Chapter Fourteen #2
That wound had never healed. It was the most tender part of her, and she would never show it to anyone.
When she moved to New York she had prayed raw, desperate prayers that her story could somehow be redeemed.
But as the years went by, she didn’t see how it was possible.
So she decided she’d do it herself, somehow.
She’d become an investigator. And giving up Bobby was probably the most selfless decision she ever made.
She had forfeited the chance to be truly known, with the clear-eyed understanding that Bobby was her last good shot and she would likely end up alone.
She hoped that he had found real intimacy with the woman he ended up with.
But some nights, lying awake, she wondered if he ever still thought about her.
Daisy pushed open the bathroom door and closed it behind her. “Ella!” she said in surprise. “There you are.”
“Where else would I be? I live in the lavatories now, remember?” Cora asked lightly. She squeezed the water from the sponge and set to scrubbing the grout.
“You look a bit tired,” Daisy said, examining her carefully.
“Thanks,” Cora said.
“No, I don’t mean it like that. Just—are you still feeling badly?”
Cora looked up at her. Sweet Daisy. She felt the tug again, to ask for help. To tell the truth, for the first time in so long. To let someone in.
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she admitted. She opened—then closed—her mouth before she could say more.
Daisy leaned against the marble wall. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with Mr. Conner now, then?” she wheedled with a knowing smile.
Cora raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with Liam?”
Daisy’s eyes widened in surprise. But Cora had seen the way Liam looked at Daisy, and the way Daisy sidled off shortly after her shift was over. Cora drew toward her. “Mmhmm. I thought so,” she teased. “Turn around. You missed a button.”
“Fine,” Daisy said, turning and holding up her hair. “Yes. Liam and I have been sneaking around a bit.”
Cora nudged Daisy and made a sound. “I knew it!”
“If Macready found out.…”
Cora buttoned the notch on Daisy’s uniform. “Better be worth it. Is he a good kisser, then?”
Daisy bit her lip at her reflection in the mirror. She pulled her uniform to the side and showed a mark on her neck.
“You little vixen!” Cora laughed in surprise and snapped her with the end of a towel.
“Your turn to spill, now,” Daisy said. “You knew Everett Conner before this, didn’t you? You got white as a sheet when he arrived, but I didn’t put it together until I saw you talking.”
The smile fell from Cora’s face.
She swallowed.
“I knew him before, yes,” she said carefully. “Years ago.”
“In New York?”
Cora didn’t answer. “When I was younger. We were both very different people.”
“You didn’t know he was coming?”
Cora shook her head. “I hadn’t seen him in years.” She knelt and began to collect her bucket and scrub brush.
“You weren’t happy to see him.”
“I thought we were friends once.” Cora hesitated, not looking Daisy in the face. “He did something that hurt me.”
“Well then, I’ll kill him,” Daisy said. She nudged Cora. “I could slip something in his tea that would give him the runs.”
Cora laughed again.
“But really, Ella. Should I intervene if I see you together again?”
Cora thought for a moment. Wondering again how much she should believe Jack’s story. She thought of the list of names and dates hidden away in his secret book. A list, perhaps, of the information he was meant to be looking for. And it would explain why he had the mob’s telephone number.
“No,” she said finally. “I can handle him myself.”
“All right, then,” Daisy said. “Just don’t run off with him and leave me to clean the jacks. This whole week’s yours, remember?”
“I remember,” Cora said.
“Oh! I almost forgot. This came for you in the post.” Daisy drew a crisp white rectangle out of her apron pocket.
It was a postcard.
Cora took it from her, examining it warily. The image on the front was an art deco print of a rose. It was dying, its head tilting downward, its petals shedding like black raindrops. It looked ominous, and Cora had a guess as to who it was from before she turned it over.
The back of it was blank, save for the name Miss Ella Duluth and the address of Byrd Castle.
The postmark was from New York City.
The meaning was clear, without Mabel having to write a word.
“Who is that from?” Daisy asked.
“Just a friend,” Cora said.
“Come on,” Daisy said. “If you’re feeling tired, you can sneak a tea.”
“Be there in a minute,” Cora said. “I have one more thing to finish up here.”
She waited until Daisy had closed the door before she took out a small pocketknife. She flipped open the blade and approached the door to the Astral Room balcony.
She crouched, examining the openings in the teakwood wall. She gauged the angle to the bed.
She would either have to hide out on the balcony until nightfall without being found, or scale the balcony from the outside—something she was actually considering.
One night, one risk, to set her up for the rest of her life.
Perhaps that was how Jack once felt. Cora took her pocketknife to the screen and cut out a flap just large enough to fit her camera, then replaced it so carefully that it was unnoticeable.
She reached for the worry stone in her pocket, then the chain around her neck bearing her mother’s small, silver cross.
Cora had sown her seeds of doubt about God the year that Jack escaped, then gave up on Him entirely when her mother died a year later.
“God always plays the long game,” her mother had whispered when it had been Cora’s turn to brush the thinning hair from her mother’s face.
“Remember.” She had clasped a frail hand around Cora’s with a firmer grip than Cora had expected. “Even when it is longer than we want.”
Cora returned her knife to her pocket. She thought the game had ended thirteen years ago.
But perhaps it had only lain dormant, and Jack’s arrival meant it wasn’t really over, after all.
Cora met Daisy in the kitchen, where they filled trays with silver bowls of ice and glasses of lime rickies, iced teas, and lemonades. The cook was scraping pieces of yesterday’s tenderloin into the trash.
“What are you doing?” Daisy cried.
Dorothy threw her a look. “The starlets won’t eat them,” she said.
Daisy’s face contorted, red flushing in patches along her neck.
“My niece would actually grow properly if she could eat what this house treats as garbage,” Daisy bit out, her jaw grinding. “Esther is only two, and my sister is making her soup out of Russian thistle.”
Tumbleweeds. Cora flinched. She touched Daisy lightly on the hand.
Daisy took a deep breath and smoothed her face back into a pleasant mask before she picked up her tray and stepped out into the sunshine.
Across the esplanade, the guests were gathering on the clay tennis courts.
Clementine was with Rita, the two of them dressed in jewel-toned, wide-legged trousers.
They swiped playfully at each other with their racquets.
They wore straw hats and silk scarves tied pertly around their necks, and small dogs frolicked around the edges of the court, yipping.
Cora flushed at the sight of Jack there, racquet in hand, loitering alongside Byrd and Beau Remington.
They were all dressed smartly in tennis flannels and tailored suitcoats.
She moved toward him in the shadows of the palm fronds.
Her heart had quickened when she had leaned toward him last night, in the golden darkness of the Assembly Room.
She had smelled his scent and was appalled that her body had responded just like it had when she was fifteen, wanting to be closer to him.
Governor Gilham leaned in to say something, and Jack threw back his head and laughed. He looked well rested and at ease, twirling his racquet in his hand, throwing an easy grin at the starlets. Cora felt a sudden urge to stab him with her pocketknife.
When she approached, she could practically feel the dull purple hollows beneath her eyes. Jack gave Daisy a wide smile, and didn’t spare Cora a glance.
Something curled deep in Cora’s belly. Watching Jack, one would never dream that anything was wrong, which made her trust him even less than she already did.
Cora took a little dried biscuit out of her pocket and slipped it to one of the dogs, a small schnauzer terrier.
She straightened just as Rita Blanchard picked up the bowl of nuts and put a cashew to her cupid lips.
She sucked it and held another out to Jack, blinking at him with her long fringe of lashes. “Would you like one?”
He kept his eyes focused on Rita when he took it. “I’d actually prefer something a little sweeter,” he said, and cracked it between his teeth with a grin. Beside him, Lola’s hair was dark and glossy, smooth as melted candy.
Cora took a fresh glass from the tray and pushed it forcefully into the sugar crystals to coat the rim.
“Mr. Conner?” she asked. She met his eyes.
Her hand brushed his, faintly, when she handed him the lemonade. The warmth of his skin hadn’t faded before he abruptly tipped the glass and spilled half of it down the front of Cora’s apron.
She gasped, the cold liquid like a bolt of ice shooting through her.
“Horsefeathers! Oh, I’m so sorry,” he cried, and dropped his racquet in a rush. “I’m terribly sorry, how clumsy of me—” he said, and whipped out his handkerchief.
He offered it to Cora, and it took everything in her not to rip it from his hands. She gave him a perfectly controlled smile and said “Not to worry, Mr. Conner. Accidents happen.”
“Here, I insist,” he said. He apologized to the other guests and took Cora by the elbow, leading her to the back of the bath house, just beyond sight.
Cora wrenched her elbow out of his grip. There was a trail of sugar crystals drying on her arm.