author's note. I moved to Indianapolis in the late Nineties for college, and one of the things I did was try to read a bunch of books by local authors. Booth Tarkington was one of them, and he's almost totally unknown today despite winning the Pulitzer Prize twice - something hardly anyone has done! 'The Magnificent Ambersons' is loosely set in Indianapolis (specifically the Woodruff Place neighborhood, which is GORGEOUS) and deals with the rise of the automotive industry - which is STILL a really big deal around here. The first time I read this book I thought it was good but the ending was sad; when I re-read it a few years ago I decided the ending is actually perfect. It's bittersweet, but I do really love a bittersweet ending. George loses almost everything he's ever had, but he gains himself, and in the end I think that's a good trade-off. It kind of annoys me that a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is totally overshadowed by the Orson Welles adaptation, when it's a really good book in its own right. There was another adaptation in the early 2000's that did a great job with the dialogue (because most of it was lifted straight from the book) but the scenery was all wrong - they had HILLS. Guys, I love Indiana but this state is as flat as a pancake!

"The city had rolled over his heart, burying it under, as it rolled over the Major's and buried it under. The city had rolled over the Ambersons and buried them under to the last vestige... Georgie Minafer had got his come-upance, but the people who had so longed for it were not there to see it, and they never knew it. Those who were still living had forgotten all about it and all about him."

- The Magnificent Ambersons, Chapter 33

He was asleep when Lucy came in. It was strange to see him so still; in her memories he was always in motion.

Fanny had told Lucy everything, over cups of weak coffee that morning, beginning with the full extent of her nephew's injuries. It wasn't just the broken legs: the whole right side of his body had taken the brunt of the impact, leaving him with cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder, traumatized internal organs, and a bruise on his hip the size of a dinner plate. Then, once the floodgates were open, Fanny told her young visitor everything about the last two years. How George had given up his chance at the law in order to keep her in genteel comfort; how he'd been replacing her dishes, one or two at a time, with the pattern the salesgirl at Ayres had sworn was the most fashionable. She told how he'd been a surprising comfort to her in his strange taciturn way – how the thought of life without him left Fanny rudderless and adrift. Lucy had heard bits and pieces of rumor, but only Fanny Minafer could tell the whole story, for she was the only one that knew it. Lucy had been disinclined to believe the snatches of gossip she'd caught on the wind, but Fanny she knew to be incapable of guile; in light of hard evidence there was only one conclusion to be drawn: that Georgie Minafer was a new man.

That the new man was out of physical danger was much less certain, or so Lucy was told by the garrulous orderly who showed her to his door. He could take pneumonia, or one of his legs could go gangrene; he could tear through his stitches and exsanguinate – Lucy smiled brightly, and closed the door in his face. She looked long and hard at George, then. She hadn't laid eyes on him in six long years, excluding a veiled glimpse at his mother's funeral, and the Major's. Though she had long since burned his photographs, his visage was seared into her memory – but her image of him was no longer accurate. The youthful softness of his face had given way to hard planes; there were lines around his eyes and mouth and a furrow sunk between his dark brows that hadn't been there before. Still, Lucy thought, the arrangement was not altogether unpleasant; in fact, she found she rather preferred it.

The bed took up most of the room, with only a chair and a little table besides. There was a window which looked out on a series of belching smokestacks; the room was devoid of a single ornament, and Lucy vowed before she came again she'd plunder the choicest spoils from her garden. Both of the patient's legs were encased in thick plaster and suspended from the ceiling on chains. His right arm and shoulder were bound and immobilized, and the neck of his dressing-gown was open, with the suggestion of bandages beyond. The dressing-gown was a plain one of gray flannel, and at that, Lucy almost laughed. The Georgie she had once known would have scorned so utilitarian a garment.

She had no intention of waking him, and had prepared herself for such an eventuality; she had Gene Stratton-Porter's latest book, At the Foot of the Rainbow, and infinite patience. After two and a half chapters George began to stir; five pages more and he was frankly staring at her, apparently warring with himself as to whether the young lady in question was an apparition or the real thing. She was dressed not in white today, but a smart suit of dove gray, with a blue Juliet cap pulled low over her shining curls. She did not speak, but met his questing gaze without a trace of coyness or shame.

"Miss Morgan," he said at length. His voice was sandpaper rough, and the line between his brows had deepened. "How – how long have you been here?"

"About thirty pages," she said with a smile, turning down the corner of the page to mark her place. "Hardly any time at all. What can I do for you, George? I mean to be useful."

He allowed her to crank up the head of his bed, and pour him a glass of water from the little pitcher at his elbow, but he suffered her to go no further. That he could scarcely manage the glass was evident; Lucy took the opportunity to look out the window, loudly exclaiming on the view, while he endeavored to slake his thirst using only his unaccustomed left hand, which was shaking rather badly besides. When she turned back, the glass was empty, and if the gray flannel was damp, she kept her own counsel.

"Why –" he began. His hand made a fist in the bedclothes, and he glared at the ceiling. "Why are you here?"

"I've been to see your aunt," Lucy said gently. "She thought – rather, I thought, and she agreed – perhaps it would do you good."

"It certainly can't do me any harm ," George agreed, still with a thunderous gaze directed toward the ceiling. Lucy wondered what the cracked plaster had done to raise his ire. "Only if you see Aunt Fanny again, I wish you'd tell her –"

"Yes?"

"That this business of a private room is nonsense. I've been telling anyone who will listen, that I belong in the public ward, not here, only Fanny must've gotten to them first!"

"And what is wrong with this room?" Lucy enquired. "It's a little bare, but –"

"Well, the cost, for one," George said without a trace of self-consciousness. "It's too expensive for – for the sort of person I am now. And it's too quiet."

"Too quiet?"

"You see," he said, "after all that time in the explosives factory, I've gotten used to the din."

"Would you allow me to visit," Lucy said, smiling slyly, "if I promise to raise a racket?"

"But you won't be coming back, after today. Haven't you satisfied your curiosity?"

"George Amberson Minafer! Do you believe I came here only to gawk?"

"Of course," he went on relentlessly, "to be sure and see it for yourself – and your father, too, I suppose – that wicked old Georgie Minafer got what he had coming at last."

She opened her mouth, and closed it, and opened it again. "Do you think so little of me," she said in a low dangerous voice, "that I would come here to gloat over your misfortune?"

"Yes," he answered desperately, "only it reflects on my character, not yours!" A sudden movement must have jostled one of his many broken bones; he closed his eyes and contorted his pale face against the onslaught of pain. When it was over, he went on mercilessly. "I deserve every inch of this. You needn't pretend otherwise."

"I thought you knew me better than that," Lucy retorted. "I don't gain an ounce of pleasure from anyone's misfortune. Least of all yours."

He met her gaze for a moment – his countenance tormented, hers full of righteous indignation – and then his face crumpled. "I didn't mean that," he said roughly. "I didn't mean to call you – to suggest that you – Won't you forgive me, Lucy?"

It was the first time he had spoken her name in six years. She hadn't realized how long she'd been waiting. "There is nothing to forgive, George, dear." Lucy reached across and took his free hand in both of her own. "Don't give it another thought."

While they were thus engaged, the door clicked open and a white-capped nurse sailed into the room. Lucy withdrew her hand, but not before giving George's an encouraging squeeze. The nurse didn't have any time for such nonsense, performing her duties with crisp efficacy while Lucy was conspicuously absorbed in her book.

"Your pulse is up," the nurse pronounced. "Your temperature. too." She scoured Lucy with an accusing glare; Lucy smiled like a Madonna in return. "You haven't been exciting him, have you, Miss?"

"Good heavens, no," Lucy protested, the very picture of innocence. "I'm merely an old friend - a very old friend."

The nurse snorted, unconvinced, but at least she left them, for the moment, blessedly alone. "You needn't lie on my behalf," George told Lucy. "I don't mean to take advantage - you needn't pity me, or think you're beholden to me, on account of a few stolen kisses when we were children!"

"We were children," Lucy agreed, "but we aren't any longer - I'm twenty-nine, you know, and you're twenty-eight. It's been a decade since we first danced together, and sometimes it feels like longer, and sometimes it feels like no time at all. At any rate, I'm old enough to know my own mind, and if I've decided that you and I are to be friends, you'd be wise not to argue!"

George chuckled in spite of himself, low and deep in his throat, and the unexpectedness of it was strangely pleasing to Lucy's ears. But in the next moment he winced again. "I could still die, you know," he said morosely. "They've been very clear about that. So you'd be wise not to get too attached."

"You won't," Lucy said, not appearing the least bit concerned.

"I won't?" One side of George's mouth quirked upwards.

"I expressly forbid it," she said haughtily, "and I think you'll find I'm used to having my own way. So you might as well give in sooner rather than later."

He looked at her strangely, searching for any trace of irony in her face or her tone, and finding none. He still hadn't made up his own mind whether he wanted to live or die, but the memory of the grim pronouncements of the doctors who had examined him seemed to fade a bit in the glow of Lucy's optimism. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"I plan to visit as often as you'll allow me," Lucy said briskly. "As for the rest of the waking hours – I'll bring you books, or magazines, or whatever you'd like to read."

"No good," George answered morosely. "My head aches too much for reading, and anyway, my glasses were lost in the smash-up."

"I didn't know you wore glasses." Lucy tilted her head at him.

"Well, I don't any more ."

"Then I'll read to you."

"I might not stay awake."

"Then I'll read to myself ," Lucy said, holding aloft her book. The movement caused her watch-face to catch in the sun, and she turned her wrist over and looked at it. "Heavens!" Lucy said with some alarm. "Is that the time - already ?"

"Don't ask me," George told her, "I'm not even sure what day it is."

"It's Tuesday," Lucy replied, "and it's four-thirty in the afternoon - Father's train came in at four; I'll suppose he'll be here any minute!"

"Your father -" George had gone three or four shades paler, and he was gasping like a hooked fish. "He's coming - you asked him to come here ?"

"Of course not," she said, "he's been in New York on business, so I haven't spoken to him in three or four days, but he will have figured it out, of course. I think he will have come straight here from the station, and not even stopped at the house, if I know him half so well as I think I do."

"Why -" George started. He seemed almost if he was going to get up out of the bed, two broken legs be damned. "Why would he come -"

"He knows about the accident, of course," she went on. "I sent him a clipping, and anyway, he often reads the papers on the train."

George laughed bitterly, and the tail end of it sounded almost like a sob. "Then it doesn't matter that the car that ran me over didn't kill me - your father's going to finish the job!"

"Don't be absurd," she snapped, "he's only a man, after all!"

"No he's not," George said desperately, "he's Eugene Morgan!"

"Well, he's my father, and I don't allow him to be unkind to anyone I've decided is my friend. And yes, that means you, George Minafer."

He relaxed a little, and allowed her to take his hand again. There were approaching footsteps in the hall. With Lucy on his side, things might just barely be tolerable.