Page 76 of If Looks Could Kill
“Think nothing of the expense,” Miss Stella adds. “We can redecorate. Your friends can visit. Come and go as you please. Throw parties. Hire cooks and musicians. Order gowns.”
Pearl pictures the rooms papered and painted and furnished. Her nightgown, a ball gown.
“You lose nothing,” Stella says, “and gain everything.”
“And the people trying to kill me?” Pearl whispers. “The man who did this to me?”
“We will deal with them easily.” She cradles Pearl’s hands gently in her own. “I never wanted a husband,” she says confidingly, “but I did always wish for a daughter. Someone to leave all of this to, when I am gone.”
Pearl has a mother, back home. They are not, it’s true, deeply close. So many gulfs between them—the loss of Pearl’s father, then her brother. Their poverty. Her mother’s reaction when Pearl told her, years later, what had happened to her that day. The pained way her mother looked at her for a long time afterward. They had never fit each other, and now there wasn’t enough room in Pennsylvania, much less in their small farmhouse, for their sadness to live side by side.
Stella’s snakes watch Pearl languidly as their mistress waits for Pearl’s reply.
“I don’t know,” Pearl says slowly. “I… May I think about it?”
A sound from downstairs breaks the stillness. A rattling, banging, jangling sound, followed by men’s low voices. Miss Stella’s snakes rise up, hissing a warning.
“That, I believe,” says Miss Stella, “will be the ruffians chasing you. I hoped you’d evaded them in coming here. Someone must have watched your movements after all.”
Stella sounds almost excited, but fear stabs at Pearl. She clutches the old woman’s arm. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she whispers. “Is there another way out? I’ve got to go wake Freyda and Cora, and—”
“Nothing of the kind.” Stella pats her hand. “Wait here.”
Tabitha—Introductions(Sunday, December 2, 1888)
Mike and I headed down Lafayette Place, arm in arm, back the way we’d come.
“You and I,” Mike said quietly, “are two friends out for a stroll, see? Nothing to fear.”
“I hardly know you,” I pointed out.
“All the same,” Mike said, “let’s get off this street and put some energy into it.”
We made our way toward the Bowery and across it. It was Sunday night, late and cold, but the streets were still full of people. The pubs were still doing a brisk business.
“I’m nearer home than I thought.” I caught myself. “What used to be my home.”
Mike kept craning his neck to look behind us.
“Is someone following us?”
“Not that I can see.” He gave me half a smile. “I suppose I might as well stop worrying and enjoy the company while I can.”
“It’s all I can do to breathe,” I told him, “and now you expect me to beenjoyabletoo?”
“Don’t strain yourself trying.”
“It’s a good thing you find yourself so amusing,” I told him.
“It means I’m never bored.”
“I guess in your profession, you’re rarely bored,” I ventured. “Always people to talk to?”
He shrugged. “Someone to listen to,” he said. “People unburden their souls to a bartender. I hear a good deal more than I say.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“It’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he said. “But my uncle’s been awfully good to me, and I feel I owe it to him to stay.”
