by Ashley Clark
And keeping the babies together, side by side, would be the most dangerous possibility of all.
Millie trembled as one baby yawned and the other nuzzled against her chest.
The one-two tug Millie had carried on for decades had materialized in human form. She had chosen to live as a white woman with Franklin. She’d been happy here, but she had never forgotten Mama. Never forgotten the life she left behind.
Never stopped aching with pride for the family, the heritage Mama had told her to leave behind.
Now she had to choose all over again.
Maybe she could run.
But no amount of running would loosen the curls, darken or lighten the skin of a child. She could tell everyone her father was Italian, and the darker-skinned baby favored him. But would they believe her? Would she ever be able to escape deceit? And would her daughter come to resent her for teaching the denial of her heritage along with pride? Would she understand it was safety that prompted Millie’s lies?
She still struggled for breath, and she thought for a moment that she might faint all over again.
Would she live with such breathlessness for the rest of her life?
“Are you ready for me to call Mr. Franklin?”
Millie’s mouth was dry, but she feared even the slightest drink of water might turn her stomach.
Slowly, she nodded. What the heavens was she going to tell him?
But for her daughters’ sake, she had to be strong.
For the longest time, Franklin just stared at them. All of them. Stared with his hands in his pockets, at the foot of the bed.
Millie loved another man. His Millie loved another man. Though he had loved her since their vows.
It was the only thing that made sense. The only reason why the babies looked different from each other.
Franklin desperately wanted to reach for the children. Wanted to touch them, hold them, and kiss his wife for birthing the most beautiful babies in the world.
But he didn’t know what to do now. What to think, for that matter.
He didn’t know if these were even his babies. They had come early, after all, and he needn’t be a fool about the timeline.
But on the other hand, they were small.
Franklin tightened his fists in his pockets. Life had been much less terrifying when he jumped trains and had only himself to think about.
Millie watched him as tears streamed down her face.
His trance broke when he saw her cry.
Franklin hurried over to her side and crouched beside the bed. Then with his thumb, he wiped the tears one by one from her eyes.
“The children are perfect.” His voice was hoarse. He locked in on Millie’s gaze, and something in the fiery ring around her eyes shook him down to his core.
She was terrified.
He could feel it from her eyes.
Franklin brushed the hair back from her sweaty forehead. “Red, what . . . why . . .”
“My mother was Black.” She blurted out the words, never once looking away from him. “My father was Italian. That’s why they killed him. They were after me for playing with their children, and he shoved them away to protect me. They grabbed him, and . . .” More tears streamed down. “After that, I learned to be more careful.”
Killed him?
Franklin struggled to understand. It was all happening so fast. The floor spun beneath him.
He knew this kind of thing happened. Everybody knew this kind of thing happened. That people out there would kill somebody just for their race or culture. In body, yes, but in other ways too—in soul and spirit, with words and hate, and maybe by instilling fear most of all. But Franklin realized with sudden clarity how lucky he’d been that he had never seen it or felt it or really known it. Until now.
He reached for her hand.
Millie’s body looked weak, lying there in the bed, and he worried over her condition. But her voice was strong. She told the story as if she were telling the whole thing for the first time. In a way, maybe she was.
“When we met, you assumed I was white, and I wanted people to think that. I thought it would give me a better chance at my dress shop. My mama made me swear I’d never tell anybody the truth because she wanted to protect me from what happened to my father.” Millie leaned her head back against the bed pillows, and both babies squirmed in her arms. “But the truth is, Franklin, I’m only half white. And in my own way, I think I loved you from the moment we met.”
Franklin closed his eyes as his body clenched from top to bottom. He turned from the bed and shook his head. “Millie, how could you?” he rasped.
“I thought if you realized the truth, it might all come crashing down beneath my feet. This life we’ve built together.” She whispered the words.
Franklin’s attention snapped back. He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “Is that what you think?”
“Isn’t it why you’re mad? Why, even our marriage papers wouldn’t hold up by the law.”
“Millie.” His tone was firm. She had just given birth, and he needn’t be too harsh. He didn’t want to weaken her further by traumatizing her. But she should know. She should know how he cared for her, what she had done to change his life. “For years, I have loved you day in and day out. To me, you’re the same woman today that you were on that train. The same woman who saved me from living and dying on those trains. Whatever your heritage is, Millie, I’ll love that too—because it made you who you are.”
Millie gently shook her head and began to tremble badly. Had the aftereffects from birth caused this reaction, or were his words to blame?
He tried to calm her with his hand on her arm, but the shaking only grew worse. Even her teeth chattered. “What I can’t believe, Red, is that you didn’t trust me. All this time.”
Millie’s face and arms and hands were sweating, so Franklin reached for the towel at the other side of the bed. The sheets were still drenched with blood, and the sight of it sobered him. For some reason, he hadn’t noticed it until now.
For the first time in a long time, Franklin began to cry.
He could’ve lost her today. That’s what Clemence said. He could have lost her.
Franklin couldn’t stop himself. He leaned down and kissed her as he had waited to kiss her all afternoon long. He kissed her as the girl on the train, he kissed her as the mother of his children, and he kissed her as his bride.
“What about now?” She looked up at him.
“We raise them,” he said. “Simple as that.”
Millie paled and looked as though she might be sick. She looked down to the babies sleeping in her arms. “We can only choose one.”
Franklin balked. “No.” He would sooner give his right arm.
“I know this reality as you do not.” Millie moistened her chapped lips and struggled to sit up in the bed. “Franklin, there’s far too much violence to raise them together. And that’s to say nothing of different seats at the theater, different drinking fountains, different schools. I realize you are enchanted with them, but you must think of this with logic. For their sake, you must be strong.”
Franklin was trying to be strong. But his heart was racing along with his mind, and he wasn’t sure he could be trusted to think straight right now. He was too in love with both babies already to know how to do right by them.
“I’m not afraid, Millie,” he said.
“Well, you should be!” she snapped with a fury he’d never seen before. “There’s no amount of wishful thinking on our part that can deny reality.” She looked down at the babies. “Their reality. All they will face.” Her expression grew wistful. “If others see our girls together—twin sisters—who look so very different . . . people will talk. People will make assumptions. And the consequences for our marriage, our family . . . their lives will both be in danger. My entire life, I have tried to find a way to hold both parts of my identity. The world hasn’t let me.”
Franklin sobered.
Millie had been forced to hide hal
f her past . . . a past it was now so obvious she loved. She wasn’t acting out of selfishness—if she were, she’d want to keep both daughters here under one roof just like he did. Who would want to separate their heart, their future?
Certainly not Millie. She was trying to keep them safe in the best way she knew how. Franklin didn’t know what the answer was, but he did see that much clearly now.
“Maybe someday things will be different. Maybe someday we can hold them both side by side. But for now, doing so would only bring harm upon them. We can take the lighter-toned child to your mother in Charleston. She will have opportunities there that we could never give her here. And I want to raise the curly-haired daughter ourselves. The tips of her ears are a little darker, and in coming days her color will deepen. This way, I can look after her myself as that happens, and in the days and months and years beyond. Keep her safe from harm.”
Millie spoke as if it were so simple, as if her mind were made up.
“What about when people ask questions?”
“We’ll notate their birthdays a week apart so no one suspects they’re twins. As for the darker skin and features”—Millie stroked the hair of one baby, then the other, with her thumb—“my father was Italian. We can say that.”
“Will people believe it?”
“Time will tell,” Millie murmured.
Everything within Franklin screamed that this was wrong. Screamed that there must be something they could do, some way they could raise both children.
But he was quiet.
Because for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any way to make it happen.
And he knew then, looking at Millie, that her mind was made up. He knew then why she trembled, and he knew their family would never be so whole as they were right now, when his wife held both fragile daughters in her own fragile arms.
“I’ll phone my mother,” Franklin said. “Maybe we can take both babies around the city, try to come up with another plan. Some way to keep them together. We’ll even visit the train terminal where we first met.”
But Millie shook her head. “Mama said the train terminal on East Bay Street burned clear down. No going back now.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Charleston, Modern Day
Harper sat out on a wicker rocker on the second-story porch overlooking King Street and made a mental checklist of all that still needed to be done before the expo in a couple days.
Farther down King, toward the college, the hustle and bustle of youth would keep the streets vibrant late into the evening. But on this side—the antiques side, as Harper liked to call it—the busyness of the day had dimmed to a glow of streetlights and the occasional passersby holding hands or enjoying an ice cream.
She sighed.
Peter rapped his knuckles against the porch door. “Got a minute?”
Harper shifted in her chair to face him. “Sure.”
He opened the door and stepped into full view. A whiff of the pecan pie Millie was baking accompanied Peter outside.
He wore that familiar grey button-down with black pants, a black tie, black socks, and black shoes. His pants fit like he bought them at Pacific Sunwear ten years ago. “What do you think of this?” He gestured toward his ensemble. “For the expo?”
Harper opened her mouth to speak. Then she closed it, tilting her head slightly to the side. She pointed her finger toward him. “That is, uh . . . yeah, are you sure you want to go with grey?”
Peter made no effort to hide the smile on his lips. “You think I look ridiculous.”
“No way! Not ridiculous at all.”
“Hideous?”
Harper crossed her legs and bounced the heel of her foot in and out of her pink sandal. She cleared her throat and used her hands while she spoke. “It’s just that you’re such a . . . vibrant . . . person, and all the grey is maybe a tad dreary?”
“You think I look dreary.” Peter looked down and pressed his shirt with his hands. “But I wore the skinny tie.”
Harper folded her lips to keep her laugh contained. “Yeah, skinny ties aren’t really a thing anymore.”
“What?” Peter adjusted his glasses and feigned shock. “And here I was, thinking I’m so fashion forward.”
Harper did laugh at that. “You know you don’t have to attend this thing, right?”
Peter pocketed his hands, hesitating like a guilty toddler. What was he hiding? Did he actually want to go for some reason?
“It’s no trouble,” he said. “Besides, I want to be there in person to thank my friend for waiving the entrance fee.”
“I can appreciate that.” Harper nodded. “Do you want me to look through the rest of your closet to see if there’s anything else I can put together?”
Peter gestured toward his clothes with both hands. “I can definitively say this is as good as it gets.”
Harper took a good look at him. Her attention caught over his broad shoulders and blue-green eyes. Yeah, that outfit was definitely not as good as it was going to get.
“Sometimes—” The wind blew a wisp of Harper’s hair into her eyes as she stood to go inside. Less than a foot away from Peter, she raised her chin and looked up at him. “Well, it’s like your old houses. You’ve got an eye to see the beauty beyond the dust. With the right restoration, something really special can happen.”
Peter met her gaze, his dimples showing. “Did you just compare my clothes to a condemned building?”
Harper rested her hand on his shoulder and returned his smile. “I absolutely did, and in case you didn’t read between the lines, we’re going shopping tomorrow.”
Clearly humored, his expression softened, and he made no effort to remove her hand from his shoulder. “Are you going to fairy-godmother me?” He opened the porch door wider.
“How do you feel about pumpkins?” Harper slipped under his arm, through the doorway.
The next morning, Harper brushed the Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit crumbs from her lace-overlay skirt while she stared at the dressing room door, waiting for Peter.
“This is embarrassing,” he mumbled.
“I’m sure that’s not true.” It’d taken a solid ten minutes to get him past the sticker shock of how much a well-fitting pair of pants cost.
“I look like that guy from The Notebook.”
Harper crossed her arms and tapped her kitten heels. “That guy from The Notebook is named Ryan Gosling, and women all over the world adore him, so you could do much worse.”
“Okay, then I look like Ryan Seacrest.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “The pants are slim fit. It’s what everyone wears now.” And had been wearing for the last decade.
“I’m not feeling the skinny jeans. What’s next? You’re going to take me to buy a fedora and a European coffee roaster?”
“So many things are happening in that sentence, I don’t know where to start.” Harper watched his socked feet and the hem of his pants shuffle back and forth under the door. “Would you please just let me see?”
Slowly, he opened the door.
He wore a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned at the top, a fitted black blazer, and the aforementioned slim-cut pants. He slipped his feet into the old-fashioned brown saddlebacks she had found for him.
And Harper’s mouth dropped. Hello, Ryan Gosling.
“You seem flustered. Are you okay?” He raised an eyebrow.
She swallowed. No, she was not okay. She didn’t know what she was expecting. But it was definitely not this. This was . . . surprising.
Yes, that was a good word for it.
Heart-leap-into-your-throat-so-you-can’t-breathe surprising.
Peter even smelled delicious.
Harper took a second to compose herself. Her toes were tingly. And her toes only got tingly when she was smitten by someone.
She blinked.
Unfortunately, it did nothing to close her nostrils to the smell of sandalwood and anticipation.
“So, what do you think?” He inched down ever so sli
ghtly so he could meet her eyes. Lord have mercy, if he could read what was going on behind them. But Harper feared she could only hide her attraction so long.
She gently pulled the chain of her necklace back and forth. “I think it’s a definite step in the right direction.”
She liked him.
Peter could feel it in the way she checked the fabric of his coat, her fingers lingering on his elbow. Her gentle touch shook him right down to his feet.
He took a glance at himself in the mirror of the dressing room. He could be this man—for one night, at least. The kind of man Harper Rae wanted to see.
Peter slid his arms out from the coat jacket and placed it back on the hanger. He was careful not to get dirt on anything. This store probably charged money to breathe. And he’d been saving all his extra cash flow for the repairs that needed to be done on the dress store.
He didn’t even care about the building anymore. He just wanted it for Harper and Millie.
And he had a plan for that now, at least. The wealthy client on the Battery. He’d be working lots of extra hours on the restoration project, but that money—combined with some of his savings—should be enough for the repairs. He wouldn’t even have to evict Harper and Millie, just tell them some maintenance was needed on the building as he tried to coordinate with their business hours.
Peter followed the buttons from his collar down, careful not to loosen them as he unfastened each one. He was ready to shimmy back into his T-shirt. Expensive clothes made him nervous. He was a whole lot more comfortable in his walking tour uniform, which consisted of a faded polo and khakis.
But if it meant Harper looked at him like that again, he’d buy a three-piece suit and all of Pemberley.
Twilight fell on the twinkling city streets the next evening as Harper and Millie waited in the living area of the loft. Millie wore her signature red cloche, red lipstick, and a velvet navy dress that was every kind of classy. Harper had decided to wear the antique dress she’d been repairing, and she liked to think the golden tones of the skirt brought out a little sparkle in her cheeks.