Chapter 26 May

26

MAY

Leigh came to see her the night before they were supposed to leave. May sat on her bed, packing, arranging her things with deliberate care by the gold light of her lamp, to quell her nerves. She folded her handkerchiefs into fourths, tucked them in around the tins of hardtack, preserved beef, and dried apricots Cook had given each of them, for the journey.

“What do you think?”

May studied the person standing in her doorway. A stranger, she thought at first, her instinct to shrink from him. A teenage boy, in shirtsleeves, a buttoned vest, and trousers that didn’t match: the trousers dark gray, the vest striped. One hand tucked confidently into a pocket, a wool fedora at a jaunty angle over short, ragged hair.

“Leigh.” May’s heart was pounding. “You can’t—please tell me you aren’t planning to wear this on the train. You’ll get us thrown out, or worse. Arrested.”

“Naw, of course not.” Leigh stretched her arms out, examining them as though she couldn’t quite believe they were hers. “I’ll wait until we’re in Wyoming. There I can wear whatever I want.”

May didn’t respond. Leigh seemed to believe the new state of Wyoming would be a sort of promised land, a place where they could do or be whoever they pleased, without consequence. May wondered how she’d never seen it clearly before, who Leigh was, or—May blushed to think of it—who she and Dolly were to each other. The haircut, too, made sense now. May smiled to herself, thinking of what Faith had said about unleashing hidden desires.

“You should go change,” May warned her, “before Pearl or any of the others see you.” This was one of Mrs. Mendenhall’s conditions for providing train and stagecoach fare for May, Leigh, Dolly, baby Jude, and Miss Rhoades—whom May still had trouble referring to as Beth—to head west together. Mrs. Mendenhall didn’t want the rest of the inmates to catch wind of the plan; otherwise, she’d have to explain the special circumstances that required May to get as far away from the city as possible, as quickly as possible. Nobody wanted to entwine anyone else in Hayward’s tangled web.

Still, it meant leaving without saying goodbye. As Faith had done. May still couldn’t quite forgive her for it.

Leigh hesitated, then came over to rest her hand on May’s shoulder. She stared down at what May held in her hands: in her left, a cheroot cigar holder embroidered with a pair of ducks, a drake and hen, their outstretched wings crossed. In her right, a ruby ring.

“It’ll be good for all of us,” Leigh said quietly. “A fresh start.”

May nodded.

Leigh pointed to the ring. “What’re you going to do with that?”

May held it up to the light. The gas lantern shone dully through the back of the ruby and brought colorful sparkles to the tiny diamonds. It hadn’t broken after Pearl flung it at the wall, which meant it could possibly be of real value. As with everything regarding Hal, the ring’s provenance brought up more questions than answers. Had he bought her a valuable ring, and if so, what did that imply about his feelings for her? Or had it been intended for someone else? Why hadn’t he demanded she return it? Was it stolen?

In any case, the best gift Hal had given her was the one he’d managed not to deliver; the day after news broke that he’d been arrested, her monthly curse—much more of a blessing, in this case—had arrived.

“I’ll sell the ring when we get to Wyoming,” she told Leigh, slipping it into her pocket. “Can’t risk someone connecting me to Hayward while we’re here. Who knows, maybe it’ll help us buy a horse.”

“Whatever price it fetches, it’ll be yours to decide what to do with. Get yourself some good leather gloves.”

May grinned. “A mink stole.”

“Silk drawers.”

After Leigh left, May stared at the cigar holder for a while, running the pad of her thumb over her even stitches. She’d worked so hard on the embroidery, had spent a pretty penny on the colored threads. The vivid green of the drake’s shining head—she liked that the most.

She dug into her bag for a piece of stationery and a pencil. Tapping the lead against her lips, she thought for a moment about what she should write. It had to sound genuine, but not overly friendly; that wouldn’t be natural. A simple farewell would do, a bequest of luck.

Pearl,

If you decide to make a go of it with Cooper, I thought you might offer him this as a present. It’s not secondhand. I never gave it to you-know-who. He didn’t deserve it, but maybe Cooper does.

Good-bye and best wishes.

She was careful not to sign her name. Mrs. Mendenhall had warned her that the detectives could come back at any time, perhaps with a warrant to search the premises, and that she should destroy anything in her possession with the name “May Lombard” attached. Fortunately, there wasn’t much. She’d never owned a passbook, of course, or kept a journal. The one identifying mark tying her to the name had been the initials she’d stitched into her gingham dress and her aprons, “M.L.” in red cotton thread. Mrs. Mendenhall had suggested she remove these, in the unlikely case the police hauled her off for questioning or examined her clothes. May had cut them out with the sharp end of a seam ripper, carefully slicing the threads from the fabric, one by one.

—

The morning after May took her shot at Hal and missed, she’d been overwhelmed with relief to see Mrs. Mendenhall at breakfast, especially after Faith had vanished. Over coffee and chunks of brown bread in the study, May had allowed the entire story to spill out to Mrs. Mendenhall and the matron, leaving nothing out. She’d begun with the purple gown, explaining how it connected Faith not only to Kitty Ging, but also to Harry T. Hayward.

Mrs. Mendenhall had pinched her eyes shut. “I wish you’d told me what you learned about the dress sooner,” she lamented. “Please, go on.”

May continued, explaining her own shameful entanglement with Hayward. Several times, as May spoke, her voice breaking at points, Mrs. Mendenhall had looked over her head at Miss Rhoades. They both grimaced when she told them how gleefully Hayward had described Priscilla Black’s body; he must have been behind her killing as well.

“Very well, May,” Mrs. Mendenhall had said when she finished outlining the harrowing events of the night before: the custodian covered in blood, the revolver May had fired and brought home, Faith’s midnight disappearance. Mrs. Mendenhall came around the desk and offered May a handkerchief. “Miss Rhoades, I’ll need my coach, and quickly. Could you telephone Junius and ask him to send it round?”

As soon as Miss Rhoades hurried off, Mrs. Mendenhall turned back to May. She came close enough for May to see the flecks in her pale-green irises. “You’ll need to go about your day as if nothing has happened. If the other girls ask where you were last night, tell them you went looking for Faith but couldn’t find her. An uneventful evening. Do you understand?”

May nodded. Her voice was caught in her throat as she did her best to hold in her tears.

“You’ve acted unwisely at times, May, but this crime is not your doing, and you have suffered enough. Take a moment to gather yourself. I will call for you when the time is right.”

Her words were a balm, soothing May enough to get her to her feet and down to the kitchen, where Cook handed her a pound of cold butter to cut into cubes. But her calm quickly wore off, and when a day passed, then another, with nary a word from Mrs. Mendenhall, not even an acknowledgment, May was twisted into a ball of nerves. Even the news that the custodian had confessed and Hal had been arrested didn’t bring the relief she’d have expected, especially when she heard the whispers that the detective had returned with the mayor. At last, one unseasonably warm day in the second week of December, when the ground outside the kitchen had turned slick and muddy and the sun was making grayish attempts to penetrate the clouds, Miss Rhoades tapped May on the arm at lunch.

“Come downstairs after lights-out.” Miss Rhoades seemed curiously eager. May had been wondering what might happen to her, too, now that she’d made her confession in front of all the inmates and half the Sisterhood. “Meet me in Mrs. Mendenhall’s office.”

The hours after that had ticked by slowly, seeming unbearably long; dinnertime and washing up were a trial in patience. After lying on her bed for what felt like hours, her feet and knees twitching and knocking together under her thin nightgown, May crept down the stairs and through the quiet hallway. Soft light seeped under the closed door of the office, and the hush of voices. When the door swung open, hinges creaking, to let May in, she was stunned to see a circle of faces wreathed in candlelight: the matron and Mrs. Mendenhall, Leigh and Dolly, who she was aghast to see had also been invited. They all glanced up at her with the same meaningful, animated air Miss Rhoades had exhibited in the dining room, a circle of women radiating a secret knowledge, looking like some sort of coven.

May’s legs wobbled. “What’s all this?” She lowered herself into a visitor’s chair.

“You’re going west,” Mrs. Mendenhall pronounced. “The day after tomorrow.”

“West.” She knew what that meant. She would be a farm wife. Men wrote to the Sisterhood all the time, petitioning for mail-order brides. Better than the gallows, much better, no matter who the husband turned out to be. She’d have to remember that. She nodded dutifully.

“We’re all going,” Leigh said, interrupting something Mrs. Mendenhall had been about to add, as though she’d burst if she didn’t share the news. “Dolly and I, and Jude, of course—and you and Miss Rhoades. We’re going to homestead in Wyoming.”

May listened in incredulous silence as Leigh prattled on about Wyoming, where she’d always wanted to live. Mrs. Mendenhall was giving them the opportunity to take full advantage of all the state had to offer: women’s right to vote (since 1869!) and own property. In Wyoming, they’d have the power to claim a homestead in their own names, which they’d do on a few rocky acres adjacent to Leigh’s aunt and uncle’s ranch.

“What’s ours will be ours,” Leigh said. “We’ll pool our money and start a homestead. No one’ll be able to take it from us.”

It all sounded fantastical, too radical to be true; May looked to Mrs. Mendenhall for validation. Mrs. Mendenhall gave a slight nod, betraying a modicum of reluctance. “You’ll take the Great Northern Railway as far as Bozeman, in Montana, and then the stagecoach to La Barge, Wyoming.”

The Great Northern Railway. May had heard of it; it was brand-new. She imagined wooden bridges suspended hundreds of feet above mountain river valleys, rippling fields under the broadest skies she’d ever seen. Without a stranger beside her for a husband, but with these three women as company.

“I have some stipulations to add,” Mrs. Mendenhall said, quieting everyone. They could tell none of the others where they were going, nor leave any hint behind. If anyone from the Sisterhood asked, Mrs. Mendenhall would feign ignorance, saying only that they must each have needed a clean break.

“That clean break is paramount,” Mrs. Mendenhall said pointedly, looking straight at May. “You are to tell no one, inside or outside these walls, where you are going. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Mendenhall,” May mumbled. She felt as if she’d been tossed in the air to float for a moment, only to come crashing back to the hard ground. No doubt Mrs. Mendenhall worried that Hal still held her in his command, that she’d try to contact him at the jail, to let him know where to write her. Instead, her thoughts drifted to her family in Chicago. All these years, she’d dreamed of returning to her family on the arm of a suitable man, to be met, at last, with her mother’s approval. Emmanuel could know her—not as a mother, she’d conceded, but at least as a respectable and doting aunt.

She stopped listening to the others and hugged herself, her own arms replacing Emmanuel’s. Her dream had never had a chance of coming true, with or without Hal. She’d been, for all practical purposes, dead to her family for years. She would vanish into the West and little would change, in her family’s eyes. Gone and forgotten would remain gone and forgotten. But perhaps prospects could change, in time, for her.

—

They left early in the morning, two days later. May dressed quietly, her belly achy and empty from nerves and too little sleep. When she came downstairs, she found Leigh pacing the foyer, restless, her light baggage on the floor beside her. Leigh looked as if she’d been awake for hours. “Dolly’s upstairs, feeding the baby,” she told May. She chewed at a toothpick, working the wood to splinters.

May nodded and set her bag down, held her stomach. All night, she’d lain awake, thinking that she wouldn’t go, that she’d tell the others in the morning she’d changed her mind. She’d stay here and risk the consequences. She’d ask Mrs. Mendenhall if that position in the bakery was still open.

“This time on Thursday,” Leigh said, grinning around her toothpick, “we’ll be waking to a breakfast of ranch eggs.”

May tried to smile. The plan was for all four of them, plus the baby, to stay with Leigh’s aunt and uncle while they built their own cabin. It seemed ludicrous, not to mention risky. What did they know about maintaining a homestead? She couldn’t shake the feeling that the land they were prepared to claim had once belonged to other people, who might want it back. Nor was she so sure they’d be able to maintain a savory style of life, four women alone, given their histories. Folks might assume they were setting up a sporting house. What would they have to do to survive?

Miss Rhoades came out of her office, holding a velveteen carpetbag, wearing a little burgundy hat and traveling cloak. She looked as nervous as May felt. “All ready?” Miss Rhoades said. She let her gaze wander up the striped wallpaper, to the staircase and back down, at last falling on the drawing room, where she’d told who knew how many stories. May had never truly felt she belonged within these walls; she’d always been eager to find her escape route back to her past. How long had Miss Rhoades called this place home? A decade, at least.

Dolly came down then, with Jude wrapped in her shawl. He was still so little that he slept most of the day and would be quiet—Dolly promised—on the train. This was another reason Leigh claimed it made sense to leave now, before the boy grew a bit and woke to the world. When Dolly came closer, May could see his soft, flushed cheeks, the shine of his eyelids, his mouth open against his mother’s chest as he dreamed.

Cook came up, sniffling, from the kitchen, and put a flaky, buttery biscuit, wrapped in a clean towel, into each of their pockets. “My dear girls.” She embraced each of them, Miss Rhoades the longest. She kissed May on the top of her head.

“Let’s go outside,” Miss Rhoades said. Her voice cracked a bit. “The carriage is waiting.”

They went out to find the street dusted lightly in new snow. A pair of birds trilled in the black limbs of a tree overhead, flitting from branch to branch. Mrs. Mendenhall and Mrs. Overlock, each in her signature pure black or muted florals, stood beside Mrs. Overlock’s big Concord coach. May had never ridden in one, with its shining windows and heavy door that would block out the elements. A footman held open the door, and she could see comfortable benches and lap blankets inside. It felt like too much.

“We shan’t dally,” Mrs. Mendenhall said as they approached. “May God bless all of you on your journey. Take care of one another, friends.”

Dolly and Leigh curtsied to the women and thanked them a final time. Leigh shook the coachman’s hand. Miss Rhoades lingered. Mrs. Mendenhall smiled at her kindly, her face sad. “You’ve snow on your jacket, friend,” she said, brushing off Miss Rhoades’s shoulder, and at last, Miss Rhoades managed to say, “Thank you.”

May was the last to board. She felt dizzy with the weight of such a goodbye. She curtsied to Mrs. Overlock, then stood eye to eye with Mrs. Mendenhall. Mrs. Mendenhall lifted one gray eyebrow, as though she knew May had something important to say.

“If she ever returns…” No need to elucidate who “she” was; Mrs. Mendenhall would know. “…please tell her I wish she could have come with us. I long to have been a better friend to her. Please tell her that.”

Mrs. Mendenhall brought her thin lips into a slight smile and nodded once. “I have something for you.” She pressed a card, no larger than a calling card, into May’s gloved hand. “You may read it on your journey. I hope it will bring you peace, May.”

May slipped the card into her pocket, put her carpetbag into the boot of the carriage, and climbed inside. The air felt stuffy already, warmed by the breath of her fellow travelers. No one said anything as the coachman hopped up and flicked the reins. They stared at one another, wide-eyed, rocking back and forth with the motion of the carriage, their collective breath caught in anticipation of all that would happen next.

Just before they reached the train station in St. Paul, May remembered to read Mrs. Mendenhall’s card.

Unsurprisingly, she found a prayer set in plain type:

Mind that which is eternal,

Which gathers your hearts together, up to the Lord,

And lets you see that ye are written

In one another’s heart.

May hadn’t given the Lord much attention in a long while. She’d had more worldly matters on her mind, even when she’d attended church. Still, it gave her comfort to imagine that she’d be remembered, recorded, not in a family Bible, but impressed upon another person’s soul. The prayer felt like a reminder that life could be sweet. Her future in Wyoming could turn out to be misery, but it could also be a lifetime of bright, sunny days, in the shadow of the jagged teeth of distant blue mountains; of Dolly’s son learning to walk, his soft leather baby shoes on dry yellow grass; of suppers shared with friends by candlelight, treasuring the peaceful exhaustion of growing and preparing their own wholesome food. May had always assumed that bliss wasn’t meant for someone like her, that she didn’t deserve it. Perhaps she didn’t. But she’d come to see good fortune not as a matter of what you earned through virtuous behavior, but of whom you loved and were loved by in return.

As they prepared to disembark, her fingers went to the card in her pocket, to make sure it was still there. She wondered if Mrs. Mendenhall had meant to imply it was Faith who kept May written on her heart, or if Mrs. Mendenhall wanted to indicate that she did, herself.

May decided she’d take it as both.