Chapter Eighteen #2
Jack’s presence sliced through the fear that held Cora like puppet strings, and Gasper finally let go.
She turned and ran, shuddering and sobbing until the blood in her lungs burned.
Her hand had trembled on the front doorknob, and she crept past her mother’s bedroom door because she couldn’t face any questions and couldn’t explain what had happened without being barred from going back.
Instead, she had climbed under her covers, beneath the hanging pictures of horses and Life magazine covers, and cried silently, cried until the fear was finally emptied all out of her.
When Cora’s father returned home that night, Cora had given him a rare hug, resting her ear to his chest, breathing in his faded scent of pine smoke and the wool of his uniform.
“What’s all this, Cora-thorn?” he had asked. He had drawn back to examine her at arm’s length.
“Nothing,” she had insisted. She knew that her eyes were swollen and red. He had given her a long look. But he didn’t press.
“Smitty and I broke up a fight today,” he had told her mother later that night. Cora had crept to press her ear against the wall, her heart rising to beat in her throat. “Something got the inmates rowdy. We sent two to cool off in solitary.”
She hadn’t seen Jack again until almost a week later.
Cora had approached him, saying his name tentatively; when he had turned, his cheeks were dappled with sallow bruises, just beginning to fade into yellow and green. There had been a deep cut at the edge of his upper lip.
She had examined his face through the fence.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” he asked roughly, dismissing it. He had bent to pull fresh weeds from the soil.
Some nights when Cora was tired of hating what she and Jack had done, she took out that precious memory, hidden in the deepest crevices of herself, and let it glow. Never too much or too often, so it wouldn’t fade away. She thought of it as she waited in the darkness.
Realizing that a part of her was afraid to take it out now and find it still glowing.
She pulled on her cigarette, trying to stay awake. The film from her camera needed five more minutes to develop. She’d rolled it inside celluloid, dropped it into its galvanized can, then hidden it in her daylight loader. She checked her watch.
And she turned her head instinctively toward the sound of a low giggle.
Cora extinguished her cigarette and crept to peer over the ledge of the open balcony. In the moonlight, she could see Liam’s silhouette beneath a tree. Another smothered laugh drifted on the night air. A woman’s fingers snaked through Liam’s hair, and then their voices turned hushed and urgent.
Cora turned away, trying to give them privacy. She had just made her way back to her room and unlocked the door when Daisy and Liam appeared in the hallway.
Daisy instantly dropped Liam’s hand. “Ella!” she exclaimed. “Just where have you been all night?”
“I could ask you the same question,” Cora said, cocking an eyebrow.
Liam tipped his hat at her. “Morning, Miss Ella,” he said in his thick Irish brogue. He bit his lip and flushed as he waved goodbye to Daisy.
Cora whistled under her breath, grinning.
“Criminy. You almost gave me a heart attack. I thought you were Macready,” Daisy said, pushing Cora into their room. She crossed herself and shut the door firmly.
Cora ate from her tin of emergency biscuits on the bathroom tile and examined the photographs she’d taken.
Once, justice and mercy had been two separate ideas to her.
Cora had relished their distinct edges as a girl.
Her mother had exuded mercy, her father justice, and Cora had believed that people who did bad things simply got what they deserved.
Until she met Jack. He had been like a magnet, skewing everything that up until that point had directed her toward true north.
She shifted uncomfortably on the cold tile, unwilling to admit to herself that it might be happening again.
She saw him pretending to stumble into the path of Truman’s guards earlier that night; raising his fists to call the Gasper’s attention away from her when she was a girl.
Distorting the neat lines around justice and mercy again. Just like he had on Pelican.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts and carefully examined the prints she’d made. She’d developed them large enough to better make out the words on them. A name, a telephone number. A plan was beginning to develop alongside the photographs.
Turning it couldn’t be a coincidence that five items were included each time.
Main Street. Albany Drive. Broadview Lane. East Court. Lover’s Lane.
Magnolia, astor, begonia, evergreen, lily.
Midway above, behind the edge, left.
She flipped back and forth between them. It took her a half a moment to realize that they were all a code, spelling out the same word.
Mabel.