Marvena points at the spot just under the squirrel’s tail. “Start there.” She hands Lily her knife; Lily’s hand trembles as she take it. “If’n you’re going to throw up, go outside.” The woman is, after all, standing on her new rag rug.
“I can do this! I used to work with Elias, tending patients during the flu outbreak. I’ve dealt with worse than this—”
“Well, things that don’t normally rile you up can turn you inside out when you’re in the family way—” Marvena stops, wishes she could grab back the words as soon as she’s said them.
Lily’s head snaps up. “Daniel told you?”
It’s best, thinks Marvena, to skirt the direct answer—yes. “Women learn to see. Just go sit down. I’ll make you some tea. Chamomile.”
Lily shakes her head but moves to one of the two chairs by the table. “Why do so many women think tea solves everything? You and Mama. And Nana Sacovech.”
“So you met her.” Marvena slices from under the squirrel’s tail to the top of its hind legs. She pulls the legs free of the skin. “I can give you something stronger, if you’d rather?”
“You mean shine?”
Marvena gives Lily’s sheriff’s star a pointed look. “Course not. I mean Vogel’s Tonic. But in my own jars.”
“Just call it what it is. I’m not going to drag you in for it. I know Daniel mostly looked the other way about shine unless folks got too out of hand.” Lily looks down, reddening.
Huh. Does Lily know that Daniel was George Vogel’s enforcer for this region, for getting moonshine cheap so he could resell it as watered-down “tonic,” while claiming it was made square with laws that allowed for pharmaceutical manufacturing of alcohol? Did Lily know that Vogel would no doubt test her, expect her to follow the same rules of loyalty—and exact a deadly price if she doesn’t? No. She reckons not.
Marvena gets two tin cups, pours shine into each, brings them to the table. “Sip it slow.”
But Lily takes a full drink. “Smooth,” she says.
Marvena lifts her eyebrows. “So, what did Nana have to say?” Hopefully, nothing about the movement. Just because Lily’s father had been for unionization doesn’t mean Lily is. She’s clearly a woman willing to go against the opinions of the men in her life.
“Not much. She didn’t tell me how to find you right away. I think she wanted to be sure that she wanted me to find you. We talked awhile, mostly about weather and gardens and such. I told her about my grandpa working here.”
“Don’t think that’ll make folks here accept you any easier. They’ll be suspicious of a woman with a badge. You know why women don’t go into mines, don’t you?”
“The lore goes beyond just mining towns. Yes. It’s bad luck.”
“Well, some folks are going to see you the same way, poking around in men’s work.”
Lily studies Marvena’s face, searching, and Marvena hardens her look before her expression reveals she might know more about this than ordinary. Good God, but Daniel’s woman is nosey. The men who appointed her might have underestimated her.
The notion almost makes Marvena smile, but she bites her lip as Lily goes on. “Anyway, Nana proclaimed me too weary looking, made me drink tea. Chamomile.” Lily lifts an eyebrow and takes another sip of the shine.
Marvena chuckles. Dammit. She does not want to like Daniel’s Lily.
“Even with Nana’s help, it’s not easy to find me,” Marvena says.
“But you can be found,” Lily says softly. “Even by people you’d rather not find you. I met your dog, Shep. Nana told me he’d been attacked while you were away from your cabin.”
Marvena looks down at her cup. She has no reason to fully trust Lily, not yet. “Frankie and me went mushroom hunting near dusk. Stayed out too long. Came back after dark.”
“I see. So to go trekking about mushroom hunting, Frankie’s foot must have healed fast? From that broken glass on Kinship Road?”
Marvena frowns, unsure why Lily has suddenly turned the conversation in this direction. “It’s on the mend, right nice.”
“Good. That’s good. Tell me—why did you pick that spot for Frankie?”
“Why’s it matter?”
“There are a lot of spots to stop, if you need privacy, on Kinship Road.”
“We didn’t walk the whole way on the main road,” Marvena says slowly. “It’s not the most direct way from our cabin. We came down some paths I know, then along Coal Creek, and then Frankie needed to relieve herself. But it’s too steep on the bank, and so I made her wait till we got to the path from the creek bend up to the main road. See, there’s this unusual tree—”
“The Kinship Tree,” Lily says. “I know it. And the path.”
“Then you know we had to come up the path to the road to come to Kinship.”
Lily nods. “That makes sense. On the way to here, I stopped where Frankie said she cut her foot. There was still glass down that path. On the side opposite the pasture.”
Marvena knows she should understand the import of Lily’s statement, but it eludes her.
“You saw that the driver’s side glass was shot out of Daniel’s automobile?”
Marvena swallows hard, keeps her eyes steady on Lily. She nods, urging Lily on.
“The glass was on the side of the road to Rossville. If he was shot on the way back from Rossville, wouldn’t the glass have been swept off to the pasture side of the road?”
It takes a moment before Marvena gasps. She’d spent little time in automobiles. She’d not made the connection Lily had.
Lily reaches in her dress pocket and pulls out a tiny, rustic doll—one of Daniel’s creations. Marvena doesn’t recognize it as one of the many he’d made her daughters, but she recognizes the button tied like a hat on the top of its head. A button from Daniel’s overcoat.
Lily touches the button. “My little girl told me yours gave this button to her when you came to my house the day of Daniel’s funeral.”
“Mama?” Frankie has finally awoken and comes out from behind the quilt, rubbing her eyes. “Am I gonna have to give back the shoes?”
Marvena starts to command Frankie back to bed, but Lily speaks up first: “Of course not, honey. I was just telling your mama how nice it was for you to give my little girl this button.”
Frankie hobbles over, eager. “Is she here? Can I play with her?”
“She’s back at our house. Can you tell me where you found this?”
“Where I cut my foot. I saw it, thought it was a play-pretty…” Frankie looks at her mama. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, honey.”
“So can I go outside? I wanna pick some flowers. For a bouquet.”
Marvena says, “Go on. Stay where we can keep an eye on you.”
Frankie hurries outside and begins picking flowers along the edge of the woods, the yellow blooms of ragwort and spring cress. For a long time the women sit silently, sipping their cups of shine, staring out the window at the child.
Finally, Lily says flatly, “I kept his buttons sewed on tight.”
Marvena is bewildered. “All right. You’re a good wife. I don’t see—”
Suddenly Lily grasps Marvena’s wrists with both of her hands. Marvena fights the urge to try to pull away, sensing Lily’s grip will only tighten. Instead, Marvena goes still, stares back into Lily’s eyes, feels finger bones dancing up her spine as Lily says, “Here’s what I imagine: Daniel had to be taken by surprise, no doubt. Otherwise he’d have fought back and his attacker would have been killed instead, or at least so sorely wounded that he’d not get far in these hills. Then there’s the fact the driver’s side window was shattered and there’s a bullet hole in the driver’s side door. Two shots, before a third and fourth hit him in the stomach and chest, which means he was out of the automobile, facing toward the shooter.
“I haven’t figured out why Daniel stopped in the first place, but he did. Maybe the hay I saw mixed in with the glass has something to do with it, a bale fallen from a wagon. In a
ny case, he gets out. Senses danger. Turns back to reach in his automobile for his revolver. His button catches on the door handle. He’s in a hurry so he pays it no mind, yet it slows him just enough so that when he turns it’s too late to spot his shooter. There’s a tree in the pasture by where he was shot, and a broken limb up in the tree. There were no windstorms the morning Daniel was shot. So I’m guessing that someone, from up in that tree, shot at him. Then, after Daniel died, took Daniel’s revolver to make it look like he’d been bested, and then ran away.”
Lily abruptly releases Marvena’s wrists. For a long moment, the women sit quietly together, stewing in the possibility that Daniel had been set up. The notion riles Marvena, yet she’s relieved to think Tom hadn’t killed Daniel.
At last Marvena says, “Tom was taken from work, put in the holding cell the night before Daniel died.”
Lily nods. “So Martin Weaver has told me. Tom is the prisoner we think Daniel went to pick up on the morning he was killed. A Pinkerton—I’ve learned his name is Harvey Grayson—came the night before to tell Daniel to come to Rossville to fetch a prisoner. At least, that’s what Daniel told me he said. Do you know Grayson?”
Marvena smirks. “I don’t know the Pinks by name. You doubt what Daniel told you? The reason to come to Rossville?”
“It was unusual—the visit and the rush to collect a prisoner from the holding cell. What would be so special about Tom as a prisoner?”
Marvena’s heart clenches as she recognizes the cleverness of the plan: kill Daniel and set up a miner they already had in custody. Not just any miner. A miner whose sister is the widow of an organizer, who’s known by many to have taken up the cause.
With what had happened to poor Shep, she’s already reckoned it’s possible there’s a turncoat in the cause, that Luther and his men know of her efforts, know that Daniel’s heart had finally turned. Removing Daniel, as she’d theorized at the last gathering in the cave, would make it easier to suppress unionization efforts. Maybe Luther and his supporters think Lily easily manageable, think that Marvena would be broken by losing her brother and Daniel.
And likely she had lost Tom. Once they’d made it look like he escaped, it would be easy enough to kill him. To dump his body in Coal Creek or bury it in a remote spot in the woods.
Marvena looks at Lily. At the house, she’d seemed to dislike Luther. But Marvena is still not sure whether to trust her. Had Daniel told her he was going to come out for unionization? Did the loss of her father to a failed rescue effort ensure her empathy or embitter her?
Carefully, Marvena states what Lily could easily learn from anyone. “Tom was known to talk unionization. Daniel was known to be opposed. On the side of Luther.”
“But ever since my daddy and the other men died, Daniel talked about the possibility of switching his view. And I believe Daniel was about ready to come out publicly for it, too. Luther said you were the widow of a miner, an organizer,” Lily says. “Is that another reason Daniel turned pro-union?”
Marvena nods.
“I see. Has your husband been gone long—or was he one of the men lost in the Widowmaker last fall?”
Lily’s tone has turned tremulous and Marvena realizes that Lily is probing the nature and depth of her relationship with Daniel.
“In the Widowmaker.” God. The woman doesn’t know her father died alongside John. Daniel would not have filled her in on this detail. “My husband was John Rutherford.”
Lily takes a shaky breath. “I recognize that name. He’s the other rescuer who—So your husband and my father died together?”
Marvena nods. “Like Luther said, me and Daniel were friends since he was a boy. We met by happenstance. We saw one another off ’n’ on … till he met you. For the past ten years, we didn’t have more than nodding acquaintance. Then after the Widowmaker … Daniel came to tell me the news about John. He—told me about your father, too. Daniel checked on me and Eula and Frankie after that, but there was nothing more than friendship between us.”
Well. Nothing more from Daniel. As Marvena has come to realize since Daniel’s death, his visits after John’s passing had stirred in her the old feelings, But there’s no use telling Lily that.
“Thank you,” Lily says quietly. After a moment, she adds, “If John was a unionizer, and Tom was wanted for stirring up unionization, are you involved, too?”
Marvena pulls her hands away, looks down. The woman is sharp. But Marvena doesn’t want to trust her with full disclosure of her role. Not on a second meeting. Trust is hard for Marvena. She’d learned how to gingerly approach trusting again through John. But then he’d died, and Eula had taken off to consort with Pinks, and now Jurgis thinks she should forget about Eula.
By the time Marvena looks back up at Lily, to try to decide how much more to share, Lily has stood up and walked over to her coat hanging on a peg. She gets out a small box from a deep pocket. She returns to the table and sets it before Marvena.
Marvena stares at the box, with gold foil lettering she can’t read and the image of a delicately coiffed woman putting a candy in her mouth. Another gift of food?
“I promised I’d look for any notes Daniel may have made about Eula,” Lily says. “I looked, though he wasn’t one for taking detailed notes. I was the one who wrote up the files for our prisoners and Daniel’s cases. He barely wrote me during the Great War—”
Marvena startles at that. She’d received many a letter from Daniel at the general post office in Rossville during the war. Not that she could read them—she’d never learned. And she’d never told Daniel that. But she’d kept all the letters.
Lily smiles. “It’s all right; some men are just terrible about things like writing,” she says, misinterpreting Marvena’s reaction. “Daniel was always … taciturn. Anyway. I did find this box in his drawer at the jailhouse. I think you should open it. See if the contents are familiar.”
With a trembling hand, Marvena lifts the lid. A faint sweet scent rises from the box.
She stares at the hair comb, with Eula’s blond hair entwining the tines. She spots a spare button from the dress Marvena had made for the child’s birthday with fabric Daniel had given her. Foil, from one of the chocolates. Feather. Rock. Arrowhead, carved from rock. One of the many tiny dolls, like Daniel used to make for Eula when she was little, like he’d made for Frankie. And of course Jolene. She didn’t realize Eula had saved some of the dolls.
Marvena looks up at Lily, sees that she’s gazing at the quilt that hangs over the sleeping area of the cabin. Her gaze is laser focused on a patch, made from the same material as both Eula’s Christmas dress and the doll’s—pale blue cotton, patterned with red flowers. Nothing went to waste in Marvena’s cabin.
Marvena reaches for her cup, mouth aching for shine. But her throat is suddenly so tight she won’t be able to swallow.
“Eula’s?” Lily asks.
Marvena nods.
“Where would Daniel have gotten it? The boardinghouse?”
Marvena nods again. “When I told him she hadn’t been seen, he likely went there first.”
“When was this?”
“About a week and a half ago.”
“Was this the last time you saw him?”
“Yes. He was supposed to come by with news of anything he found out…”—she pauses, mentally counts back—“five days ago.”
“The day he was killed,” Lily says softly.
Marvena holds Lily’s gaze with her own. “Yes.”
Lily stands. “I’ll go by the boardinghouse, but it will have to be tomorrow. It’s getting dark and I need to get home.”
Marvena nods. “Thank you.” She puts the lid on the box, pushes it toward Lily.
Lily shakes her head. “You keep it.” She stands, gets her coat, opens the door. They hear Frankie singing as she plays along the wood’s edge. “She has such a pretty voice,” Lily says.
“Like her daddy,” Marvena says. “John was always humming some tune or other.…”
; Lily’s stance stiffens. She says, “Frankie and Eula … they’re full sisters?”
Marvena considers how to answer—tell her an easy lie of yes? But as Marvena studies the woman, she softens, reckons that Lily has shown herself to be tough, coming here, and that she’s earned hearing the truth. “What Luther said was true. Daniel and I were friends from childhood. Then, lovers. He left for his boxing career with George Vogel—anything to get away from these hills and hollers. His father was hard on him. He didn’t much like living on the farm with Elias and his family, either.
“He left when he was eighteen. By the time he came back a few years later, I was already working at the boardinghouse. By the time he came back the second time, I’d had Eula.”
“When was this?”
“Let’s see—Eula was six by then. Daniel had lost his first fight, been injured. Came back to his uncle Elias’s to recover, retrain. Anyway, I’d moved back here—this was our grandpappy’s cabin first, then our daddy’s, and then Tom moved to Rossville to work for Ross Mining. I took up my daddy’s business to eke out a living for me and Eula. Truth be told, I don’t rightly know who Eula’s father was. Anyways, by the time I saw Daniel again, I’d already met John. And Frankie is definitely John’s.”
For a moment, Marvena sees him, sitting on her porch, making another doll, when she and Eula came home one night, after a rare afternoon away at a taffy pull. Daniel gave the doll to seven-year-old Eula with his usual fanfare, and then Marvena had sent the child inside. She had news for Daniel, news she thought he’d find hard to bear—she’d met John Rutherford, a man who’d never married, had no children of his own, a man with sadness carved around eyes and mouth, and arms too lean. He’d taken a fancy to her, watched over Eula.
Daniel had been happy for her. More than that, relieved. He had, he said, met the woman he would someday marry—Lily McArthur—when she was old enough. In the meantime, he was going back to Cincinnati, to fight again for George Vogel. He just, he said, wanted her to know.
And then Daniel had asked, Would John Rutherford be kind to Marvena? To Eula?
The Widows Page 14