CHAPTER THREE
T he unease receded when Leona entered the house, followed by curiosity. Mrs. McCarthy greeted her in a subdued manner, cutting her eyes toward the front parlor. Sobbing came from that direction.
“Helen?” Leona hung up the coat and laid her hat on the foyer table.
“Mrs. Caldwell-Jones came in with Mr. Gladney,” Mrs. McCarthy said, picking up the hat. “Not fifteen minutes ago. But she was looking for you, she said.”
The glow of the sherry still lit her blood, and she’d enjoyed her afternoon with Daphne. Hopefully it would carry her through the next hour or so.
Leona slid open the pocket doors. Her harried-appearing husband glanced at her with relief. He eased himself away from the weeping woman on the couch, and Leona took his place beside her.
A pretty woman with dark red hair and fine-boned features, Helen wore a striped green and yellow wool day dress, a handkerchief pressed to her brown eyes.
The Caldwell-Jones’s were New Money, and Gil and Henry were building a land development business.
The four of them dined in and out together or went together to parties.
Leona didn’t know Helen well, but Helen’s secrets showed in her eyes, her nervous gestures, and the pitch of her voice often too loud.
The couple drank and fought too hard, and Leona knew more about their marriage than was polite.
Leona took Helen’s cold hand and patted it. “Has something happened?”
“The police have come to talk to me again,” Helen whispered with a voice hoarse from crying.
“Now they think I will leave town to join him.” Sobs shook her again.
When she recovered somewhat, she said, “I don’t know which is worse.
When I first reported him missing, they said he’d likely abandoned m-me.
That it happens all the t-time. They said I should have been a better wife. ”
Anger smoldered through Leona for what Helen had suffered at the hands of the police. “Oh, Helen.”
“Since I’ve told the police about the missing money, they must have changed their minds about what happened to him,” Gil said gently. He caught Leona’s eye. “They’re watching her house, hoping they’ll catch her leaving or Henry coming back.”
Helen broke into another storm of weeping, and Leona put her arms around the shaking woman. Pity nearly brought her to tears herself. But Helen pushed her away. “It’s what your husband thinks, too, Leona,” she said sharply.
“Helen. I told you. I don’t think this at all.” Gil held his hands out, placating. “Henry’s gone and the money’s gone, and we’re the ones left behind with his mess.”
Helen continued glaring at Gil, who looked at Leona with a mildly confused expression.
“Why don’t you get us some whiskey?” Leona suggested and made a shooing gesture. Hoping he’d understand Helen was determined to be angry at the nearest man in the room.
He nodded and turned toward the kitchen, then to the foyer. Mrs. McCarthy entered to pour drinks for them just as the front door closed behind her husband with a clap.
“Mr. Gladney said to eat without him,” Mrs. McCarthy said to Leona.
“There’s plenty, if you’d like to stay?” Leona asked, though reluctance sat heavy on her shoulders.
Helen hiccupped and blew her nose into her overused handkerchief. “I have missed your cooking, Mrs. McCarthy. This has been the longest few weeks of my life.”
“It has been quite terrible for you,” Leona said.
“I just can’t—can’t quite believe it.” She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment and taking shuddering breaths. “My Henry would never leave me. I know we fight, Leona. But part of me knows he would never—.” Helen swiped at her reddened nose. “But apparently he has.”
“Did he leave you badly off?” Leona hadn’t given much thought to Helen, in this respect, worrying about their own sudden instability. Not a very good friend, after all.
Helen began to cry again, saying, “I don’t know what I’m going to do—" Then she sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I have jewelry to sell. He didn’t take those with him, at least. And a little money I put by of my own. The house is paid for, but I fear Gil will want it to pay back the debt.”
Probably. Leona had seen the calculating pencil adding and subtracting.
“He’s going to sell the Lyceum and perhaps some other holdings.
” Leona had a small allowance from her grandfather, but if she had to, she’d make sure neither of them lost their home.
“I’ll talk to him, never fear. Now, let’s have supper. ”
***
L EONA WAITED UP FOR Gil, in bed with a book when he finally came through the door.
She’d done more thinking than reading. He was not as late as the night before, anyway, and far more sober.
He kissed her with a distracted air. From his pockets he took his watch and some change, then the little notebook he’d been working in this morning, placing them on top of the dresser.
Leona drew her knees up and put her arms around them. “Gil?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t turn but slipped out of his suspenders. After removing his trousers, he hung them neatly in the closet.
“Will we have to sell the house?” She’d meant to ask something else entirely, but after spending a harrowing evening with Helen and her very real fears, they’d seeped into Leona’s thoughts.
Gil removed his shirt and tossed it into a basket for laundering. She admired his bare torso before he pulled a nightshirt on. Only when he was in bed beside her did he speak again.
“No, not the house. I don’t want you to worry—”
“I’m worrying anyway. I’m the worrying kind. Not knowing is worse, Gil.”
He sighed and turned onto his back, gazing up at the ceiling, hands clasped over his chest. “It’s the business I’m worried about.
No one will trust me now, but they’ll see eventually I had nothing to do with Henry’s theft.
He took mostly cash, but forged a loan paper with my name, so this needs to be cleared up.
There is still income from some of the properties to keep us going.
I’m afraid I cannot support your magazine launch now—we’ll put that off until—well.
Her heart sank. She’d feared as much.
“With your allowance from your grandfather—”
“Yes, I want to help.”
“We can keep the house and Mrs. McCarthy—”
“I really can’t cook, so that’s a relief.”
He didn’t smile, disappointing her.
“I’m much better at housework.” He did smile at this. “But how can we help Helen?”
He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at her. “Helen? Why—what—she’s not our responsibility, Leona.”
“She’s afraid she’s going to lose her home. That you’ll take it away from her to get back at Henry.”
He ran his fingers through his dark hair, pushing it out of his eyes.
Leona made a mental note to remind him to make an appointment with his barber.
“The house on Cobble Hill would help us, yes. But not to get back at him. He owns it, it’s his property.
They’d probably have to find him first or prove abandonment.
I’ll look into it, eventually. Leona, I want to sleep, no more questions.
” He turned onto his side, his back to her.
Leona couldn’t help but be envious that, with all his burdens, he fell asleep and began to snore.
While she lay awake, money on her mind, forcing her to look back on her life, her family.
Her first husband, Jack Davenport, had been the youngest child and rejected the family money for the same reason he’d joined the Union Army.
Some of the family fortune had come from plantations where enslaved people were worked to death.
Leona’s mother, when she married her father, had been cut out of any legacy from the Stanbury-Smith side.
So, there was no help there. Leona might be back in good graces with them, as upon her marriage a cousin had begun to send her chatty family letters.
But it only made her think about all those battles she’d lost with them—a dead end.
Could her grandfather help? She rolled over and sighed.
She suspected he didn’t care much for Gil.
If she could complete the memoir, though? Perhaps there would be some money there.
Gil had said it would all be over by Christmas. She hoped he was right.
***
B Y THE TIME SHE ROSE from another sleepless night, Gil had gone, but she recalled with a jolt of pleasure she had guests coming for luncheon.
Wednesdays brought Ruth and sometimes her nephew, Theodore.
Leona washed from the ice-cold water pitcher and basin in a hurry.
As she dressed, she considered omitting the hated bustle.
Why had the Bloomer suit died out before she’d reached the age to decide for herself if she wanted to wear it?
Leona dressed in the plain day dress and bodice of blue wool with a plaid shawl as, ah, yes, Mrs. McCarthy began the unhappy symphony of pots and pans banging about preparing for visitors.
Mrs. McCarthy had confided in her about living in Manhattan City and enduring Draft Week in ‘63. Five days filled with madness and brutality as rioting mobs of white men attacked with violence men, women, and children of color in the city streets. Even as she’d hidden two women when the riot roared past her own house, the male members of her family were burning the Colored Orphans Asylum to the ground.
Ruth in Leona’s house was a reminder of this time for Mrs. McCarthy, shame, and the fear, though Leona had always admired Mrs. McCarthy for her quick action.
But Leona had bad news for Ruth. It followed her down the stairs to the dining room where she ate eggs and ham with gusto, which made Mrs. McCarthy’s mood brighter.
After breakfast, she fell into a light sleep on the divan, lulled by the droning rain.
Mrs. McCarthy woke her as a knock resounded at the front door.
She disappeared again into the kitchen and her preparations.