“Not yet.” The shoe still dangles from one finger. “Don’t you worry about that. Please, Gracie. What aren’t you telling me?”
“The fire,” she says. “It was the fire in the garage. I told you it was probably just the girls playing with fireworks.”
“And?”
“I didn’t really think that. I only told you it was the girls so you wouldn’t worry, so you’d think it was a harmless accident. I think it was the men from the alley, the ones who leave the broken glass. I thought you’d be angry, maybe get into an argument.”
James nods as if he understands but his brow sits low over his eyes and he chews on the inside of his cheek the same way he does when he reads in the newspaper about another factory closing its doors. He slips the shoe over the rack and walks up to Grace.
“Do you know what happened to Elizabeth, Gracie? Was it one of those men? Was it the one you pointed out to Orin?”
Grace fingers the narrow lace that trims the hem of her full blouse.
“Someone killed Elizabeth, Gracie. It wasn’t an accident.”
Grace shakes her head and continues to run her fingers along the rough lace edging.
“They shot her in the back of the head,” James says and points to a spot above his ear. “Here, they shot her right here. If you know something, you have to tell me.”
“James, stop,” Grace says. “Stop saying these terrible things.”
“What do you know, Gracie? Tell me now.”
“Orin is confused,” she says, sliding a few feet toward the end of the bed so she can stand and walk past James to the bedroom door. “Orin’s confused, is all.” She walks into the hallway. “I have supper for Mr. Symanski. You’ll run it down to him? This is all so awful. Who would do such a thing to Elizabeth?”
“Gracie?”
“Wash up,” she says. “Supper in fifteen minutes.”
Day 7
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The first two times Julia tries to wake Bill, he doesn’t stir. Now he will definitely be late to work. All the men will be returning to the factory today, and Bill should be among them. Behind her, the twins’ door is closed; their room, quiet. She checks her watch.
After James left the house yesterday, Bill had stood in the entry and stared at Julia. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask her to explain, didn’t notice the mess in the kitchen. Just stared. What had happened between James and Julia left something tangible in the room, something concrete enough that it filled up the entry and pushed Bill and Julia apart. By the time Bill left, slamming the front door behind him, he knew the truth even though Julia hadn’t uttered a word. She had waited up for him, but at some point during the night, she fell asleep on the sofa and didn’t wake when he came in.
“Bill,” Julia says, pushing open the bedroom door. She kneads her neck with one hand where it’s tightened up from sleeping without a pillow. “You’re late to work.” She leans into the room but doesn’t cross inside. “You need to get up.”
The bed creaks and Bill throws back the top cover. He is fully dressed in the clothes he wore the day before and still wears his black boots. Both are untied. Black laces dangle across the white sheets. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he swings his legs over the side of the bed. Even from across the room, Julia smells the liquor. Black-and-white scotch. He drinks it over ice.
“Figure I’d better get my house in order first,” he says, his voice rough from cigar smoke.
“What do you mean by that?”
Julia crosses into the room but stops at the foot of the bed. She leans over and tugs on the quilt, straightening Bill’s side.
“What did he do?” Bill says.
“What did who do?”
“James Richardson. In this house. What did he do to you?”
Feeling as if she’s naked from the waist up, Julia folds her arms over her chest. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why aren’t you going to work?”
“Asked you a question. Plain and simple.”
“And I’m telling you, it’s a silly question.”
Bill groans as he stands from the bed. He often comes home from the factory rubbing his lower back or the thick muscles at the base of his neck. He walks over to the window that overlooks the street.
“He touch you?”
“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake the girls.”
“Answer me, then. He touch you?”
Julia backs into the doorway and leans there. “Why aren’t you going to work, Bill?”
“You going to tell me what I walked in on last night?”
“You didn’t walk in on anything. James was… he was comforting me. He was being kind.”
“He was comforting my wife?” Bill says slowly, thinking about each word as if not quite certain what they mean.
“Yes, he was.”
Julia stares at him. His rounded shoulders hang, his hair is mussed on top, his jawline droops. He has lost more of himself than Julia has in the years since Maryanne died. Studying him now, she realizes how weak he’s become. So weak that all he remembers of their daughter is that she cried. All he remembers is her small red face and the tiny, rigid body. All he did during those few short months she lived was complain. He needed more sleep. Couldn’t be expected to work a full day if he couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep. No one else’s baby cried so much. Why theirs?
Bill unfastens the small buttons on the front of his shirt. Next, he unbuckles his belt, pulls it from his waistband, and tosses it on the bed.
“He lay his hands on you?”
Maybe Bill got so tired of all the crying he decided to stop it himself. Maybe that’s what has weighed so heavily on him all these years. When he mumbled about being sorry, he wasn’t talking about some woman down on Willingham or Elizabeth Symanski. Julia hadn’t considered it before. Never. Now it’s so obvious. The doctor was wrong. Babies don’t die for no reason. It’s not the grief that has made Bill so weak. It’s the guilt.
“I asked you a question. Did he lay his hands on you?”
“Only after I laid mine on him.”
Peeling off his shirt and tossing it on the bed, too, Bill lifts his eyes. “Excuse me? You want to repeat that?”
Though she’s gone too far, Julia can’t stop. She swallows and lifts her chin. She knows it now. Bill did something to Maryanne the night she died. He must have gone to the nursery while Julia slept. He must have decided he couldn’t live with it another day. All those nights after Maryanne died, he walked through this house as if Julia weren’t living in it alongside him. He looked past her, around her, through her. He was numb. He must have forgotten his guilt in these recent years, forgotten Maryanne. He became playful again, almost seemed to love Julia as he did in the beginning. But then came Grace’s baby, Betty Lawson’s baby, Elizabeth’s disappearance-one of them reminded him, drew his guilt to the surface. She knows he did it, knows that’s why he can’t live with the thought of another child.
She had overslept the morning it happened. When she woke, startled by the silence, she threw back the covers. She stood on the cool oak floors, curled under her toes, and as she rubbed her feet together to warm them, she listened. Inside the nursery, the weight of the air lifted. The temperature dropped. It was as if a window opened. Or someone shook a blanket. She walked across the wooden floor, slowly, hoping it wouldn’t squeak underfoot. At the crib, she placed one hand on the top rail, reached inside with the other. Maryanne’s tiny leg was cool.
The pain of it took two weeks settling in and then it stayed. The doctor rubbed his thick gray eyebrows and said it happens sometimes. No good reason why. Don’t go thinking you’ll find one. Then he patted Bill on the back.
“After a time, she’ll be ready again,” the doctor had said.
In the beginning, people offered privacy. A soft touch on the shoulder. A hug. They brought casseroles and lemon squares. Grace came every day, slipping silently through the front door to do the laundry, push a broom, scrub the pots and pans. She was the only one brave enough to wade through it day after day. James worked outside. He raked leaves and cleaned gutters. When a few weeks had passed, Bill thanked Grace and James, sent them away with a handshake and a hug, and closed the door to Maryanne’s room.