A Fine Imitation

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Amber Leah Brock Player

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 9781101905111

eBook ISBN 9781101905128

Cover design by Elena Giavaldi

Cover photography: (woman) Condé Nast Archives/Corbis; (skyline) E.O. Hoppé/Corbis

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For my mother.

For my husband.

For the girls.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

—Charles Mackay

If she had to guess, Vera Longacre would say that most of the girls at Vassar College knew her name and could pick her out of a crowd, even if she could not do the same for them. Her peculiar brand of celebrity came without any effort on her part, much like the money, the houses, and appearances on the society page. Very few of her fellow students could claim to know her personally, and a still smaller group would be able to identify her favorite foods or pastimes or which room in the dormitory was hers. But almost everyone knew Vera's face well enough to whisper and nod discreetly in her direction as she glided past them on the quad. She sometimes felt like a walking magazine cover, with her name above her head in place of a title.

Not that she didn't have a social group. In her first two years, she had selected a couple of girls of adequate means and manners, with whom she ate dinner and studied from time to time. The classroom, however, was a sacred space for her. When the instructor lectured, she preferred to be out of danger of distraction. She found the third row of the classroom the perfect compromise. Freshman year she had made the mistake of choosing a seat too close to the professor's podium, and sophomore year had taught her the back of the room made it difficult to hear over the whispers of less inspired classmates. Now, as a senior, she had found the perfect balance. Close enough to hear well, not so close that the professor would expect her to answer every question.

Vera liked to arrive a few minutes early. On that morning, she walked into the classroom in the Main Building to find only three other girls giggling in the back row. The auditorium-style seating sloped down to a lectern and desk at the front of the room, and three large windows at the back provided far more light than the new electric bulbs overhead. Once she had chosen her third-row seat, she opened her textbook to the assigned reading. She skimmed back over the paragraphs, then found her attention drifting to the plates, which showed richly colored prints of a set of neoclassical paintings. Who could read endless pages of dry description when the paintings were right there to be devoured?

A satchel thunked down beside Vera, but she did not bother to look up. Her two closest friends did not share any of her classes, and she didn't care for small talk. She flipped the page to a new painting as the girl in the neighboring seat let out a huff.

“If you ask me, the problem with the neoclassicists is all the lounging,” the girl said.

Vera looked up to find a pretty girl with hair as black as her own, though her eyes were blue instead of Vera's brown. A playful smile lit up the girl's round face.

“I mean, look,” the girl continued, gesturing at the plate on the page. “Every single figure here is draped against a marble wall or slumped against a column. Surely one of those painters must have known the ancient Romans or Greeks could stand and sit like normal people, don't you think? Just look at how this woman is flopping around.”

“I…suppose.” Vera could not think of a better answer to such an absurd observation. “It is part of the style, though.”

The girl tapped the paper. “Oh, it's always part of the style. Anytime they're doing something silly-looking it's part of the style.”

“How would you have done it, then?”

The girl pulled the book from Vera's desk and inspected it. She waved her hand again, dismissing the painting in front of her. “I don't know. Wouldn't it be much nicer if it looked like real life? If it had real detail?”

“Like a photograph?”

A grin spread on the girl's pink-cheeked face. “Exactly. See? You understand. With their eyes all rolled to the gods like that, it looks like they're having fits. The worst thing is how lazy it is on the artist's part. Making a person look real is far more of a challenge.”

Vera stared at the girl. At least she wasn't talking about the weather. “I'm sorry, have we met before?”

“I don't think so, why?”

Before she could prepare a more polite answer, Vera said, “Because most people introduce themselves before barging up to complain about women in neoclassical paintings having fits.”

The girl's eyes widened. Vera thought for a moment she would get up and leave, but instead she laughed. “Then I'd better introduce myself. I'm Bea Stillman. Please, never, ever call me Beatrice.”

Vera's brows shot up. “Stillman? I'm surprised we haven't met before now. I didn't know there were any Stillmans here.”

Bea shook her head. “Not those Stillmans. Related, though. He's my father's cousin. We left for Georgia before he left Texas.” She sat up straighter. “We're the Atlanta Stillmans.”

The mention of Georgia explained Bea's breathy cadence and drawn-out vowels. “I must say I'm surprised,” Vera said. “Why come so far north?”

The girl toyed with her bracelet. “I was at Agnes Scott, in Decatur, but my parents decided the New York set would be a good influence for me. Fewer pearls, more diamonds. Though I don't know how good your manners are after all.” At Vera's frown, Bea leaned forward. “You haven't introduced yourself yet.”

“Oh.” Her stern look relaxed. “Right. I'm Vera Longacre.”

“Of course I knew there was a Longacre among us,” Bea said with a wry tone.

Vera turned to fuss in her bag. “Yes, that's me.”

Bea paused at Vera's tightened expression. “Oh, now, don't be that way. That's not the first time you've gotten that reaction, is it, Rockefeller?” Her softened pronunciation of the final
r
made it sound closer to “fella.”

Vera's features loosened into a smile. She adopted the tone her mother and her friends used to speak to the wait staff at the club. “We are not the Rockefellers, goodness.”

Bea played along, lifting her nose into the air. “Don't like the comparison?”

“Certainly not, darling.” Vera leaned in, lowering her voice to a hush. “New money.”

The girls laughed. The room had filled as they were talking, and now most of the rows were occupied. The instructor walked in, set her briefcase on the desk, and turned on the slide projector. The slight, gray-haired woman's voice bounced around the oak-paneled room for about five minutes before Bea started scribbling on a scrap of paper. She passed the note to Vera.

Are you a senior?

Vera wrote
yes
and passed it back. After further scratching on Bea's part, the scrap returned.

I'm a junior. I live in Josselyn. You?

Ignoring the note for a moment, Vera put on a firm listening-to-the-teacher face. When she felt her point was made, she wrote
Strong Building
.

Bea didn't write back for a good while. At last, the paper returned to Vera, with a new line.

You ought to get moved to Josselyn. We have showers.

Vera wrote back,
Josselyn wasn't built when I started here.

Bad luck. Do you have a beau?

This question took Vera by surprise, and she missed most of the discussion about the sculptor Canova as she chose an answer. Finally, she put
yes
on the paper and slid it back down the long desk.

Bea glanced at the paper and pursed her lips dramatically.

That took a while to write.

I didn't want to miss any more of the lecture.

But you sure didn't look like you were listening. Who is he? Is it forbidden? I simply love forbidden romance.

It's not forbidden.

You can tell me. I'm good at keeping secrets.

Not now.

Vera thought for a moment after this and added:
It's not a secret
.

When the professor dismissed the class, Bea stood and exhaled hard. “I must say, you have me in suspense, Vera Longacre. Why don't you come with me and tell me all about your scandalous love affair?”

Vera laughed. “It's not a scandal. It's the exact opposite of a scandal, as a matter of fact.”

Bea scooped up her books, papers, and pen in one messy jumble with one hand and hooked her elbow through Vera's. “Well, come with me and tell me your deadly dull story anyway.” She shot a look out of the corner of her eye. “I may as well say it. I wasn't planning to like you.”

“Oh, no?”

“That's why I started talking to you.” Bea led Vera down the stairs to the exit.

“You started talking to me because you thought you wouldn't like me?” Vera asked.

“That's right. I like to pick a serious-looking girl and say a few shocking things, to see how fast she moves to another desk.”

Vera nudged Bea with her shoulder. “That's horrible.”

“It is, but I'm starved for entertainment.” She rolled her eyes and drawled out the word
starved
. “Anyway, you didn't move desks. You sat right there and said something clever.” Bea released Vera's arm as they entered the hallway. “I'm afraid this means we have no choice. We simply must be friends.”

Vera studied the odd, lively girl beaming in front of her. Papers dripped from the clumsy stack in her arms. Bea's careless stance sent a shot of affection through her. Perhaps it was that carelessness that drew her to Bea. There was none of the social posturing Vera was so accustomed to. The girls she typically socialized with were so afraid of saying the wrong thing, they hardly spoke at all. Bea wasn't a breath of fresh air, she was a balmy gust.

“If we must be friends, then I guess we ought to go to lunch together,” Vera said. “Would you like to?”

Bea nodded, and the two headed off, trailing paper all the way.