Evelyn

by C. L. Stone

  When I didn’t say anything, he reached for my hand as if wanting to shake it.

  I let him take it, unwilling to be rude now when he reminded me he was the one to do so much for me when he knew nothing of me at all.

  I just didn’t understand him.

  He held my hand only for a moment, giving it an encouraging squeeze. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve grown tired of Mrs. Harvey myself, and she has outstayed her welcome here.”

  I gasped. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to help,” he said. He lifted his head again and gently squeezed my hand. I ignored it because his gaze was so intent on my face, I couldn’t think of anything else. “Unless you’ve forgotten the purpose of all this. Soma clearly hasn’t taught how to play the game very well.”

  “You know I’m playing?”

  There was a curl at the corner of his mouth. “I know everything. But I admire you’re even giving it a try. Eva Lacroix, not many girls would stick out being around Ace for long, let alone become involved in the antics he gets himself into. I do my best to keep him in line.”

  “He says you annoy him.”

  “No matter what he thinks of me, I’m on his side, and now I’m on yours. If you want to put an end to Mrs. Harvey, you have to get her to confess to her sins. That’s how you score. Or didn’t Ace...or Soma... Did they dare not even tell you how to properly play?”

  I shook my head, suddenly concerned myself. Soma and Ace had promised to tell me everything, but they had neglected to tell me what the end goal was. “I have to get her to admit to what she’s done?”

  “The game isn’t to confront her,” he said. “You see what happens when you try to directly confront someone. You set them on the warpath. For you.”

  “Ace is acting like it isn’t a big deal. Soma said my reputation couldn’t get worse...”

  Loïc frowned. “No, this is all wrong. You can’t set yourself up like this. They should have known better than to send you off like this, unprepared.” He turned from me, pulling a cell phone from his pocket. He dialed it and spoke. “Oliver,” he said, his stare drifting down the hallway but then came back to me. “I want you to pull photographs of Mrs. Harvey’s most exploited children in her sweatshop. Whatever that writer can dig up. I know he has some. Deliver it to me. Now.” He hung up without hearing anything that Oliver may have said in reply.

  “What are you going to do with those?” I asked.

  “I’m going after the point. But you’ve got one last chance to steal it from me. I’ll let you deliver the warning message.”

  Soma had said if I gave Ace or Loïc a chance, they would go after the point themselves. Only I was tempted to allow it, because I didn’t see a way to fix this alone. I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was doing. “What’s that?”

  “Send Mrs. Harvey a message, in whatever form you can. Tell her quietly if you’d like, that if she doesn’t confess to what she’s done, that you’ll expose the truth, more publicly than she’ll ever wish for.”

  “Blackmail?” I asked.

  “Confession or self-correction is the game,” he said. “It isn’t blackmail if you’re not wanting something in return. All you are asking for is for her to admit to anyone who will listen what she has been up to, if she won’t at least correct it herself. It may be a stretch to think she’ll amend it at this point.” He put the phone back into his pocket and then turned down the hall. “You’ve got twenty minutes to get the message to her.”

  Twenty minutes. Who would he show the photos to? Would he approach her himself with the pictures? Demand answers? Ask her to leave? Make an incredible scene and embarrass her in front of all those people?

  Loïc doesn’t lie, that’s what both Ace and Soma had told me. If he said he’d give me twenty minutes, that’s all I had.

  If I wanted a point, I had to do something.

  I started to hurry down the steps, and then slowed to appear calm. I tried to calculate what Loïc would do if Mrs. Harvey didn’t confess.

  But would she turn the full force of her wrath on me if I pushed her any more?

  Matters

  I lingered in the downstairs living room for a moment, considering my options.

  If I went back to the tent, I was going to face the firing squad, and Mrs. Harvey was the captain set to tell them to fire.

  But I couldn’t hide.

  Still, I needed a couple of minutes to pull myself together and figure out how to salvage this. Loïc was about to expose her. She had no idea it was coming. Soma had said decorum wins. So what were my options.

  Attendants lingered in the living room. One older gentleman had fallen asleep siting up in an armchair nearby. I pretended to be checking my phone, like I was on business of some sort.

  I only stared at the glowing screen. What was I going to do?

  Loïc had said I could send my warning to Mrs. Harvey quietly. There was no way she was going to let me near her without yelling at me and causing a scene.

  I checked around the living room, finding a notepad and a pen on a nearby side table.

  I went to it and I ripped out the paper. I wrote out a quick note.

  Mrs. Harvey,

  Someone has photographs of the children in your sweatshop and is threatening to leak this unless...

  I stopped. Unless, what? Who did she have to confess to?

  I absently pulled out the phone, tempted to ask Soma, or Ace, or even Oliver or Loïc. I still had Loïc’s number.

  He had done so much already for me in Atlanta, etc. Just being near him for five minutes, he was both tender and merciless. I understood why Soma warned me I should get to know who I was dealing. I didn’t think it fair to call for help from men who were trying to also score the same point. I couldn’t ask for help every time.

  I looked over to the old man who was sleeping quietly in his chair.

  An attendant came over, turning a lamp off nearby him. She touched his arm and spoke quietly. “Would you like to lie down?”

  The older gentleman shook his head and waved his hand to kindly ward her off. “Just waiting on my wife,” he said with a small smile. “When you’ve been to one art auction, you’ve been to them all. Just let me know when they’re done, and I can ask her how much she’s spent.”

  The attendant smiled. “Shall I make a suggestion to the auctioneer that they avoid any of her bids?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s what makes her happy. That’s all that matters.”

  I hadn’t mean to overhear, but the sentiment had emotion thickening up in my throat. It was very kind of him to allow his wife the enjoyment.

  And I suddenly wondered if what I was doing mattered. Sure, she could confess to anyone in the room what she was up to. She could be exposed and exiled.

  The kids would still be working in horrible jobs.

  She could sell her stuff in another city where people won’t ask questions, or online, like I knew other sites did regularly. If it wasn’t her buying the garments, someone else would. The place would still be in operation.

  Would I be happy with that? Even if I scored a point, it lost the meaning when there were kids out there who were still suffering because of Mrs. Harvey or people like her willing to exploit it.

  I finished the note:

  ...unless you call the factory and ensure the children are given proper health care and food, the ones younger than fourteen are sent to school properly, and the older ones are given the same treatment any American worker could expect. If they won’t listen, don’t give them any business. You have ten minutes to make the initial phone call that should make this happen.

  The last part I added for myself.

  If it doesn’t happen, I will make sure this never stops haunting you.

  It sounded dark, but I meant it. Calling me out, the shop owner, and Gretta gave me a lot of fuel to my anger. How dare she throw hate at us when she should be angry at the factory making her garments? How cruel and callous could she be?

&n
bsp; And if she did nothing? If she ran away? I’d ask Soma how we could help those kids. It was a single sweatshop, but now that it was exposed, I wanted to do everything to help.

  I folded the note and found the attendant that had helped me at the door. She was standing at the rear door now, looking toward the tent.

  She smiled as I approached. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  I nodded and smiled. “Will you please see that this gets to Mrs. Harvey? Someone left it for her. And if she asked, it wasn’t me.”

  The attendant winked at me. “Anonymous someone left a note. Got it.”

  I was very grateful.

  I went out first, heading toward the tent, eager to take my place again before Mrs. Harvey could assume I had run off.

  I threaded my way around the tables, keeping my eyes focused on Ace. Ace was clapping after someone had been announced as a winner of a particularly large painting. He stopped when I settled in and leaned into me. “You okay?”

  My heart was beating rapidly. I’d missed a soup course and had taken longer than I thought, but I nodded. “I think so.” I wasn’t sure I would eat much anyway. I was too nervous that I’d make another mistake.

  He didn’t seem completely satisfied with that answer, but he returned his attention to the podium.

  I spotted Blake Coaltar a few tables away. He was talking to other people but I caught his attention. He gave me another co-conspiratorial wink and waved a hand to say hello.

  I waved back shortly, but my nerves stifled my movements. I’d done this all wrong from the start.

  I poked at my serving of duck a l’orange. Maybe it was too obvious the note came from me, since I had been gone for so long. Maybe she would recognize female handwriting.

  And then suddenly, I wondered how would I know if she made any changes to the factory. Wouldn’t I have to wait to hear from my source that those changes actually happened?

  How would Loïc even know if she made a confession of some sort? I didn’t see him in the tent. Would the staff alert him?

  Maybe I should have stayed away, and out of the line of fire. This was a game I didn’t know the rules for. Every step felt uncomfortable.

  Shortly, an attendant brought over the note, expertly passing it to Mrs. Harvey without drawing too much attention to herself.

  The attendant walked away before Mrs. Harvey could open it.

  Good. No reason for her to get the heat I was bound to get after this.

  I focused on my food, ready with a few daring choice words I would send back at her if she chose to make a scene right now.

  A minute passed by, and I was still looking at the duck on my plate.

  Another minute.

  I dared to glance up, at Mrs. Harvey holding the note in her fingers.

  Only, she wasn’t looking at it.

  She stared right at me. Hate and bitterness hard on her face.

  She knew it was me. Or at least she was sure no one else would dare threaten her.

  Her lips moved, like she was on the verge of saying something.

  She was wasting time. Maybe I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t so sure that what I had done was the best thing to do. I wanted this to be over with, and I had allowed Loïc to help me, doing things his way.

  Ace tended to do things on the fly. I wasn’t sure his way was best, either.

  What was I even doing here? I’d been caught up in all of this. It sounded a lot like many of the games I’d heard rich people play with each other. Except I had to give some credit to Ace and Loïc. From the sound of it, they tried to make things better, in their own small way. Yet, they were playing on a different level. I’d just stepped into the middle of this without knowing the full of it.

  Trying not to show any indication I knew what the note was about, I offered a casual, cool, face of simple content and confidence. I did poke at my food, but Mrs. Harvey seemed to rather have a staring contest across the table, as if waiting to see what I would do.

  Challenging me.

  She was waiting to see if I’d make good on my threat. Counting down the minutes. What did she think I would do? Scream in the middle of the tent about what she had been up to? Pull up a photo on my phone and pass it around?

  I glanced at Ace, who stared, fixated on Mrs. Harvey, as if daring her to do anything brash.

  It was uncomfortable as conversation was going on around us, the next piece of art was being put on display. People were either eating or talking while things were shifting.

  There was a gasp from the far side of the room. This was followed by more, and an uproar of confusion around the tent erupted.

  Mrs. Harvey leapt from her chair, spinning around toward the people in the back, but they were all staring past her toward the television screen.

  Instead of art, it was now showing the picture of a young girl, no more than seven, who had hands as red as brick, and her mouth and nose were the same color. She gazed off to the left of the camera.

  In her hands, she was holding a bra, sewing a label to it.

  The label was clearly Mrs. Harvey’s brand.

  I choked, putting down my fork, gazing at the screen.

  I hadn’t until that moment come across a picture of what was happening. It was worse than I had imagined even the first time I wrote about it in my blog. Worse than I had heard about from the article I had picked up that informed about it.

  The auctioneer silenced, looking around presumably for Loïc to find out what to do. Before she said anything, the picture changed again, this time a younger girl, maybe six, at a sewing machine, her thin fingers trying to pinch a piece of fabric so she could feed the machine.

  The small uproar turned into boisterous chatter, some in angry tones, women gasping and leaning into each other to speak. Blake Coaltar was booing dramatically.

  I steeled myself, ready for a confrontation. I hadn’t expected this.

  However, Mrs. Harvey was already on her way out of the tent. She was negotiating her way through the crowd, her husband in tow. People looked after her, displeased tones and glances cast in her direction.

  My heart was beating so hard, my entire body shook. I expected her to turn around, to yell, to threaten.

  She had run instead. She couldn’t lie her way out of this. It was so confrontational, and unless she was willing to take the podium to explain to everyone what they were seeing, her only option was to run.

  And she’d chosen to leave.

  I pressed a palm to the table, fear of retribution swelling inside me. She could easily hunt me down in a town like this and tear me to pieces.

  Ace turned to me, whispering harshly. “How did you do that?”

  “Loïc stopped me in the hallway,” I whispered back.

  He growled low. “I told you we could handle it. You shouldn’t have involved him.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” I picked up my head. I stared into those blue eyes of his. “I didn’t have a chance to think about it and he was already going to expose her on his own. I wrote her a note to try to warn her. I didn’t know he would do this.”

  “He stole your point, Eva,” he said and frowned, shaking his head. “I warned you about him...”

  I turned on him, seething and hoping no one else could hear us. “I don’t care about the point.” I waved shortly to the pictures on the screen before an attendant turned off the television and the auctioneer asked everyone to excuse the interruption and to please return to their seats. I remained standing and turned to leave.

  Ace caught my arm. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t want to be here,” I said. “I did this wrong from the start.”

  I left the table. I heard Ace say, “Sorry. She’s sensitive about seeing kids like this. I’m going to take her home.”

  Good idea.

  This was all completely wrong. Maybe this was what Ace and Loïc did to make themselves feel better, but it left children out in the lurch in the long run. Mrs. Harvey may have been exposed, but she wasn’t go
ing to fix the problem.

  I wanted to. Now that I had faces attached to this—the kids, who had been suffering this long without any help—I felt so stupid.

  They could keep the points. What did I care? What good were they?

  I blinked rapidly on my way out of Loïc’s house, hoping to keep it together until we could get into the car.

  Retreat

  Soma had pulled up to the house in the town car. I climbed into the back, and Ace got in next to me.

  I slid as far as I could to the other side of the seat, pressing my arm against the opposite door.

  “What’s wrong?” he barked at me. “Why are you like this?”

  “What is this game you’re playing?” I asked. I had hoped to keep it in until I was sure we were out of ear range of attendants. I hadn’t wanted them to see me so upset and think they had something to do with it. It was difficult to maintain any decorum now.

  “You know about it,” Ace said. “You just did it. Or rather you started it and then Loïc did it.”

  “What happened?” Soma asked from the front.

  “Just drive us back,” I said, stuffed a thumb into my mouth to bite it to stop myself from saying anything more. I was angry, but I didn’t want to rail on either of them.

  Ace had been right. Those pictures had affected me. Greatly.

  Soma shot a look at Ace, but Ace gave him a hand signal to indicate he should drive. Soma pulled away from Belle Cielo.

  I chewed on my thumb, a habit I’d had when I was younger when I was upset. I stared out into the trees and scenery whizzing by on our way back to Charleston, but I wasn’t seeing them.

  I couldn’t stop seeing those faces.

  Those girls. There had to be more like them, too. How did he get them so quickly when I had never seen them?

  I bit harder into my thumb, enough to cause impressions from my teeth.

  Ace must have been aware enough to let me fume in peace, because he said nothing else on the ride back.