TCB Part 41: Sunday Afternoon (cont.)

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In the previous installment:

Montgomery Lester reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a battered leather-bound book. The cover, which had once been red was now battered and faded to a pale brown. There was a deep gash across the front cover, and corners were dented and bent. ARCHIVES was written in block letters on the front. He ran a hand over the cover, and he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes once again. This book contained the one thing that he would have given his entire fortune to find. That a man had died for this book was bittersweet for him. 

He couldn’t bear to open it. The thought of what he might learn was almost too much to bear. He placed his hand on the cover and thought back to thirty years earlier.

***

Young Montgomery was 24 years old. He was in his final year at the university. He sat in the library, trying to study for his last exam. But he couldn’t focus on the books in front of him, because the woman across the library was a much more interesting thing on which to focus. Her blonde curls seemed to dance about her shoulders as she scanned the pages of a text. She was sitting at a table strewn with books, much like Montgomery’s. Each time he tried to concentrate on his studies, he found his eyes wandering up to see if she was still there.

Their eyes met for a moment. She smiled at him. She didn’t look away in embarrassment. She didn’t pretend it was an accident. She only smiled. Montgomery couldn’t tear his gaze away. He was captivated by her. He hoped his jaw hadn’t dropped to the table. Then she did something completely unexpected.

She stood up. She walked toward Montgomery’s table, still smiling, eyes locked on his. His heart beat faster, he felt his legs turn to gelatin. She walked with purpose and grace toward him. When she was a few steps away, she put out her hand toward Montgomery.

“I’m Alice Clarke.” Montgomery could have sworn it was the voice of an angel.

“M-m-montgomery,” was all he could get out. He sounded like such a fool.

“Lester. Yes, I know who you are. What’s more…I don’t care who you are.”

“Excuse me?” Montgomery asked, stunned out of his stupor by her forwardness.

“I mean that I don’t care that you’re Montgomery Lester, the son of the most powerful man in the country. I think you’re cute, and I’d like to have a cup of coffee with you.” She smiled again, eyes locked on his.

They talked for hours over coffee, then dinner, dessert, and drinks. They talked so long that Montgomery had lost track of the time. It was 2 am before they knew it, and the restaurant was kicking them out. When they talked, it was like nothing else mattered. He looked into Alice’s eyes and saw more than he’d ever seen in a woman. He walked her home that night and kissed her at her doorstep. At the moment when his lips met hers, it was like a thrill of electricity that shot from his head to his feet. He knew then and there that there was nothing that could keep him from spending the rest of his life with this incredible woman.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that he learned of her true passion: Technology. It was the one thing that could prevent them from being together. It was the one thing that his father would absolutely forbid. He wept for days that he would lose his true love because of the war that would define their generation. He began to hate the Traditionalist movement because it would ultimately keep him from being with Alice.

Even worse was that Alice knew all along. For Montgomery, her allegiance was a surprise, but she knew who he was from the start. She knew that his father was the patron of everything that she fought against. She knew that Montgomery would have to make the choice between her and his family. It was a choice no man should have to make. It was the hardest choice of his life. No matter what he chose, he could not possibly be right.

He chose Alice. He told her that he knew that his father would hate him. He would be disowned. He would never show his face in public again. The war’s ultimate result was clear. The Technologists had been defeated, and it was only the cleanup remaining for the Traditionalists to complete their revolution.

But he wanted it all. He didn’t want to give up the company, his family, his wealth. He chose a life where he could never be open about who he loved.

They were married in secret, so that Montgomery’s father would never know. He would visit her under cover of darkness, sneaking in and out of the home so that his father and staff wouldn’t see him. He would go to her in the cottage he had bought for her. He loved being with her. He loved everything about her. Everything except her secret, the thing that kept her in hiding, the thing that kept her from taking his name.

He hated that secret. He hated that he couldn’t tell his father about his lover. He hated that he couldn’t take her to social gatherings, that he had to tolerate the women that were paraded in front of him hoping to be his wife. They were all inferior to Alice. None of them could be his wife, that job was already filled.

Then one day, he came home from Alice’s cottage and found his father in his bedroom. He was sitting at Montgomery’s desk, a box of letters strewn across the desk. He recognized them at once.

“Who is Alice?” his father asked.

“A woman.” Montgomery replied, afraid of what his father might do.

“Do you love her?” he asked

“I do.” Montgomery responded.

“You’re going to have to learn to forget her, son. I can’t believe how foolish my son is. I raised you better than to be with some filthy Digit woman. This can never see the light of day.”

Montgomery couldn’t bear to tell him that she was his wife. He feared for what his father would do if he had. He was too weak to tell him, too cowardly to try to protect his love. When his father had gone, he sat at his desk, strewn with love letters, and sobbed for hours.

The next day, he went to the cottage to warn Alice. She was gone. The cottage was gone, burned to the ground. Alice was gone. He cried out for his love, the woman he called wife. He couldn’t protect her from his father’s goons. He didn’t even try. He blamed himself for this. He hoped she was dead, that would be better than what would happen if she was captured alive.

He did as his father said and tried to forget her. He tried to love other women, but each time, he couldn’t bear to look in their eyes. They lacked Alice’s spirit. No woman would ever be Alice to him. Eventually, he gave up, focused his life on his work as a way to forget. He was good at his work. When his father died and passed the company to him, he ran it better than his father could ever have dreamed. Under his leadership, the company underwent a revolution that would see him exceed his father’s power and wealth tenfold and more.

Yet, there was a hole in his life left by Alice. He started to search for her. He needed to know what happened to her. Had she been taken alive? Had she been imprisoned? Executed? For a long time, he didn’t want to know. But now he had to know. He couldn’t be ignorant any longer. He had to find what happened to his love.

The difficulty, he found was that he couldn’t search the records. He had access to anything he wanted, but not without question. If he went to the archives to look for what happened to a single anonymous Digit woman, it wouldn’t take long before they would discover why. That would be the end of his reputation. He would forever be known as a sympathizer, he would be lucky if they didn’t lock him up himself.

He spent time scanning every index that he could without drawing suspicion. Over time, a picture began to shape itself. He would find a mention of her name here or there. He found an accounting of her role in the Technologist resistance, a role that he was sad to discover was bigger than he had ever known. Then he found the key.

Records were kept of every Technologist captured and their eventual disposition. He identified the exact book that contained that record for Alice. Then he waited. Until one day, he learned that the record books were to be moved to his city, for enshrining in an archive of the revolution. He made his move.

As always, he had to avoid being discovered looking for Alice. Even though he had full access to the train carrying the book, he had to shift the focus on someone else. He had to make sure that nobody was looking at him when the book went missing. No expense was too great for him to get his hands on that book.

Part 42 >