LILY
“I still think this is the damned foolest thing I’ve ever heard tell of a woman doing,” Mama says the next morning as Lily steps into the kitchen. Mama’s round face is so puckered with outrage that her mouth looks like the top of a drawstring purse. “And just two days after—”
Mama stops shy of finishing—after Daniel’s burial.
But Lily sees, besides the outrage, the lines of worry on Mama’s face. Lily goes over and kisses her on the cheek. “Yet you came. Thank you.”
“Well, don’t take my presence as approval. Though you do look right nice.…” Mama’s grudging compliment trails off as she looks at Lily’s abdomen. A look of suspicion crosses her face, and Lily quickly turns away, toward the table where the children sit.
“Now, you all be good while I’m out—” Lily starts. But then she sees that Jolene is playing with one of the tiny dolls Daniel made. This one has a dress from a bit of white-and-red-checked fabric that Lily recognizes—and something else. A bronze button, with thread tying it to the top of the doll’s head, like a hat.
Lily rushes to the table, snatches the doll from Jolene. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s one of the dolls that Daddy—”
“I mean the button.” It’s from Daniel’s jacket, the one he’d been wearing when he left the morning of his murder. She always made sure his buttons were secure. “Where did you get it?”
“From that girl. Who came the day … that day.” Lily’s heart turns as she realizes Jolene can’t bring herself to directly reference her father’s burial just two days ago.
“Am I gonna get a switching?” Jolene’s voice trembles. “She said I could have it.”
“Did she say where she got it?”
Jolene shakes her head.
Lily forces a smile. “That was nice of her, Jolene. It makes a nice hat. May I borrow it?”
Jolene nods slowly, but her lip trembles. “Mama? Are you going to be all right?”
Lily kneels before Jolene, tucks a stray strand behind her daughter’s ear. “I’m going to be fine. Say—would you like to come with me? Hold the Bible while I swear in?”
Jolene’s face brightens with joy as this time she nods vigorously. Lily pockets the doll and turns to look at Mama. “Don’t hold lunch for me. I have some things I need to take care of.”
“Beats all I’ve ever heard tell of, a woman sheriff,” Mama mutters. But then she rushes over and puts her hands to Lily’s face. “Don’t let a tin star make you do fool things, child.”
As Lily looks down at Mama’s face, she sees her mother’s scowl is a thin mask for all her past losses, for worry about what her tomboy, impetuous daughter will do. No doubt her trip to Kinship Inn has already gotten back to Mama.
Lily doesn’t say anything; she won’t make reassurances she likely won’t keep. But she scoops her mama up in a hug and presses a gentle kiss to the top of her graying head.
* * *
“I, Lily Ross, do solemnly swear, that I will support, uphold, and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Ohio, and the Charter and laws of Bronwyn County, Ohio; that I will faithfully, honestly, diligently, and impartially perform and discharge all of the powers and duties incumbent upon me as sheriff in and for the county of Bronwyn, state of Ohio, according to the best of my ability and understanding. So help me God.”
After her swearing in, Lily lowers her right hand and takes her left hand from the Bible that Jolene holds while staring up, beaming with pride. Jolene pins a sheriff’s star on Lily’s lapel.
“Good luck, Sheriff Ross,” says the judge.
Just that quick, the ceremony is over. Jolene tucks the Ross family Bible under her arm. Lily takes her daughter’s hand and turns in the courtroom to see that a small audience has gathered. Martin and Hildy. There in the back row, Luther and Elias. Word had spread.
Lily thanks Martin for coming and then asks Hildy to walk Jolene back to the house.
“First duty as jail mistress?” Hildy quips.
Lily gives a quick smile but flicks a wary gaze toward her brother-in-law and uncle. Even across the courtroom, Lily sees the glaze to Luther’s eyes. After Martin, Hildy, and Jolene leave, Lily hurries past Luther and Elias in the hallway, hoping to escape with a nod.
But Luther’s words catch her. “So here’s our new pretty little lady sheriff.” His voice is sloshy, the sloppiness of a drunk.
“Luther, don’t—Lily, please wait—” Elias is saying. Lily stares down the long hallway, tiled in black and white, a checkerboard that makes her momentarily queasy. She puts her hand to her stomach; she’d either not had or not noticed morning sickness in the blur of days since Daniel’s been found, but now, of all times, it seemed to be returning.
“I’m sorry,” Elias says. “I thought—we thought—we should be here for such a momentous occasion since we’re family.”
After Elias’s wife and daughter died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, Luther, a lifelong bachelor, moved from his Rossville house and into the farmhouse, supposedly to temporarily keep an eye on Elias. But it wasn’t temporary, and now Elias kept an eye on Luther.
Lily offers Elias a quick smile and pats his arm. Family had always meant everything to Elias, and he’d lost so many—his wife, his daughter. Now his nephew Daniel.
But she looks pointedly at Luther. “Do you know where Harvey Grayson has gone?”
Luther looks confused. “Who?”
“The Pinkerton who showed up here, the night before Daniel died. You told me the man’s name is Harvey Grayson.”
Luther stares at her blankly and Lily realizes that he doesn’t recollect their conversation on the porch. He probably doesn’t even recollect his nasty words to and about Marvena.
“I was at the inn yesterday to locate Mr. Grayson,” Lily says. Just yesterday? It feels like a lifetime ago. “He left the day of Daniel’s funeral. If he was reassigned, surely you received word from the Pinkerton Agency? So you could tell me where he was sent?”
Luther shrugs. “The agency doesn’t share where their agents are reassigned. Why should they? I don’t care, so long as I have sufficient numbers. One’s as good as another.”
“Like miners?”
Luther grins again. “Something like that.”
“I’ve also learned that the escaped prisoner is Tom Whitcomb. The brother of Marvena. Did you know that?”
Luther’s grin dissolves into a frown. “Of course,” he says, blustering. He didn’t know, Lily thinks. God, did he pay attention to anything except drinking and trying to squeeze every bit of profit out of Ross Mining?
He looks at Elias. “I’ll wait for you outside.” He staggers down the hallway, whistling.
Lily finally looks back at Elias. “You’re driving, I hope?” She really didn’t want her first duty as sheriff to be filing a report on Luther having an accident.
“Of course, though it will be hard to convince him. You know how stubborn Luther can be.” Elias smiles sadly. “He and Daniel had at least that much in common.”
Elias looks at Lily, waiting, she knows, for her to soften. But she keeps her gaze hard.
“Lily,” Elias says, “he’s hurting, too. Things were hard between him and Daniel, but—”
“Don’t!” The single word comes out as a snap.
As Lily watches Elias walk away, she suddenly longs to catch up, to apologize, but she doesn’t want to confront Luther again. So she waits, giving herself a moment to simply breathe.
* * *
Minutes later, Lily steps out of the courthouse. She notes that Luther and Elias are nowhere in sight and is just observing that the spring day has turned blustery when two men rush up to her.
“Mrs. Ross! Mrs. Ross!” one calls. The other one, right behind him, holds up a camera; a loud pop and a flash of light and for a moment Lily can’t see.
When her eyes clear, the man who called her name is grinning, pencil poised to notepad.
“So,
Mrs. Ross, how does it feel to be the first lady sheriff in all of Ohio? It’s a novelty position, but does this take some of the sting out of your husband’s death?”
Lily glances behind the men, calculating; other people on the steps and walking in front of the courthouse have stopped to stare at this spectacle.
“Darby Turner,” the man says, “with the Cincinnati Enquirer.”
Odd, Lily thinks. She doesn’t see anyone from the Kinship Weekly Courier, which had carried the news of Daniel’s death on its front page. Possibly other papers in the state had carried it as a news item, farther in. She hadn’t thought her appointment especially newsworthy, although she knew it would be duly reported locally.
“Really something, a lady sheriff!” Darby is saying. “We did some digging and it seems the first was in Texas, about seven years back, similar situation—the sheriff died in office, and his wife, who’d been his office deputy, filled in as sheriff. Just until the next election, of course.”
Lily gives a tight smile. “Was her husband shot by an escaping prisoner, too?”
The man recoils. “No. Stroke.”
“Mmm. Still hard on the poor widow and the man’s children, I’m sure. And this other lady sheriff, until she—of course—gave up her role at the next election, was she a novelty?”
The reporter frowns. “I don’t know.”
“You weren’t here, as far as I know, covering my husband’s death. So, novelty though I might be, why come all this way? And how did you know so quickly?”
Mr. Turner grins. “We received a tip. Now for my question. Is it safe to say you plan to carry on the role in the same way that your husband did?”
“I couldn’t possibly dream of filling my husband’s shoes,” she says, forcing a demure smile to her lips. “I’m sure Commissioner Riley and Deputy Weaver will guide me, though.”
* * *
Lily starts to enter the bank but stops short upon spotting the playbill poster in the bank window: “One Week Only! May 1–8, Kinship Opera House, Carson’s Troupe, Five Vaudeville Acts: Miss Hennypen’s Violin, Maestro Bo’s Magic Show, Master Gill (All the Way from London!) the Elocutionist Recites Shakespeare, William and Guthrie’s Amazing Dancing Mule, PLUS the newest Clara Bow comedy-romance, Kiss Me Again!”
Lily puts her hand to the pane as she studies the line drawings, rendered in thick black lines, of the violinist, the magician, the mule, and the photo of Miss Bow’s enchanting pout.
The playbill reminds her of another from nine years ago. Lily leans into her hand on the glass. The image of Daniel’s poster conjures itself with dizzying force.
Lily had been on a rare trip with Mama to Roer’s Department & Dry Goods Store. While Mama coveted the new lace-up shoes on display, Lily lingered in front of Kinship Trust Savings & Loan, staring at a poster ad for three weeks from the day at the Kinship Opera House, “The Middleweight Fight of the New Century for the Greater Appalachian Region,” with a photo of Daniel Ross, wearing just black shoes, socks, shorts, and boxing gloves, legs, fists, arms in a fighter’s stance, leaning toward his imaginary opponent with a cocksure grin.
For the past two years, she’d cursed Daniel Ross for unearthing desires she’d never known before, making her miserable for the want of delicious, terrifying things, leading her to dare dream he wanted those things, too. Then leaving. Telling her there’d be a sign of him—of all things, a hawk looking at her. She’d not seen that or any other sign of him, and she’d stopped believing in signs. But dreams of him had not stopped, and that made her confused and angry.
Yet the sight of him, even in a grainy publicity photo, dissolved her anger like sugar on the tongue. She remembered that last moment in the barn.
He was beautiful.
He was everything she wanted in life.
The sudden knowing of how much she’d missed him broke loose, spilled over her, washed down her back, between her breasts, over her arms, though her groin, soaked her flesh.
When Mama called her name, she was leaning into the wall, forehead against the poster. Mama had given her a little shake, then clucked: Boxing brings out men’s savagery. Yet, as Lily followed Mama into the dry goods store, she had sworn to herself she’d find a way to go to that boxing match, to see Daniel again, to confront him.…
A man accidentally jostles Lily—another Pinkerton. He stares at Lily, then at the sheriff’s star on her lapel, and then looks back at her with a sneer before continuing to the street.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lily spots him joining several other new Pinkerton men walking down the road from the train station, a cocky swagger to their steps, their coats pulled back to reveal their weapons. A shopkeeper—Mr. Douglas, who’d bought out her daddy’s business—steps back from sweeping to let them pass.
A woman with a pram crosses the street, away from the lurid gaze of one of them.
Another question to jot in her notebook: Why is Luther bringing in more Pinkertons?
She squares her shoulders, walks tall, and enters the bank.
* * *
Inside, after Lily has requested the manager, she sits in a leather chair in the waiting area. She’s never had reason to be in the bank—Daniel took care of all of their finances—and so she gazes at the polished woodwork, the black-and-white-marbled floor.
A side door opens; Mr. Chandler, the bank manager, emerges. “Mrs. Ross,” he says.
Lily follows him into his office. After they’ve settled in chairs, Mr. Chandler looks solemnly across his desk at Lily. “Mrs. Ross, we thought highly of your husband. We are all sorrowful at his loss. As the estate is settled, I’m sure his holdings will transfer to you.”
“I’m here to ask about a second account, separate from his primary account,” Lily says.
Mr. Chandler’s eyebrows lift. He steeples his fingertips together. “I see,” he says, and Lily takes his sudden reddening as indication that he’s well aware Daniel did have a separate account. She unclasps her pocketbook and pulls out the second savings and loan passbook.
“I found this. It’s out of date. I’m hopeful that you can tell me the full balance?” Lily pushes the passbook to him.
“Sheriff Ross did keep a secondary account. He set it up to pass in its entirety to you in case anything happened to him. If you’ll wait a moment, I can look up the exact amount for you, but I think you’ll find on the question of finances that you needn’t worry.” The banker gives her a sympathetic look. “Daniel wanted you to be taken care of. He’d be surprised you’ve become acting sheriff.”
Surprised? He’d be furious.
After Mr. Chandler steps out of his office, sudden fear pinches Lily’s throat, unbidden thoughts creeping forth: What if Daniel had changed his mind about this account going to her? What if he was one of those husbands who kept a secret account for a mistress? There was Marvena, but she wants to believe—needs to believe—that whatever had been between them was over long before Lily was part of Daniel’s life. And Marvena certainly didn’t have the visage or dress of a well-kept mistress.
Lily feels a moment of satisfaction at the thought, then shame at judging Marvena so superficially, and then shame comes full circle to fear. Her stomach is contorting by the time Mr. Chandler reenters the office and sits down behind his desk. He slides a piece of paper toward her. “It will take a few days to create a ledger for you of all the deposits and withdrawals over the years, but here is the balance as of today.”
Lily has to fight to keep from gasping as she stares at the figure. Just over six times what Daniel made in a year.
$12,520.68.
* * *
Abe Miller is standing on Lily’s front porch when she returns to her house. He leans against the porch post, casually flicking ashes into the standing ashtray.
So. He has received word at Kinship Inn that she’d come looking for him.
There are no scars on his smooth skin, no grime under his nails, no flecks on his perfectly pressed suit, and yet Lily sees in the directness of his
gaze, the precision of his stance, even in how he holds his cigarette so steadily as its ash grows too long, that this man’s goal is simple, calculated: efficient, passionless survival.
“I’ve heard you came calling for me,” Abe says.
“You came to Daniel’s burial,” Lily says. She clenches her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “You tried to speak to me at the cemetery.”
Abe smiles, but there’s nothing to it, not even bemusement. It’s merely a reflex at her devotion to propriety, even in the most unusual circumstances. “I’ve come to offer condolences on Mr. and Mrs. Vogel’s behalf.”
“Thank you. Please tell the Vogels I appreciate that.”
“Certainly. Now then, I’m here as well because we’ve received news of your appointment in Daniel’s stead as sheriff. So in addition, I offer congratulations on Mr. Vogel’s behalf. We were, ah, very beholden to your late husband. As he was to us.”
Lily’s face flames as the sum echoes in her head: $12,520.68 …
After Daniel had returned from the war, he’d taken her again to the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati, a second honeymoon, this time a gift from him, not George Vogel. They had a wonderful time. But one morning, Lily had awoken to find her husband gone from their bed.
Daniel could no longer fight due to shrapnel that had torn through his shoulder—his heroics in the Great War had been reported in not only the Kinship Weekly Courier but in the Cincinnati and Columbus papers as well. Only one person could get Daniel to leave her side.
George Vogel.
She’d dressed in the garnet V-necked dress she’d worn the night before and searched the hotel until she found them in the bar: Daniel. George Vogel. Abe Miller. Goons tried to turn her away, but George waved them off and her in, his gaze leering. This was the second time she’d met George and Abe. Suddenly she felt exposed rather than elegant in her dress.
As she’d taken a seat next to Daniel, George told her that Daniel had just agreed to work for him. And when she’d looked back at Daniel in horror, he’d simply stated that George had heard of their stay at the Sinton, asked him to work in his business in Cincinnati, but that he’d declined the offer. Instead, he’d follow up on another tidbit of interesting news from George—that Bronwyn County Sheriff Tate was planning to retire. Daniel would run for sheriff. He’d win, given that he was a war hero.
The Widows Page 11