“Most of the crew did,” Ada said. “When Prohibition takes effect, Johnny will have the largest stock of liquor in Boston— probably in the whole Northeast. He’ll be rich.”
“And he won’t have to split the profits with anyone,” Corinne said.
“What a piece of shit,” Charlie said, dropping back onto the floor.
“We’ve been wrong this whole time,” Ada said. She lay down too. Her voice was soft with weariness. “All those cons we pulled, all those people we robbed—we thought we were doing it for the Cast Iron, so that we would be safe. But we were just propping up Johnny on his throne.”
“As a particularly pretentious ass once told me,” Corinne said, “kingdoms always crumble.”
“So what are we going to do?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know.” Corinne flopped down and crossed both arms over her face. She didn’t want to think about Johnny, about how easy it had been for him to use them—and how eager she had been to be used. She had spent her whole life trying to always be the cleverest person in the room, and it was just now occurring to her how boundless her own stupidity was. “We should lie low, I guess, for now.”
“Doesn’t sound like you,” Saint said.
“Maddy’s dead,” Corinne said, a little sharply. “None of us is going to be next.”
“She’s right,” Ada said. “Besides, she’s got a wedding to attend this afternoon.”
Corinne groaned.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the time they had all woken and washed up as best they could, it was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. Ada spent a full fifteen minutes convincing Corinne that she had to attend her brother’s wedding.
“You won’t exactly be able to keep a low profile if your mother calls the National Guard to search for you,” Ada argued. “Besides, the president himself wouldn’t dare interrupt that wedding. You’ll be safe there.”
“What do you mean, me?” Corinne demanded. She looked up from the spot of dried blood on her dress that she was scrubbing at furiously with a damp cloth. “You’re coming too.”
“Look at me, Cor. I could play a whole sonata and still not convince your family to let me through the doors of that church,” Ada said. “Besides, I don’t want to go.”
Corinne made a face at her but didn’t have a ready response. Ada decided that now was as good a time as any to break the news.
“I’m going to see my mother.”
Corinne’s gaze snapped back to her.
“You can’t. The HPA knows where she lives.”
“Surely we caused enough of a ruckus at the asylum to divert them for a while.”
“You don’t know that.” Corinne waved the rag with more dramatics than was strictly necessary.
“I’ll take Charlie with me.”
“And what exactly is Charlie going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Ada shrugged. “Safety in numbers, I suppose.”
Corinne snorted in a way that would make her mother weep. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Ada said, fanning herself with mock indignation. But she was relieved that Corinne didn’t seem inclined to press the matter further.
Charlie turned out to be even more against the idea than Corinne. It took Ada threatening to go by herself to convince him to come along. Their walk across town—which involved mostly side streets and back alleys—was more silent than Ada would have liked, but she couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. After their dawn conversation and the revelations about Johnny, everything else seemed trite in comparison. It did occur to Ada, when they neared her mother’s street, that Charlie might be afraid. He’d had a close brush with the HPA and could have ended up with a lot worse than a black eye.
She wanted to ask him, but it seemed an unfair question somehow.
Ada wasn’t afraid. She knew she should be, but last night had wrung her out. She didn’t have the capacity for fear anymore. She just wanted to make sure her mother was safe.
They approached the street cautiously. The agents’ car was nowhere to be seen, but Ada knew that didn’t mean anything. They could very well be inside the front lobby waiting. They might have already taken her mother into custody, someplace where Ada would never find her.
Ada ignored the gnawing uncertainty and crossed the street. She considered asking Charlie to wait outside, but that seemed too ungenerous considering the circumstances. Her mother answered the door on Ada’s second knock. She must have seen them through the kitchen window. She was wearing a simple brown dress and a vibrant blue head scarf with green flowers. She didn’t say anything to them, just opened the door wide.
The silence continued as Nyah served them coffee in the living room. Ada didn’t touch hers. Charlie drank his in three gulps, and Ada pushed her cup over to him as well.
“Well,” her mother said, “do I get to know his name?”
“Charlie Lewis, ma’am,” he said, reaching over to shake her hand.
“I am Nyah. It is nice to meet you, Charlie Lewis.”
Ada couldn’t stand the pleasantries. She went to the window and opened it, suddenly desperate for the fresh air. Her mother clicked her tongue with a disapproving sound but didn’t say anything. Ada breathed in the chill. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to be anywhere but here. The familiar feeling of powerlessness swept over her, but she fought it. She told herself that she did have a choice, and she was choosing to protect what she loved.
“Mama,” she said, turning around to face her, “it’s not safe here anymore.”
She was sure her voice would break, but it stayed strong. Her mother was watching her, jaw set, hands folded primly in her lap.
“I know,” Nyah said.
The words were like hammered nails. Ada knew they couldn’t go back.
“I’ve been hiding cash in the hatbox under your bed,” Ada told her. “There’s enough for a train ticket and a place to stay for a while. Pick a town at random. Somewhere in Ohio or Illinois.”
“What about your father?” her mother asked. “I am supposed to leave him behind in that prison?”
“He’ll understand,” Ada said. “He would want you to be safe.”
Her mother’s hands clenched more tightly, and she pressed her lips together. Ada could feel Charlie’s eyes on her, and she avoided them. She went to the kitchen counter, found a pencil and a piece of paper, and wrote out the Wellses’ address.
“Here.” She handed it to her mother, who didn’t reach to take it. Ada set it in her lap. “Write to that address when you’re settled, but put Corinne’s name on it. She’ll make sure I get it.”
Ada stood in front of her mother, helpless to say or do anything further. It was a plan she had thought up years ago, when she’d first gotten involved with the Cast Iron’s illegal activities, right after her father was convicted. The idea had been more of an exercise back then. A puzzle to figure out. It had never occurred to her that one day she would have to follow through.
“Thank you, Ada,” her mother said. “You have always taken good care of me.”
Ada glanced at Charlie, who had already stood up, wiping his hands nervously on his trousers.
“We have to go, Mama,” she said. “You should leave as soon as possible. Today.”
Her mother nodded gravely. When she was like this, so solemn and regal, Ada could imagine that the bedtime stories were true. That she really was a queen with a palace atop a mountain, who kept wise counsel with bold lions and clever snakes, who had all the treasures of Africa at her fingertips.
But this wasn’t how that story ended.
Ada and Charlie left. As they went down the stairs, it was all Ada could do to keep her eyes dry. There was a white-hot flame at the base of her throat that would not be quenched. Charlie was ahead of her, and when he reached the bottom step, he turned and looked up at her. She loved the way he looked in the plain light, so honest and open. Like his face had never hidden
a secret, had never held a private shame.
“Are you sure you’re ready to leave?” he asked.
The tears in her eyes spilled out the corners, and she whirled to run back up the stairs. She pounded on the locked door until it opened, then threw herself into her mother’s arms.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she managed through her burning throat. “I’m so sorry it has to be like this. It’s my fault.”
“A turn in the tale is not the end,” her mother whispered, squeezing her tightly.
“It feels like it, though.”
Her mother rocked back on her heels to look Ada full in the face. Ada tried to memorize every graceful line of her mother’s features, the light of her eyes, the scent of bread and grape-seed oil and coffee.
“You must always give more than you take,” her mother said. “You will remember that, won’t you?”
“I’ll remember,” Ada said. “I love you, Mama.”
Her mother kissed her forehead, sealing the memory there. For a glorious moment, the flame inside her was quiet, and Ada felt at peace.
“I know,” her mother whispered. “Nakupenda sana.”
“I know.”
Phillip and Angela’s wedding was at three o’clock in the afternoon, just before the setting sun cast a glow over the white steeple of the Old North Church. Corinne arrived at fifteen till with Saint in tow.
“Just sit somewhere in the back,” Corinne told Saint. “And try not to look conspicuous.”
“And when someone inevitably tries to kick me out?” he asked.
“Tell them you’re Phillip’s uncle Ambrose’s son.”
“Who is Uncle Ambrose?”
“Someone whose son they wouldn’t want to kick out.”
Corinne went around the back of the church to find her mother, who had a predictable reaction to her daughter’s state of dress and overall appearance of having been to hell and back.
“I can’t believe you ran off like that. I didn’t sleep a wink,” Mrs. Wells told her, as she buttoned her into the dress that had been ordered specially for the wedding. It was a respectable navy blue, with quarter-length sleeves and a hemline that made Corinne feel like a spinster aunt. Angela had probably picked it out.
“Mother, if I’m being perfectly honest with you, it’s probably going to happen again,” Corinne said.
“I wish you would talk to me,” Mrs. Wells murmured, fussing over Corinne’s hair with a brush. “I don’t see you all year, and even when you’re home you’re somewhere else. And then that horrible incident last night.”
“It’s all a big misunderstanding,” Corinne said. If only that were the truth. “It will all be straightened out by the time I go back to school.”
Mrs. Wells made a noncommittal sound and handed Corinne her powder compact.
“Hold this. Those dark circles are dreadful.”
Corinne had thought the compact was silver, but as soon as it touched her skin, she realized it was steel and dropped it.
“Sorry,” she said immediately.
“No, I’m sorry, honey. I always forget,” her mother said, scooping it up and putting it on the table.
“It’s all right, I— Wait. Forget what?”
Her mother was silent, patting at Corinne’s face with the powder puff.
“Stop it,” Corinne said, pushing her hand away. “Forget what?”
Mrs. Wells sighed and sat down at the table. She put away the compact and fiddled with the hairbrush.
“Mother,” Corinne said.
“I’ve known since the first time I saw you after you—you got sick,” said her mother. “Your aunt—my older sister—was the same way. She used to write stories, beautiful stories. I was the only person who ever knew how she could bring the stories to life. We had an old iron tub in the house, and she used to cry until she was sick whenever my mother made her bathe in it.”
“You never told me you had a sister,” Corinne said.
“Her name was Alice. When she was a little older than you are now, she—she hurt herself.” Her mother squeezed the brush in a trembling grip. Her voice was thin and tight like a string. “The doctor couldn’t bring her back.”
Alice the lion tamer. Alice the pirate. Alice the opera singer.
Alice the wordsmith. Alice who couldn’t be saved.
Corinne swallowed hard and knelt down beside her mother, wrapping her mother’s hands in her own. The loss of her grandfather’s pocket watch was more real than it had been before. She felt somehow heavier without the familiar weight in her pocket.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That was a long time ago,” Mrs. Wells said, smiling though her eyes were damp. “Stand up, Corinne. You’ll wrinkle your dress.”
Corinne obeyed, shaking out the hideously long skirt. For the first time, she considered the significance of her mother’s not calling the police the night before. She’d been lying to her family for years, assuming that her mother was too dense to figure it out. But maybe Mrs. Wells knew more about Corinne’s life than she let on. Corinne thought about her mother’s refurbishment of the house, of all those iron fixtures replaced with brass, under the pretense that Garden & Home Builder had declared it the height of style. Maybe her mother, who stowed the ideals of Down Street so deep in her heart, understood that some secrets should be kept.
“Does Father know?” Corinne asked.
She almost didn’t want the answer. She was remembering all the dinner parties throughout the years where her father had expounded on his views on hemopaths, all the years of unfeeling, offhand comments, each one a burr under her skin that she could never quite be rid of.
Her mother seemed to understand what she wasn’t saying. She reached out and took Corinne’s hand in both of hers. The gold of her wedding rings was cool against Corinne’s wrist.
“I thought maybe you would tell him, when you were ready,” she said. “I hoped that you would tell all of us, in time.”
The words weren’t a reprimand, and they held no disappointment. Instead they were extended like an olive branch, or a promise. Corinne didn’t know what to say. She’d been fighting against her family and her name for so long that she’d forgotten what it felt like to have even one of them on her side.
“Mother, have you seen my—” Phillip appeared in the doorway, cutting himself short when he saw his sister.
“Hello,” Corinne said.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Are you okay?”
He came into the room, and Corinne wasn’t sure if he was going to throw something or shake her by the shoulders. Instead he pulled her into a hug. The sensation of being trapped inside her brother’s bearlike grip was not entirely unpleasant. She hadn’t hugged him since she was eleven years old, the day she left for boarding school.
“We looked for you all night. God, Corinne, we thought—” Phillip choked up, which was something else that hadn’t happened in years.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Mostly.”
Phillip held her at arm’s length and examined her with a stitch in his brow. His bow tie was off-kilter, and Corinne straightened it.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I never meant for things to go this far.”
“And is it over?” he asked. “Whatever it is?”
Corinne shook her head. “Not yet.”
Mrs. Wells stood up. With swift, practiced motions, she dusted off Phillip’s lapel and smoothed down Corinne’s hair. She let her touch linger, looking between them. There was an emotion in her eyes that Corinne couldn’t identify or understand, and it made her wonder why she’d ever thought her mother was anything but fathomless.
“Phillip, you’re going to be late to your own wedding,” Mrs. Wells said. “We’ll sort this all out later.”
Corinne knew that none of this would be sorted out as easily as her mother made it sound, but she decided to let herself believe for a few precious seconds that it could be. That brief respite gave her the strength she needed to follow them int
o the chapel.
The interior of the Old North Church was painted all white, but it bloomed pink in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. There was a display of white roses every two feet along the aisle, and someone had draped garlands along the upper balconies. Corinne sat beside her mother in the first pew on the groom’s side. The whole ordeal seemed to drag on for hours. By the time Angela actually made it to Phillip’s side at the altar, Corinne was certain that half the congregation was asleep. The minister’s smile shone benevolently upon them, and then he started into a speech that had all the indicators of being everlasting.
Corinne sank down a little in her seat and stole a look over her shoulder to furtively scan the crowd. She finally found Saint in the last row, being blessedly unobtrusive. The church wasn’t full—which the marital couple would no doubt take as a personal offense—and there was only one other person on Saint’s row. He seemed familiar somehow, with a round face, overlarge nose, and long ears. Corinne racked her mind. He was familiar in the way politicians were familiar, not because she’d ever met them but because she had seen their faces plastered across the newspaper headlines.
Saint’s drawing. The one of the man who had shot Gabriel.
She craned her head to look back again, no longer caring how subtle she was being. One of the doors of the cathedral had opened slightly, and a latecomer slipped in. She had never seen Johnny in a suit before. She didn’t know how it was possible, but he caught her eye immediately, as if he knew right where to find her. He smiled and slid in on the other side of Saint. When Saint saw him, he blanched a ghostly white. He started to stand up, but the man on his other side clamped a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly the man was different. His face had melted into one that Corinne knew very well. It was Guy Jackson.
Johnny leaned over, his eyes still on Corinne, and whispered something in Saint’s ear. Saint closed his eyes and locked his jaw. He nodded.
The three of them stood up and left quietly, with Saint between the two men. Corinne strained to see, earning a swat from her mother and a glare from Aunt Maude, who was behind her.
Iron Cast Page 29
