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PART III
GLADYS

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88A

MARINA WATCHED TREY from barely open lids. He was almost lying in his comfy corner chair holding their sleeping baby, looking down at her, his face open, unguarded.

He was not happy.

She didn’t expect him to be.

In fact, she expected he would pack her and the baby up and send them back to St. Louis to his grandparents, who had hinted that they would be happy to let them stay forever if Trey changed his mind. It was nice, knowing she and her baby had a place to go where they were wanted, where she could learn how to be an adult with a baby and nobody to account to except a landlord and utility companies and and and …

Trey bowed his head over the sleeping baby and hugged her closer to him. She whimpered a little but settled. He rubbed his face on Susanna’s blanket and his fingers curled into the fabric.

Then … a ray of hope …

He pressed his mouth to her forehead and closed his eyes. “Daddy’s here, Button,” he whispered. “I’m not gonna let anything hurt you. Ever. And so help me God, if you or your sisters ever come home with a cat like me, I’ll kill him. I promise I’ll try to raise better men than I am.”

Sisters? Brothers?

Marina closed her eyes and released a long, relieved sigh.

Trey might not be happy at the moment and he was never going to be a good man, but he’d do right by Marina. He was never going to love her, but he would always think of her as his best pal. He would stay with her, build a family with her, and take care of his children the way his parents had taken care of him.

Marina didn’t care about love.

She certainly didn’t want happiness.

Responsibility, fidelity, honor, and dignity … that was what she cared about. Honor and dignity she may never get but responsibility and fidelity he’d give her in spades. He wanted her.

It was enough.

*  *  *

Marina knew where she was before she had climbed out of the depths of sleep. She knew she had a baby. She knew the baby should be awake. She knew she had to feed the baby.

Yet … all was quiet.

Too quiet.

She lunged out of bed—tried—promptly tripped, tried to catch her balance, wobbled because her head was spinning, and fell, landing on her shoulder.

She lay there for a few seconds, breathing heavily, trying to make the dizziness stop, before she heard pounding footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Marina,” Trey breathed, crouching behind her, his big, rough hand stroking her face. That felt so good, she sighed and closed her eyes and didn’t care.

That was all he said for a while.

She heard the faint whimpers of a baby coming from downstairs, then a woman’s cooing.

“Who … ?”

“Dot,” he said softly. “Brought bottles and goat’s milk over to feed the baby early this morning. You need more help than I can give you, what with work and being gone for a week.”

“I want to feed my own baby,” she croaked, horrified—angry— “That baby is mine!”

“She is and you will, but I need to feed you first. Mama doesn’t get fed, baby doesn’t get fed.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine.”

“On a school day?” Marina asked, confused.

“A couple of days’ absences aren’t going to hurt her, and then you’ll have her at your beck and call all weekend, too, help you get settled in. Right now, Button just wants her mama, but Sister Albright sent instructions with Dot that said to let you sleep as long as you wanted.”

“Button?”

“The baby. Cute as a button.”

Marina couldn’t help her wry smile. It felt good to smile. She took a deep breath and tried to sit up. Trey helped her, and for the first time since she’d left months ago, she looked in his eyes, studied his face. “You look different.”

“I do?”

She nodded. “Older. Sadder.”

“I feel about fifty right now, Sugga,” he grunted as he helped her to her feet, then eased her onto the bed. He crouched in front of her. “Been sad for the last while. Guess it caught up to me. You look different, too.”

“Good or bad?”

“Good. Less lost. More confident.” He paused. “Older.”

Her mouth twisted. “How did I get to bed? The last thing I remember is your cutting the cord. You couldn’t have gotten me and the baby home by yourself.”

He looked surprised. “You don’t remember? You were walking and talking fine. A little woozy,” he amended, “but that’s normal after giving birth. Maybe … maybe you do that when you’re hurting, or did something unusual. You haven’t done that since we got married, so far as I know.”

“I did it in St. Louis. The early morning maids caught me. And I did it once in Boston. Grandmother caught me when I turned the hotel-room doorknob.”

“Sister Albright told me you wrote it in your diary, whenever your mama or daddy caught you. You did it at the Albrights’, too.”

They exchanged glances, then she looked away. She knew what he was thinking because she was thinking it too: If she walked in her sleep while otherwise distressed and she hadn’t walked in her sleep since she had lived in this house, she wasn’t distressed here. This house was a house of peace for her. Apparently anger didn’t make her sleepwalk.

“Do you remember me waking you up during your fever?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t want to know.”

“Why did you want to come back?” he asked quietly. “I thought you’d stay forever.”

“I liked it there,” she mused. “I didn’t have to think. Grandmother Susanna took me here and there to entertain me, including me in her social scene and her circle of friends. They all treated me like a beloved granddaughter, giving me this advice or that advice, telling me how adorable I am.”

“You are,” he said gruffly.

She smiled a little. “At Christmas mass, the priest asked if why what happens to us matters, and he said it didn’t. It happened, there’s no changing it, there’s only changing yourself. I decided he was wrong. It does matter. After I got your card, I went to him and told him everything. He asked me how I liked being treated like a child, told what to do. I did and didn’t. It’s difficult for everyone, when there’s a married woman and expectant mother, to treat her like a child. He asked me if I was tired of it yet. I didn’t know. He said there would come a time I needed to put away childish things, and at some point, someone would demand I do so and the only thing I can do is react.”

Trey’s mouth twitched up in a tiny smile.

“Or die.”

Trey’s smile faded.

“He said life is a constant balance between want and should. Reacting was inevitable, and not always a bad thing. Acting was more difficult unless you want what you want and you don’t care about anybody else.”

“Like me,” Trey muttered.

“Yes. After Christmas mass, I had a dream I was walking on the sidewalk on our block and I was looking at houses I thought needed some sprucing up or I didn’t like the color somebody painted theirs. So I waved my hand and then it looked like what I wanted it to look like and the owners had no say. They could only yell at me for doing what pleased me, then had to spend money and time painting it back because I acted upon them. I did something I wanted to do instead of something I should do.

“And I woke up ashamed of myself because that’s a rude thing to do but also because I liked that I had that control. Not of others, but I decided to do a thing just because I wanted to and the only thing that happened was people I didn’t care about yelled at me. The week after Christmas Grandmother Susanna took me to the library for the book club she’d chosen for me which was just right for me, but—”

“She chose it,” Trey said softly.

“Yes. I’m not complaining, because I liked it and she had the best of intentions but it was that she remembered the meeting time and place and told me to get in the car. I didn’t even know if I wanted to go. But that’s what a child does and I was about to have a child and—

“Well, I asked myself, ‘What do I have control over?’ Whether I live or die. You sent me to St. Louis so I would have less control over whether I lived or died, but they still didn’t have total control because they had to sleep some time. So then if I decided not to kill myself, what could I control?

“I went back to the priest, who told me also that why has an expiration date, that letting the why matter past its expiration date was like deliberately eating rotten meat. It doesn’t hurt anybody but yourself.”

Trey grimaced.

“He didn’t say, ‘Go home to your husband because that’s what good wives do.’ He said I should contemplate what you did and how long I was going to let the why matter. That was what his sermon meant. He didn’t tell me what to do at all.”

“Is that what you wanted him to do?”

“Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “It took me a couple of days but finally I worked out that if why didn’t matter anymore, then I had no reason to stay in St. Louis. I could even get on a train right then and come home. Grandmother Susanna had taught me how to get a cab, get on a train, go somewhere, get a hotel room, fetch porters. Three times, she just up and decided to go to New York. She didn’t even tell Grandfather Elliott until that morning at breakfast and he just said, ‘Oh, good. I’m about out of my favorite espresso.’”

Trey chuckled.

“And we were on the train in an hour. She didn’t even pack except for a nightgown and toiletries. She said we’d get clothes when we got there. She acted.”

Trey was nodding. “But you asked me to come get you.”

“I acted,” she said. “You reacted.”

“I reacted when you were sick,” he said quietly. “Answer the question, Sugar. What made you want to come home?”

“Well, first, I figured out that whatever you think is interesting, I think is beautiful. You say ‘interesting’ when you mean pretty when it’s actually only pretty in a different way, a way you like more, so it’s pretty, but doesn’t say what you want it to say. Beautiful is too much. Pretty isn’t enough.”

His mouth twisted. “The old man told me that. He said to tell you you’re pretty because that’s what the world understands, but I couldn’t because then you’d think I was lying.”

“The second thing was, your handwriting is atrocious.”

Now he looked confused.

“It’s so someone who wants to look at your real books has to take a lot of time to figure out your numbers.”

He gaped at her in shock. “How did you know that?”

“Because I can read it. If I wanted, I could take the books to Boss Tom or Treasury and show them the holes. But should I? You are a thief and a thug. But so are they. I don’t owe them anything. I don’t owe you anything, either, but I like you.”

“Still?”

“Dot hurt my feelings too, but I understand why and I’m not going to stop liking her. I wanted to not betray my friend, even though he hurt me so very much.”

He winced a little.

“But my friend told me he was hurting and he knew it was his own fault and he expected never to see me again because of it and he didn’t expect me to ever understand the sacrifice he made.”

“When did I say that?”

“In your Christmas card, which nobody but I would be able to read.”

He puffed a small laugh and raised her hand to his mouth. “I hoped you’d get that.”

“The noble lout. I don’t know if Lucie could ever have loved Sydney, but he was the hero of the book and his name lived on. I would rather Carton be my friend than Darnay, and if my friend were on the gallows, I would beg for mercy not because I should but because I want to keep a friend who would let me go thinking he was awful rather than hurt me anymore.”

His smile was thin. “I’m going to hurt your feelings,” he said low. “I can’t help it. Can’t keep my goddamned mouth shut and I just say any old thing and don’t mean a word of it. Half the time I don’t even know what I think, much less say it right.”

“I know.”

“So … are we still pals?”

She nodded.

“Best pals?”

“I don’t know.”

88A

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