Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
Florence, who usually collapsed into bed as early as she could after long days spent hunched over her sewing, was a yawning mess the next morning.
Vivian, more accustomed to late nights followed by early mornings, had been the first one up.
They couldn’t have breakfast until after they took Communion, but she had coffee ready to help them shake off sleep.
“I’d’ve left you to snooze,” Vivian said, loving but mocking, as they pulled on their hats, rushing to make it to mass at the Catholic church on time. “But I thought you might want to go to confession today.”
Florence’s blush could have lit up an entire city block, but she kept her mouth pressed into a tight line, refusing to take the bait by either arguing or agreeing.
In fact, she was remarkably close-lipped the entire walk there, and there was a distracted look on her face as they sat and stood and sang their way through the service.
Afterward, she did duck into the confession booth to speak to a priest. But she didn’t say what they had talked about, and Vivian couldn’t ask.
Since it was Sunday, it was time for their weekly good deed: when they stopped to pick up groceries for themselves, they also bought them for their upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Thomas, and what Florence often called her unreasonable number of children.
She wasn’t wrong. Two marriages at very different points in her life had left Mrs. Thomas with too many children, and the oldest ones now often left grandchildren with her to care for while they worked.
It had all left Mrs. Thomas a sarcastic, flinty, unpleasant woman.
But she had been the one who had kept them together after their mother died.
They owed her for that, no matter how much they disliked her.
“You take it,” Florence said when they reached the front door of their building. “I’m too tired to stay polite if she gets testy with me today.”
“Sure thing.”
A sharp, unpleasant smell was creeping under the door across from the stairs as they passed by.
“Have you seen Widow Kaminski recently?” Florence asked as they both wrinkled their noses, glancing at the door where the smell seemed to be coming from.
“Not in a few days,” Vivian said, frowning as she tried to remember. “Why?”
Florence sighed. “I think she’s getting too old to take care of herself. Smells like she had some kind of accident in there. We should take her some dinner tonight and check in.”
“Well, you go start cooking, and I’ll handle Mrs. Thomas.”
The Thomases lived one floor below them; Vivian went to knock on their door while Florence headed upstairs.
“Door’s open,” a man’s voice rumbled.
Vivian poked her head around the door, feeling shy.
Mr. Thomas worked six days a week at a factory, so he was rarely home.
Wiry from too much work and not enough rest, with a bushy beard and a bass voice that seemed wrong coming from his thin body, he was a temperance man living in a corner of the city that couldn’t have given less of a damn about Prohibition if it tried.
He wasn’t unkind—in fact, he was gentler than his wife—but he was exactly the sort of man Vivian had no idea how to deal with.
“Morning, Mr. Thomas,” she said, holding up the basket. “Florence and I picked up some groceries. There’s canned peaches as a treat, and condensed milk, and a ham bone. Should I put it to boil?”
“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Thomas snapped, striding into the room with a child on each hip.
She plopped both of them unceremoniously on the floor to squabble over an empty box, then went to fetch a pot from the precarious stack of them in the kitchen.
“Sarah!” she called, and a young girl appeared at her side.
Mrs. Thomas handed her the pot, and Sarah scrambled off to fill it up at the tap in the hall washroom.
The heavy pot banged against her knees as she went.
From next door, where Mrs. Thomas’s grown daughter lived, came the sound of a child’s hacking cough, before it was interrupted by a crashing sound from the bedroom where the older children slept. Mrs. Thomas sighed. “Never a moment’s peace.”
“I won’t bother you anymore,” Vivian said quickly before she could get roped into watching the children. She reclaimed her basket and headed for the door. “Have a good Sunday.”
Out in the hallway, she didn’t immediately head upstairs. Instead, she leaned back against the door, eyes closed, as she let out a shaking breath.
Florence thought of Mrs. Thomas with irritation, anger, and gratitude all mixed together.
But for Vivian, thinking about Mrs. Thomas brought on quiet, sinking fear.
She dreaded the thought of ending up like her: worn down by pregnancy and poverty, with too many mouths to feed and no expectation of her circumstances ever changing.
Florence thought her sister was careless, flirting with anyone she liked the look of, drinking too much, dancing with strangers.
But with the specter of Mrs. Thomas hanging over her life, Vivian was more careful than someone might have imagined from looking at her.
She had worked hard for the little bit of freedom she had in her life. She wasn’t about to risk that.
“Vivian?”
Her eyes flew open, and she shook her head to clear her confusion and her grim thoughts. Dr. Harris was standing in the hallway, his sandy hair and brown suit both looking trim and tidy as ever in spite of the heat.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Peachy,” she said, straightening quickly. “Just taking a quick breather. It’s just sweltering, isn’t it? You here because someone is sick?”
He nodded at the door next to Mrs. Thomas’s place. “Poor baby has croup,” he said, sighing. “And this heat isn’t helping. The air is terrible today.”
“I heard the coughing,” Vivian said. “Sounded rough.” She gave him a critical look, noticing the shadows under his eyes. “You look like you’ve had a hard time of it recently, Doc.”
He gave her a weak smile. “It’s an uphill battle in this neighborhood sometimes. If it’s not sick babies, it’s grown men poisoning themselves with moonshine. And if it’s not either of those, it’s something else.” He shook his head, then tried to change the subject. “How is your sister?”
“She’s fine,” Vivian said, a little wary.
He didn’t seem to notice. “That’s good to hear.
I hope she’s not taking on too much. I went to see Alba this morning and found that she was living with the Henrys.
The children said you and Florence were there helping out.
The kids had lots to say about her and her stories,” he added with a smile. “Seems they like her.”
“Everyone likes Florence.”
“She’s likable,” the young doctor agreed, and Vivian tried not to bristle, still a mess of protective and possessive feelings after watching her sister spend half the night dancing with Danny.
“But I overheard Beatrice and Alba talking when I arrived, and something they said … Vivian, tell me truthfully. Beatrice said she was going to leave well enough alone about her uncle. Is she?”
Vivian hesitated for just a beat too long. “Yes,” she said, but as soon as she met his eyes, she sighed. “No. We’re not leaving it alone.”
“I thought not,” he said. “You know that’s dangerous, right?” There was real worry in his eyes, and Vivian remembered what he had said about his brother.
“I know. But Bea’s real cut up about her uncle, especially with Alba’s baby on the way. And it’s bigger than just Pearlie. We’ve been asking around. Seems someone’s got the people in this part of the city running scared.”
“The letters,” he said, looking embarrassed when she glanced at him. “I couldn’t keep my nose out of it either. After we spoke, I went and talked to those patients again. Someone has quite a tidy little business going on.”
“It’s rotten is what it is,” Vivian said, her voice shaking. Her hands balled into fists. “Stealing from folks who can already barely afford to feed their families—” She broke off, frowning at him. “What’s that noise?”
There were raised voices coming from one of the floors below them. The worry and confusion were plain to hear, but Vivian couldn’t tell what they were saying. Without waiting for the doctor’s response, she left the basket on the floor and hurried to the stairs.
“Everything all right?” she called down.
Will Freeman, young and stylish and what some people called a “determined bachelor” in roundabout fashion, appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you smell gas up there?”
Vivian sniffed, trying not to let her worry bubble up too sharply.
Gas in the building was dangerous for everyone.
“Not up here,” she said, starting to make her way down.
“How bad is it?” She might have to run back upstairs and start banging on doors to get people out of the building if they couldn’t find the source.
“We found it!” someone yelled from the ground floor. “It’s coming from Mrs. Kaminski’s.”
Vivian and Will arrived at the same time, and he pounded on the door. “Mrs. Kaminski? Anna? Are you in there?”
“She’s a little deaf these days,” someone said behind them. Vivian turned, startled to see that it was Dr. Harris. But of course he would have followed her down. “Can we get the door open?”
Will turned away. “I’ll go grab—”
“Wait, it’s unlocked.” Vivian stared in surprise as the doorknob turned in her hand and the door creaked open. “Does she usually leave her door unlocked?”
It was dark inside, with all the curtains pulled shut, and swelteringly hot. The air was thick with the smell of gas. Vivian nearly gagged.
“Mrs. Kaminski?” she called, hesitating.