Page 127 of If Looks Could Kill
I forgive you, Tabitha, for leaving last night, Pearl thinks with a smile. Now go home.
As if following instructions, Tabitha turns to Mike and says something. Hand in hand, the two of them turn and leave. Tabitha keeps craning her neck for one last glance. Just in case.
Pearl smiles to herself. How about that for timing? Or had some part of Tabitha responded to Pearl? Wouldn’t that be something.
Tabitha must be counted among the memories to be held dear.
Her path now clear, Pearl circles around to the back alley without attracting notice from the dwindling bunch parked outside. She enters the back door using the key she has pilfered from the landlady. Such a criminal she’s becoming!
The key’s hiding place is an empty tin of soap flakes in the pantry. Pearl lowers it inside quietly, then makes her way carefully up the stairs. They love to creak, these old staircases, but Pearl takes each step experimentally. On the second floor, she hears sounds of snoring from the bedroom. She manages to reach her floor without waking her mistress.
She tiptoes along the hall to her room and opens the door. Her skin prickles. Something isn’t right. Something is here that shouldn’t be.
Slowly, carefully, she peers around the door, but the room is as dark as coal.
Her senses are taut, straining. Something is wrong. She takes one step farther in, just enough to reach the bedside table where the lamp and matches are.
Huge arms grab her and clamp a sweet-smelling cloth over her face. Her eyes roll back in her head, and the darkness takes control.
Tabitha—Stolen Property(Early Morning, Tuesday, December 4, 1888)
It was a quieter walk back to O’Flynn’s Tavern than any other time I’d spent thus far with Mike.
Had I left too soon? Given up too easily?
I’d just felt it was time to leave. That there was no more point to standing there. No more point to my futile crisscrossing of the city at all, if in fact there ever had been.
Where are you, Pearl? I had felt so sure God had urged me to keep trying to rescue her. But what more could I possibly do?
“Are you all right?” Mike asked at length.
I turned to him. “Mike,” I said, “do you believe me?”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, “about Pearl being a Medusa?”
He gave me a long look. “I believe you’re telling the truth,” he said. “If there’s a lie somewhere, some trickery, I don’t believe it’s yours.” He smiled. “I don’t deny it strains belief.”
“Thank you, Mike,” I told him, “for not thinking I’m crazy.”
He winked. “Oh, I didn’t say that.”
I gave him a shove, and he retaliated by reaching an arm around me.
“It’s hard not to feel like I’ve been the world’s most colossal fool,” I admitted.
“You’re a good friend,” Mike told me. “I admire that.”
“Your aunt said that about you, too.”
“Lord above,” he groaned. “Whatdidn’tshe say?”
I laughed. “She’s a fountain of knowledge. I have lots of questions for her.”
“How come,” he asked, “you’ll be seen walking around town with an Irish immigrant lad?”
Because you’re devastatingly handsome and utterly charming?
