone, Gillian," Angela responded bluntly. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but she wanted her to understand. Truthfully, she wanted to grab Gillian, break the uncomfortable feigned civility, and shake her until she came to her senses. The two women had never really been what you would call friendly, but it ate her up inside to see her like this: her body here but her mind fixated on a ghost.
Gillian, apparently faking temporary deafness, turned away to pour herself more whiskey from the decanter on the table. Angela knew that she was beyond convincing, but Richard was sure and that was all she needed.
It was pouring rain the night that he had come to tell her that her husband was dead. Richard found her at the hotel she was staying in with Tommy. He was the only person who knew where she had been since the night she called him, covered in Louise’s blood, and asked him to take her and Tommy somewhere safe. Safe from the man who had entered her home when she was sleeping. Safe from Jimmy’s world. Richard agreed.
She went back to their beach house only once after to pick up a few things and finalize the sale. When Jimmy revamped his will after his father’s passing, to her surprise, he had also given Angela the full right to all of his assets. An elderly gentleman with sideburns explained the details to her in the kitchen, and she gladly signed it away to a handsome young couple from Trenton.
Angela left without walking into the bedroom; she couldn’t. As Richard helped her into the car and they drove off, she wondered if the new owners would have been so eager to buy the home if the fact that someone had died there had not been kept hush hush. But she hoped they never found out. She wanted the sun and the ocean breezes to suit them better than they had Mr. and Mrs. James Darmody.
Now, Gillian turned back at her and offered to pour Angela a drink, but she politely refused. “I understand the motivation, dear, but you could be more subtle,” Gillian insinuated.
"What are you saying?"
"Running with his money when he’s been missing for only two months seems a bit calculated. Some might wonder if you ever cared at all.” She narrowed her eyes, put her glass to her lips, and took a long sip. “They might wonder if you only married him so he could support you while you painted pictures and entertained guests.”
Gillian’s eyes didn’t leave Angela’s face, but she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of cringing. “I’m leaving you with this place and all of Jimmy’s father’s possessions. I have a right to them, but I don’t want them. I’m taking what I’m taking for Tommy. It’s not—”
"Tommy needs his grandmother," Gillian hissed, her lips pursed, white knuckles clutching her glass.
"Tommy needs me, and I need to get out of here," Angela retorted back coolly. "Goodbye, Gillian." She turned on her heals and walked out. She wasn’t naive enough to have expected tears or a warm, motherly hug, but it was not quite the parting she intended. She had at least wanted to say thank you for all of the nights she had spent baby sitting Tommy.
But things never really seemed to work out for Angela how she planned them in her head.
—
That evening, she held Tommy’s hand and lead him onto the Broadway Limited, the two followed dutifully by Mr. Harrow. She carried only two small suitcases filled with her and Tommy’s clothes, but Angela owned more money than she had ever thought she would have in her life. She looked straight ahead as the train pulled away.
She looked out the window only once they had passed the border of New Jersey. Richard pointed out a sign as they passed it, “Hmm. Pennsylvania.”
"And beyond," Angela smiled, looking out at the blurry green and brown countryside whipping by, stroking Tommy’s hair as he slept at her side.