Mr. Dare looked down at the paper again. “Now I believe there’s still about three hundred thousand dollars left in Henry’s trust,” he said, “so the two of you will each get half of that as well.”
Overwhelmed, I slumped a little on the sofa. So much money! I supposed a case could be made that Henry owed me something for his deception, yet … I did the math in my head … four hundred thousand dollars? I thought of Honor. Of Jilly. I would take the money. I would set up some sort of trust for Jilly once I received the funds. I certainly couldn’t make those arrangements through Byron Dare—the man who had prosecuted Henry’s friend Gaston and his colored wife. I’d have to find a lawyer outside of Hickory. One who wouldn’t have known Henry or the Kraft family. One who wouldn’t ask questions.
Mr. Dare got to his feet. “I’ll be on my way, ladies, and let you two absorb this news,” he said. “And again, to both of you, my condolences.”
Ruth and I remained quietly seated until we heard the front door open and close. Then she looked across the room at me.
“I suppose you’re happy now,” she said.
I was startled by the question. “Happy?” My skin prickled with sudden anxiety. Could she possibly know about Vincent and me? “That Henry is dead?” I asked. “How can you ask me that?”
“My son was so foolish,” she said. “Why couldn’t he have taken a couple of hours out of his busy day to write a will? This division of his money, his property—it’s not right. Surely you can see that.”
I let out my breath in relief. She knew nothing about Vincent. “I agree,” I said, attempting to be conciliatory. “I don’t need that much. Maybe Mr. Dare can help us figure out a way to—”
“You tricked my son into marrying you,” she said.
That was too much. “I did not trick him, Ruth. I—”
“Then you move into my home like you own it.” She gripped the arms of her chair, her fingers white, and I saw sudden fire in her eyes. “You, who come from some common … Italian neighborhood in Baltimore. You don’t belong here. You insinuated yourself into my life. Then you cost me my two children.”
I gasped. “Ruth, I never meant to—”
“What you meant or didn’t mean to do doesn’t matter.” Her voice held a deceptive calm in spite of my own rising anger, and I felt a shiver run up my back. “You cost me my daughter and son,” she said. “You might as well have shot Lucy through the heart. And Hank?” Her chin quivered and I tensed. I didn’t think I could bear it if she cried. “Well, all I can say is, he was alive before you came to Hickory and now he’s dead, just like my beautiful daughter. Our lives—mine, Lucy’s, and Hank’s—they were perfect before you came along. And now look at them. My children are gone and you’re still here. Is that fair?”
I was stunned. I opened my mouth to speak without knowing what I would say, but she plowed ahead before I could get a word out.
“Now you want to move into the beautiful house Hank designed and live a life of leisure with his money.” She raised one bony hand and pointed her finger at me. “I want you to leave,” she said. “I want you to get out of my house. Today. I don’t want to have to look at you another instant.”
“This is your grief talking, Ruth.” I tried to speak calmly. “Things have been so much better between you and me. Please don’t … I know you’re upset. I know you’re grieving and I am too. But it’s not fair for you to—”
“Hank was so foolish not to protect his assets from your greedy hands.”
My cheeks burned and I stood up. I’d had enough. “I never wanted to hurt Henry or you or Lucy and I certainly never asked him to leave me so much money,” I said. “But the truth is, Ruth”—I looked her directly in the eye—“I didn’t get myself pregnant.”
I turned on my heel and left her in the living room as I stormed up the stairs. She’s a sad, grieving old woman, I reminded myself once I reached the bedroom and shut the door behind me. I leaned against it. She was right: I needed to get out of this house as soon as possible. I didn’t think she and I could live under the same roof another day.
I sat on the edge of the bed thinking of all I needed to do before I could extricate myself from Ruth and her house. I had to speak to Byron Dare about how to get that “small sum” he said I could have to tide me over. Suddenly, I thought of the armoire. I had access to more than two thousand dollars in cash, right at my fingertips.
I stood up and crossed the room to the armoire, catching my reflection in the mirrored door as I turned the key in the lock. I was as pale as Ruth. It had been a hard few days. I pulled open the door and saw that the armoire’s false bottom was askew. The fabric-covered board sat at an angle, one side higher than the other. I gripped the leather strap. Lifting the board, I let out a gasp. The money was gone and in its place was a single manila envelope, this one quite bulky. Written on the white mailing label were three initials, and it took me a moment to realize they were mine. T.D.K.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the envelope in my lap as I undid the clasp. I spilled the contents onto the bed and nearly screamed. Ten fifty-dollar bills. A red C gasoline ration sticker. A booklet of C coupons.
And bones.
Three chalk-white skeletal fingers.
I stared at the contents of the envelope for a long time, and then I couldn’t help myself: I laughed.
Henry was alive.
81
I put the envelope and false bottom back in place in the armoire, grabbed my handbag, and went downstairs to call for a cab. I was relieved to discover that Ruth was in her room. I wouldn’t bother to tell her I was going out. Instead, I walked outside into the darkening night to wait for the cab, thinking about my discovery. Henry had planned this whole charade and he’d intended me to know. He’d left the bottom of the armoire askew in case I hadn’t already thought to look for the money. And he’d known exactly where he could find a skeleton to leave in the fire as his “charred bones.”
The taxi pulled up in front of me and I slipped into the backseat, breathless and excited, and gave the driver Reverend Sam’s address.
“What?” he exclaimed. “You want to go to Ridgeview now?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do. And I’d like you to wait for me. I may be as long as an hour. All right?”
“You’ll pay for the wait time?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.” I had the feeling he’d be telling his buddies that Hank Kraft’s widow went to Colored Town after dark, but I didn’t really care. I watched Hickory sail by outside the window. I couldn’t wait to see Reverend Sam.
* * *
“Ah!” Reverend Sam said when he answered his door. “I’ve been expecting you, child.” He stepped aside to let me in.
“You have?” I asked.
“Yes, I was certain you’d want to try to connect with your husband. I was sorry to hear of his passing. Even though he didn’t think much of me, did he?”
I didn’t bother responding. I was too anxious to get to the anteroom, and I nearly plowed ahead of him down the hallway. I let him catch up to me. Let him be the one to open the anteroom door. As I’d expected, the skeleton was gone.
“Where is it?” I asked. “Your skeleton?”
“It was stolen,” he said, hands on his hips. “Very strange. I came down here a couple of mornings ago and it was gone.” We stood in the center of the small anteroom, staring at the empty place where the skeleton used to stand. “That was the only thing missing as far as I could tell.” He swept his arm around the room, taking in the other artifacts. “Very odd, don’t you think?” He walked toward the open door to his office.
“Very odd,” I agreed, following him into the smaller room. “You said your power came from your artifacts,” I said as I sat down opposite him. “So have you lost your power without the skeleton here?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to have affected my ability to connect at all,” he said. He reached across the desk, motioning for my hands. “Let’s put it to the test, shall we?”
>
For twenty minutes or longer, we sat across from one another as he tried and failed to contact my husband.
“I’m sorry, Tess,” he said finally. “It seems your husband is still not too fond of me.”
“It’s all right,” I said, sitting back in the chair. If anything, I believed in Reverend Sam and his abilities more than ever now. After all, it was impossible to connect with the spirit of someone who was still alive.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with my missing skeleton affecting my powers though,” he said, getting to his feet. “I had a couple of good readings this morning.”
“Henry’s just being stubborn.” I smiled at him as we walked out of his office and into the anteroom. I wondered if he thought I sounded quite flip for a new widow, but he returned my smile.
“Yes, I believe he is,” he said, and either he winked at me or he had something in his eye.
I stopped walking and studied him curiously. “Did you call the police about the stolen skeleton?” I asked.
“No,” he said, looking at the empty spot in the room where the skeleton had been. “I’ve always believed that if a person steals something from me, he needs that something more than I do. That’s probably the case with my skeleton. What do you think?”
He knows, I thought, and I wondered if Henry had stolen the skeleton or if it had been a gift.
“What I think,” I said, leaning forward to give him a kiss on the cheek, “is that you’re a good and generous man, and I’m very glad I met you.”
82
I could barely concentrate on my work the next morning at the hospital. It was my first day back since the fire, and I’m sure my coworkers thought my distraction had to do with grief. They had no idea what was really going through my mind: where was my husband and what did he have up his sleeve?
I was also exhausted. I’d called Grace Wilding when I got home from Ridgeview the night before to ask if I could stay with her for a while.
“Of course,” she’d said. She’d asked no prying questions and I was grateful, both for a place to stay and for her kindness. I moved my things to her apartment in the middle of the night, leaving a curt note for Ruth about where I’d gone. It was a relief to be out of that house.
People were so kind to me at the hospital that morning. “You should have taken more time off,” they all said. “It’s so soon, and you must still be so upset about Mr. Kraft.”
I gave each of them my stock answer. “Thank you, but it’s best for me to keep busy.”
Grace had taken over most of Amy Pryor’s care in my absence, but we had many new patients and they kept me occupied. While I bathed them and fed them and wrapped their limbs in hot wool, I was constantly looking through the screened windows for Zeke. I needed to talk to him. I was sure he knew the truth, in spite of his bravura performance at the house the other night when we were anxiously waiting for news about Henry’s fate. They were as close as brothers, those two.
Late that morning, I finally spotted Zeke walking from the stone building toward his truck, and I knew I needed to catch up with him quickly before he drove off. I was in the middle of feeding a two-year-old girl, but I called to one of the volunteers and asked if she could take over for me.
“Of course, Mrs. Kraft,” she said, and she took the spoon from my hand and gave me a little push toward the door. She probably thought my grief had suddenly gotten the better of me and I needed a break. I thanked her and nearly flew out of the building. I caught up with Zeke as he was opening the door to his truck.
“I need to talk to you,” I said as I neared him.
“What about?” he asked, his hand on the door handle.
“Where is he?” I asked quietly. “Where’s Henry?”
“I reckon he’s with his maker,” he said, and for a fleeting moment, I was afraid I’d guessed wrong and Henry really hadn’t told him his plan. But then I saw a flicker of light in his long-lashed eyes. “Why would you think anything else?” he asked.
“I know he’s alive,” I said. “And I know he wanted me to figure it out.”
He looked away from me and I saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. He wasn’t sure he could trust me.
“You don’t need to worry,” I added. “I understand this was his way of setting me free.”
He nodded then, and I saw relief in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly right.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how this sets him free.”
He glanced behind me as though trying to see if anyone was around to overhear us. “Get in the truck,” he said.
I walked around to the other side of the truck and climbed in. He started the truck and we drove along the dirt road until we came to the clearing where the National Guard had cut down trees to use in building one of the wards. The expanse of stumps had an eerie feel to it, a sea of light and shadow, and I shivered. Zeke turned off the engine.
“He’s goin’ out west,” he said, facing me. “Right now he’s on a bus somewhere in the middle of the country on his way to Washington State.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “Washington? Where his friend Gaston is?”
He nodded. “He’ll stay with Gaston and Loretta.”
“But what about Honor?” I asked. “What about Jilly? Does Honor think he’s … does she know he’s alive?”
“Yes, she knows,” he said. “The plan is for her and Jilly to follow him, soon as I can figure a safe way to get them there.”
“Could she take the train?” I asked. “Or a bus?
He smirked at my ignorance. “Those trains are full to the gills and there ain’t no room for a colored gal and her child,” he said. “Even if there was, she’d be in the Negro car with the colored soldiers drinkin’ it up and talkin’ about how they got lucky on leave.” He shook his head. “I know all about that ’cause I used to be one of them. I wouldn’t let her do it. And the bus? That’d be worse.” He looked at me, raising his eyebrows. “You have any idea what that’s like?” he asked. “Sitting in the back, if there’s any seats at all. Having to get out every time you come to a new state line ’cause you’re colored. Fight for a seat on the next bus if you can get on at all, because all the seats are already filled with white folks. No place willing to feed you when you stop in a town. They can’t make that trip out there alone.”
“Could you possibly drive them?” I asked, although I knew it would take forever with gasoline rationed.
He shook his head. “Negro man driving ’cross the country?” he asked. “It wouldn’t be safe for me to try.” He looked past me, scratching his cheek, and I thought he was imagining something I couldn’t possibly comprehend. “Colored folk have a way of disappearing on the road,” he said. Then he looked squarely at me, the slightest smile on his face. “He left you that C gas sticker for a reason,” he said.
“Me?” I was shocked. “I can’t possibly!”
“Can’t you?” he asked. “He left you his car too.”
“What if we had a flat or…”
“I’ll get you another spare,” he said. “And a copy of the Green Book.”
“The green book?”
“It tells you safe places you … Honor and Jilly … can get food and a room for the night. The sundown towns to steer clear of.”
“What’s a ‘sundown town’?”
“Places where she and Jilly wouldn’t be safe after sundown.”
“Oh,” I said. “Once we were out of the South, though, they’d be okay, right?” I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this.
He shook his head. “You read the Green Book, you’ll see. You’ll do it?”
“I’m needed here right now, Zeke,” I said. The trip would take weeks. I thought of Vincent. He was here and I was now free. I didn’t want to leave.
“Hank had faith in you,” he said.
“What about Adora? How can Honor leave her?”
“I’ll take care of Mama,” he said. “Right now she thinks Hank is d
ead, but she’s good at keeping secrets. She’d like knowing Honor and Jilly are safe with him, wherever they are.” He looked toward the tree stumps, rubbing his jaw with his hand, thoughtful. “Maybe in time me and Mama can go out there too,” he said. Then he shook his head, letting out his breath as though he knew he was getting ahead of himself. “We got to just take things one step at a time,” he said.
I thought of the money Hank had been socking away in the armoire. Had he been saving for his escape long before I came on the scene? “He hid money in our room,” I said. “Was this his plan all along?”
“He was savin’ up, but he didn’t rightly know what he was savin’ for except to have money for Butchie and Jilly. He couldn’t use factory money. Miss Ruth kept a tight grip on that, goin’ over the books with a fine-tooth comb. He had to find another way to get money.” He clamped his mouth shut, and I knew he thought he’d said too much.
“The money has something to do with the gasoline rationing coupons, doesn’t it.”
He hesitated. “Everything to do with it,” he said finally. “But you don’t need to know. It’s better you don’t.”
“Yes, I do need to know,” I said. “He owes me that. He owes me the truth.”
He ran his hands over the steering wheel and a few seconds passed before he spoke again. “They were counterfeit, those coupons and stickers,” he said finally. “He printed them at the factory, then he’d sell them to some local people, and Lucy would take them to … I guess you’d call them middlemen. The middlemen would buy a slew of ’em, raise the price and resell them.”
“Lucy!” I thought of the manila envelope she’d wanted to deliver to someone across the river the day of the accident. Then there was that cryptic note Teddy Wright had left for Henry. “Was Teddy Wright involved?” I asked.
Zeke gnawed his lower lip as he decided how much to tell me. “Teddy was the eyes and ears in the police department,” he said finally. “He let Hank know if the police were gettin’ suspicious, which didn’t happen for a long time. Lately, with those agents comin’ ’round, Hank knew it was time to get out.”