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Chapter 20 Faith

20

FAITH

It had taken all Faith’s willpower not to race over to May while Mr. Van Cleve said grace. She’d tried giving a little wave, but May wouldn’t look in her direction. At dinner, Faith hurried to sit beside her, but she realized after she sat down that she needn’t have rushed: no one wanted to be within three feet of either of them.

They were served all the courses at once: turkey and stuffing, salad, cranberry relish, fritters. Faith’s stomach whined in anticipation as Miss Rhoades gave another, briefer, blessing. She looked around at the flushed faces of so many women, half of them currently pregnant; in their shining eyes, their bosoms straining against their blouses, their spindly, anemic wrists, she recognized her own hunger, the feeling of being simultaneously full and empty that had plagued her ever since her last monthly curse.

When Faith took a break from eating to stretch her aching ankles under the table, she felt May’s eyes flit toward her lower abdomen, looking, as everyone always was, for a swell.

“Did Leigh give you a note?” Faith murmured to May.

The other girls whispered and poked one another—watching her, even on Thanksgiving. She wished they wouldn’t react so when she deigned to speak.

May tilted her chin up toward the ceiling as she chewed. The folds of her eyes were puffed and red. “You needn’t have worried. I’m not going to see him anymore.”

Faith bit into a cranberry, letting its acrid juice numb her tongue. She watched a clear stream of wax drip down the side of a candle, turn white when it hit the tablecloth. She hadn’t expected May to agree so quickly about Hayward, but her demeanor felt awry. The shift of her eyes, the tears brimming, pointed to something more complex than a simple change of heart.

May took a sip of water, swallowed hard. “He came by just yesterday with a man called Johnny Lundberg, asking if I’d accompany him to the opera. And I declined.”

Faith put down her fork and laid her hands on the table to steady herself. “Here?” The word came out choked. It was all she could manage. “Here.”

May still wouldn’t look directly at her, just kept tossing glances from the corners of her eyes. “Just leave it alone; I told you, I won’t be seeing him again.”

But that wasn’t up to May—didn’t she realize? That would be up to him .

Miss Rhoades came by with bowls of pumpkin pudding, and Faith reluctantly picked up her spoon, took a few slow, custardy bites without tasting any sweetness. The opera . The word swelled inside Faith’s mouth, the round egg of it. He’d offered to take May to the opera, knowing, as he now must, that May was a nobody. Why would he do it? What would Hayward have to gain from being seen with a girl like May out in public?

As she ate, the truth settled in around Faith. Hayward and Johnny knew where to find May, which might mean they knew where to find Faith. At this very moment, they could be waiting for her outside. Today was a holiday; that, and only that, might be her salvation. She could get away in time.

She turned to May, who was stirring her pudding absentmindedly, staring straight ahead. She hadn’t taken a bite. Faith tapped the table, trying to get her attention; somehow, she’d have to let May know she’d be leaving soon, and wouldn’t come back.

Without looking at her, May slid back her chair, picked up her tray, and carried it to the sink. No one else in the dining room seemed to notice or care as Faith watched her onetime bunkmate, her one remaining friend on this Earth, slip away forever.

Faith went, first, to Mrs. Mendenhall’s office, where she sifted through every drawer of the desk, searching for her money. It was nowhere to be found. Anger overtook her, then panic: where would she go with no money? She took a few deep breaths to settle herself. She couldn’t dwell on it. There was little time to spare. She waited to be sure none of the guests had congregated in the foyer, then crept up the stairs, back to her dreadful room. Briefly, she considered knocking on May’s door, but decided against it.

The tower reeked of mildew. She hadn’t noticed it before but did now that she’d spent some time away, and the smell filled her with rage. She yanked her white cap from her head and flung it at the bedclothes. Hairpins clattered to the floor.

Slowly, her breathing returned to normal. She had to think clearly.

The thing to do was leave Minnesota, start over someplace where no one could find her. But she had no money to catch a train, had not even her old crystal ball, or her divining salts, and what could she do, set up a fortune-telling booth in the middle of the Union Depot? Word would reach her pursuers immediately. They were wily ones, with friends everywhere, it seemed. No wonder they’d been able to use May so thoroughly. Not her fault she hadn’t seen it coming—neither had Faith.

Incredibly, she’d been nervous when Hayward took her to read that first girl’s fortune. She’d wanted to do right by him, to impress him. He’d showered her with so many compliments ahead of time, on her beauty, on her supposed gifts as a clairvoyant; she’d been anxious to live up to his expectations, and to Johnny’s.

By then she had spent several nights in Johnny’s bed with him, right in his wife’s house. By way of explanation, he’d told his wife he couldn’t sleep without Faith’s use of mesmeric hypnosis, and it was true that after their lovemaking—quiet, though Mrs. Lundberg slept in a different wing of the house—he’d ask her to whisper him to sleep. His eyes would close the minute she laid her cool hands to his shoulder and knee. She brought her lips close to his ear and recited whatever she could remember: psalms, poems, a little rhyme her schoolteacher in Pennsylvania had taught them to remind them of the days of the week. When she ran out of words to recite, she simply hissed and clicked and blew in his ears. Gooseflesh would fleck his skin and then subside when he finally fell asleep. Then she’d flee to the attic, where the other maids would turn over and huff into their pillows, no longer speaking to her.

But Hayward seemed harder to please than Johnny, more exacting, more technical: her next afternoon off, following their meeting at the hotel, he’d taught her what he knew about animal magnetism, about the metallic humors coursing through every organic body and the way you could manipulate them with your mind. Faith listened, skeptical, until he lifted an eyebrow and said with a devilish smile: “It worked on you, didn’t it? When Johnny and I took you upstairs.”

She scoffed. She didn’t want to think of it that way, as something they’d persuaded her to do against her will. It had been her choice. They stared hard at each other, an invisible force shimmering between them. She felt a small burst of triumph when he looked away first.

“Don’t get bent out of shape,” Hayward said with a wave of his hand. “Now it’s your chance to do it to someone else. I need you to tell this dressmaker to accept a loan from me. Work your magic: you’re the one who knows how to tease out what someone really wants. Figure out what Kitty Ging wants, then promise she’ll get it if she goes into business with me.”

The problem was, she’d liked Kitty Ging. Hayward brought Faith into Kitty’s shop dressed absurdly, a silk scarf wrapped around her head, heavy earrings clipped painfully to her lobes. She carried the crystal ball, something Johnny had found in a pawn store.

“This,” Hayward declared, “is the famous Marguerite the Magnificent.”

Faith blinked. Famous? She’d never been called by that name before. He must have made it up on the spot.

Kitty took one look at her and rolled her eyes. “Funny costume,” she said to Hayward, gesturing at Faith with her thumb. Faith was impressed with her height, her lacquered black hair, her fearlessness in dealing with him. “Listen, this is the most unusual birthday present I’ve ever been offered, but I still think this stuff is hogwash.”

Faith bit her lip. Kitty was right, it was mostly hogwash.

“Oh, for certain. You’re a churchgoing gal,” Hayward replied solemnly, leaning with one elbow on Kitty’s desk, one long leg crossed in front of the other. In his gray suit, he cut a fine figure. Everything he wore hung well on him.

“I didn’t say that.” Kitty laughed and punched him lightly on the arm. It wasn’t hard to see what Kitty wanted. Kitty wanted Hayward. She shone in the spotlight of his attention. Faith couldn’t be sure if Kitty was sleeping with him already, or only hoping to, though, clearly, the two were formally unattached.

Faith asked him to leave while she read Miss Ging’s fortune, and he shot them a wink. Kitty led her to the back room, among bolts of fabric and several iron Singer machines, their bobbins and pedals at rest. They sat at a little table, face-to-face. There were no windows, but Faith could hear low rumbles of summer thunder and the pitter of rain against the back wall. The air in the workroom felt thick.

With a smirk, Kitty held out her hands; her fingers were long, smooth, and white, the nails trimmed neatly. “Oh—face-up?” she said, turning her palms to the ceiling.

One glance at the lines on the woman’s palms was enough. Her life lines were short, too. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, but Faith didn’t want to look closer. She pulled off the earrings and rubbed her swollen lobes, and Kitty’s eyes widened.

“You think it’s rubbish,” Faith said quietly, “so don’t let’s waste our time.”

Kitty removed her hands to her lap and tilted her head to the side, studying Faith. “Then what shall we do? He’s paying you, isn’t he?”

He was, and he would be expecting results. He’d want Kitty to emerge from this meeting ready to accept a loan from him, and more: he’d asked Faith to urge her to take out a life-insurance policy on herself, naming him as the benefactor. “Tell Kitty the other girls will be after her,” he’d instructed Faith. “All my admirers. Tell her one of them’s likely to bump her off, and then I’ll need a way to collect on my loan.” His logic seemed clumsy to Faith, the threats ineffective. She found it hard to believe someone would agree to such a thing when he wasn’t even a family member. But maybe Kitty wanted him to be.

“Let him help you.” Faith gestured to the ridiculous getup. “Look at the lengths he’ll go to, to get you to trust him. He wanted me to tell you the spirits are on your side.”

The two of them laughed, like old friends. It felt good; Faith couldn’t remember the last time another girl had laughed with her. Kitty looked flattered, her cheeks pink under her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said. “My pa used to say, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ Do you know that one?”

Faith shook her head.

“It’s from Shakespeare. I forget the play. But, good Lord, I could use the money. It’s hard to be a woman alone, running a business. You must know that, Marguerite.”

The comment flustered Faith. She didn’t know anything about running a business. Her station in life felt far removed from Kitty’s. But Kitty didn’t know that, of course. She might even have assumed Marguerite the Magnificent had a storefront of her own.

“Maybe he doesn’t want you to feel so alone,” Faith tried, gently. “If you let him help you, you tie him to you. He’ll have a stake here. In the business. And in you.”

Kitty nodded slowly, rubbing her arms so that her stiff sleeves rustled. A little smile crept onto her face. An enchanting person, Faith decided. She hoped she wasn’t leading Kitty into a dangerous situation. Her next words, however, came so easily—they slipped off her tongue.

“You could make it even more intimate if you asked him to be your next of kin on your life-insurance policy. You have one, don’t you? As a business owner?” When Kitty shook her head, she feigned shock. “Every sensible woman who owns a business has one.” Implying she had one herself, though she wasn’t even sure what it entailed.

Kitty should have been smart enough to see through Hayward, Faith thought later, as she and Hayward celebrated, toasting her success with a new bottle of Tennessee whiskey. Her victory felt hollow, even when he paid her in gold coins. Kitty had appeared addled with love for him, distracted from good sense by the shining reflection of his beautiful face in her eyes. But Hayward seemed blinded by something else.

How could she have done it? Faith stood at the tower window, watching snow coat the road, thicken the tree branches. She’d led an unsuspecting woman into Hayward’s clutches. Her own culpability gnawed at her. If she could go and warn Kitty Ging right now not to trust a word the man said, not to have anything to do with him, especially regarding money, she would. But it was too late for that.

Besides, Faith wasn’t going anywhere at the moment. She’d tied her belongings into one of her pillowcases, but she couldn’t leave in this storm. She’d have to hope for better weather in the morning, perhaps get on the road at first light.

Downstairs, dinner continued. The guests had become louder as dessert was served, although not as loud as they’d have been if there were any liquor involved. Girls were beginning to trickle upstairs in pairs and threes, their voices carrying the cadence of holiday merriment. Faith lay back on her pillow, thinking of May heading to bed alone.

Pieces of their conversation, and her memories, flitted through her mind, like pieces of a puzzle that hadn’t been cut to match. Hayward and the opera. Kitty’s reluctance to borrow from him. May’s secret revolver. Faith should have felt relieved that she’d at least warned May to stay away from him, but she didn’t. A bigger plot was afoot, she could sense that, but she couldn’t make out the edges of the trap.

What if Hayward were standing before her right now, asking her to read his fortune? What would she tell him?

She heard nothing but the same answer she’d given him many months ago, that first meeting at the hotel: I’d say you were about to come into a lot of money . That was the evening when she’d gone upstairs with him, in the hotel. The one time she’d slept with the devil. The memory brought a burning sensation to her throat.

Heartburn, she realized. The life growing in her belly still seemed so insubstantial, but she’d heard the other girls complaining of acid creep, of their babies pushing up into their ribs. She stood and chugged cold tea, then began to pace, quelling the fire in her chest.

I’d say you were about to come into a lot of money. What if Hal were about to come into a lot of money? The man seemed determined not to work in the traditional sense, so how would he attain it? She walked back and forth, the thin boards of the tower room complaining under her bare feet, until, at last, she stopped, the answer looking her plain in the face.

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