Chapter 28 Isadore
“I’ve never been so embarrassed!” Professor Farrow shouted, the words hammering through Greta’s nursery.
Greta, thank heavens, had learned to sleep through the noise.
The professor was often frustrated, but Izzy had never heard him erupt like this. Something about Olivia Belle’s visit had sent both him and Simon into a tizzy.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Simon said calmly in the parlor below. “She was confused.”
“Mrs. Vane is never confused.”
“Not her,” Simon replied. “Olivia.”
Izzy curled up on the carpet, her knees drawn to her chest as she leaned over the grille.
When the men argued, the professor usually chided Simon for being gone too long, telling him that he needed to provide better for his family.
The professor had asked him to find steady work in Winfield, but Simon didn’t want to leave his current position.
Promising, always, to her and his father, that more money was coming soon.
After she and Simon argued last month, when she threatened a return to Elms, he surprised her with a new coat and saddle shoes and a proper crib for Greta.
He’d even taken her out to dinner and to the theater to see The Taming of the Shrew.
She was skeptical, like the professor, about Simon’s work, but she’d enjoyed his generosity this spring.
For now, she and Greta had what they needed.
A shadow swept under the vent, probably the professor pacing since Simon often turned into stone when he fought with his father, like he was battening down the hatches to wait out a storm.
“I don’t understand.” Professor Farrow lowered his voice as he moved across the parlor and then turned. “How could you get married?”
Izzy rocked on the floor. How could he have forgotten that she and Simon married more than a year ago? Poor man. It was such a shame to hear him losing the rest of his mind.
“I’m allowed to marry who I want,” Simon insisted.
“Not when you’re married to someone else.”
Someone else?
She must have misheard. Or the professor was even more confused than she imagined. Simon hadn’t married another woman. He would be hanged or something for having two wives.
Izzy leaned forward, waiting for Simon to contradict him. Tell the old man he was senile. Of course, he hadn’t married twice.
Then again, Simon knew it was senseless to argue with a man who forgot the most basic things these days. Two wives. It was funny really. She and Simon would laugh about it later.
The professor’s voice filtered up to the nursery again. “I keep giving you chances, Simon, and you continue to deceive us. I won’t let Izzy and Greta be caught in your web.”
“There is no web.”
Simon lied to her at times, she knew that, but he’d wanted to marry her. And she agreed to become his wife before she was expecting a baby. Some days she felt stuck here but trapped in a web?
Oh, she was so confused. In desperate need of air.
“You have to leave Winfield,” Professor Farrow said, a quake with every word.
Izzy waited for Simon to tell him their arrangement would no longer work. Clearly, the professor needed more care than they could provide. Not a move to the cottage out back. He needed to relocate to a home for the elderly.
Instead, Simon said, “If I leave, I’ll take Izzy and your little Angel with me.”
“No, you won’t.” The professor had regained his strength even as her heart sped out of control.
Why would Simon take them away instead of demanding the professor leave?
“You can’t stop me,” Simon said.
“I won’t have you treating your wife and daughter like horses.”
“You shouldn’t meddle, Dad.” The last word, drawn out, sounded like a sneer.
“You are welcome to leave on your own, Simon, but I’ll cut off your inheritance if you take Izzy and the baby. The three of us will manage just fine without you.”
“I don’t need your money.”
“You’re a fool, Simon. Your mother left her family in Cleveland for a reason, and she’d be devastated if she knew you’d returned to their schemes.”
Simon mumbled something else, but even with her ear hovering over the register, she couldn’t catch it.
“How are you going to provide for your wife and daughter?”
Her husband stepped under the vent. “I’ve looked after Izzy’s child well enough.”
“Izzy’s child?” the professor asked.
“She’s certainly not mine.”
Ice swept through her veins. Was Simon losing his mind too?
“Greta looks just like you!” the professor snapped.
“And Isadore isn’t my wife.”
“Of course she is—”
“We never married.”
Never married? Izzy dropped back on the floor, clutching her stomach. What was happening? They’d had their wedding last year. She had a ring.
“Izzy seems to think you’re married.”
“She knows the truth,” Simon snapped. “She never even asked to sign a license.”
Izzy’s head spun. She’d obtained a license to drive in Elms. Did she need one for marriage too? Simon’s friend, a reverend in Cleveland, had married them. The man would have told her if she needed to sign a paper.
Unless he wasn’t a reverend at all.
Oh, Lord. What if the whole thing had been a sham? What if she wasn’t really married?
That’s why Simon didn’t want her using Mrs. Farrow as her married name. Because it wasn’t true. And now, it seemed, he’d gone and married someone else. A woman probably twice his age.
Olivia Belle.
Had she gotten the license for marriage? The woman likely knew about such things. And she seemed to have plenty of money, even if she didn’t spend it on clothes.
Had Simon married Olivia for the money, after he found out Izzy’s parents didn’t own a paper mill?
Smoke drifted up from the parlor, and she scooted away from the grille, afraid she would gag. And then both men would discover her eavesdropping.
Simon didn’t know it yet, but she had another baby growing inside her. And how could she tell him now? He’d probably say it wasn’t his.
Or maybe she should tell him right away. He would have to divorce Olivia and get Izzy, the mother of his two children, a license.
She couldn’t work at the paper mill, not even nights, if she had another baby. For better or worse, she needed a husband.
Greta whimpered in her crib.
“You’re going to be all right,” Izzy whispered, brushing back her daughter’s curls.
Greta opened her eyes, then reached up and gently wiped away one of Izzy’s tears.