(She’d have to learn not to worry about those things; just because Jo was in the habit of pulling people aside for news for the last month didn’t mean every private moment was a dangerous one.)
“All of us were stumped after that,” Violet said. “We worried Father had gotten his hands on you.”
“Some of us did,” said Doris. “I always figured that if he had you, you’d have cut the phone line so he couldn’t call around scaring people.”
“Some of who did?” Jo said. “Who else have you seen? Is everyone all right?”
“Rebecca and Araminta are still in the city,” Sophie said. “Araminta already has work at Bloomingdale’s. She’s a seamstress there, does alterations in Ladies’ Gowns.” There was a note of wistful envy in the words.
“And Rebecca’s gone to school for stenography,” Doris said. “She had so much money stashed away that she could afford school three times over, but she’ll end up somewhere that does her good.”
Jo frowned. “So why aren’t they here with you?”
Doris cocked her head. “Why would they be? They found a lovely apartment on a quiet street not too far north, and they have some money to live on.”
“But—” Jo faltered. “But wouldn’t you want—?”
“They like it,” Violet said. “Sam even offered, but they didn’t want to.”
“Because they didn’t want to impose on Sam,” Jo said, “but I’m sure if I found us a place to be all together again we could—”
“Jo,” Doris said. Her eyes were dark and serious. “They’re happy where they are.”
For a moment, Jo’s mind failed her, and she could only think in terms of things missing, as though she’d left something behind—something she couldn’t name—and it was already too late to ever find it again.
(They hadn’t failed, even though she’d failed them. It hadn’t come to her worst fears. She should be happier than this.)
When she looked around, she and Doris were alone in the garden, and Doris had led her to the garden bench and was looking at her a little strangely.
“Jo, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, all on your own. I can’t even think—I had Sophie and Violet with me and I knew the others had gotten away all right, but I still didn’t sleep for a week, not until I’d heard from Ella.”
Ella. “Where is she? How did you find her?”
“She found me, actually,” Doris said. “She guessed where I would go, and that Sam would be brave enough when it counted. She called him up—she was prepared to shout him out of town, I think, if he had let us go—but the next thing I knew he was handing me the phone.”
That made Ella a sharper judge of character than Jo had been.
“And Sophie found Araminta,” Doris said. “They both answered an advertisement for a position in alterations at Bloomingdale’s—they found each other in line on hiring day. You could have knocked me over with a feather. When Sophie came home with Araminta and Rebecca in hand I thought I would faint, I really did. I ruined two cuffs, I was crying so hard.”
It felt like Doris was laying stones on Jo’s chest.
“When—when did that happen?”
Doris said, “Just over two weeks ago. That was the night I asked Sam to go to the Kingfisher and ask about you, because I thought if we had one miracle in a day we might as well have two.”
“I wish you’d gone over yourself,” Jo said. “Jake thought it was a trap—I had warned him that nothing was to be trusted—and it’s why he waited to tell me.”
Doris sighed. “Well, that’s what happens when you let twelve suspicious girls loose on the streets, I suppose. Can’t be helped.”
Her skin prickled—she needed to see them all again, as many as possible and as soon as possible (sheep-counting was a habit that was hard to break).
“Boy,” Doris said, “do I wish Ella and the twins had gone a little later.”
Ella was with Hattie and Mattie, then. All three of them had gotten out all right. Jo made fists, released them.
“Where did they go?”
Doris wrinkled her nose and braced herself a little, as if she was still fourteen and waiting to be told whether or not they could go out dancing.
“Hollywood.”
Jo laughed.
It was a little loud and a little too long, but the morning’s emotions had been piled on too fast and too heavy for her to believe everything now; she’d have to laugh now, think later.
Doris barged on. “They went to the Swan the first night—to pick up men, I guess, from what the twins told me, though Ella won’t say anything now about what she’d really planned. I suppose picking up men is as good a way to make money as anything else, in a pinch. A producer saw Hattie and Mattie dancing. When he saw them going back to sit with Ella . . .”
Here Doris only shrugged. It was no question what would happen if a Hollywood man laid eyes on Ella.
“They did a screen test,” Sophie said from the window.
Violet said, peevish, “We didn’t get to go.”
Jo smiled at her, wondered if she would ever be able to look at her and not see a girl in a nursery.
“And they’re already on a train?” she asked Doris.
“They left on Thursday,” Doris said. “They wanted to wait to see if you would find us again, but the scout said this was going to be their only fare-paid invitation, and I told them to take it.”
Jo raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t look at me that way, Jo, please. You know that she and the twins are going to be the toast of the town, and they’ll get better work there than here. They had two appearances lined up before they even got on the train. Ella’s going to send me a postcard when they’re settled, to let me know their new names—they have to talk to the studio about it first, apparently. No one wants them using the old name.”
The old name. Ella and the twins would leave it behind; Doris already had; Violet might soon. No one had called Jo by her last name since she’d left the steps of her father’s house.
The Hamilton legacy was doomed in earnest.
Jo thought that served her father right.
“And what about Rose and Lily?”
Doris shook her head. “No word. They left together. We’re hoping they’re all right.”
Poor twins, Jo thought with a twisting stomach.
She recalled every time she’d ever overlooked them, all at once; she felt what she should have felt, then, and a rush of awful imaginings of what could have happened—images of them trapped in some factory, in some train car, in some alley frozen dead. They were still missing, and they’d had no one to look out for them, no one who even knew them well enough to guess where to start searching.
Jo was beginning to realize how little she’d known about them, when it mattered.
She was beginning to realize how little they needed her now.
(Why did she feel so tangled?)
“Jo,” Doris said. “You look pale—what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. It was too embarrassing to say aloud. She had to pull herself together.
“And where have you been?” Doris shook Jo’s sleeve once to punctuate. “At least we knew the twins had gotten out—when we ran you were still shouting at Father like to raise the dead.”
Jo could only imagine what it had sounded like from the outside. “He threatened me with the mental hospital,” she said.
Doris went pale. “What?”
“For all of us,” Jo said, “if we insisted on defying him.”
Off Doris’s horrified frown, she explained, “Father found out that we went dancing at night. He wanted us put away for it.”
“Oh my God.” Doris pulled her hands back and pressed one open palm to her chest. “Jo, tell me that’s not where you’ve been. Please, no.”
Jo shook her h
ead. “I got stalled by van de Maar, but he faltered and I made it out of there before anyone could reach me.”
“So where have you been? What are you doing now? Have you seen anyone?”
“Here,” Jo said. “I’ve been here the whole time, and I’ve seen everyone in the world but the people I wanted to see. I host the Marquee.”
There was a beat of silence. Then it was Doris’s turn to laugh until she cried.
“We’ve all been dying for a dance,” she said, “but we were too afraid to go out anywhere until we knew what had happened. We didn’t know what to do, and Ella went to that new place and never went back because it wasn’t the same. You’re awful for keeping it a secret, Jo—don’t think I’ll ever forgive you because I won’t.”
Doris stood up, said, “Wait until I tell them all we get to go dancing tonight!”
Then she ran into the house, her little gold ring catching the light.
Still, Jo couldn’t shake, just for a moment, the image of Doris at eight years old, learning new steps, grinning like her face would split the first time she got them right all the way through.
And now Jo sat in Doris’s husband’s garden, where most of her sisters had already been and gone, and wondered if any of them would ever need her again the way she must have needed them.
(Lou. Lou had loved her in earnest; but that didn’t bear thinking about.)
• • •
After Jo had told Jake about Lou and Tom, there was a long and measured silence.
“Married,” he said finally.
She nodded. “A month ago. They were on the road to Chicago, last I knew.”
Jake frowned, shook his head like he was clearing water out of his ears. “Are they in love?”
“I don’t know,” Jo had said, around a lump in her throat. “She needed to get out, and he was willing to take her. I wouldn’t know what happened after that.”
Maybe nothing had happened between them. Maybe they were sniping back and forth to cover an awkward silence every time they crossed paths.
Maybe they were in love by now. (She tried not to imagine what that would look like—a dance floor, maybe, a tawny head and a bright one, two wide smiles.)
Jo knew that even Lou, sooner or later, would have to love somebody, and Tom could make himself easy to love.
“I never took Tom for the scoundrel type,” he said.
“He isn’t,” said Jo, because at least that much she was sure of. “He did it as a favor.”
She stopped herself there, and she had said it so plainly that it might have sounded like nothing but the facts, but still Jake looked up at her for a long time, as he ran his finger around the rim of his empty glass.
After a while he said, “You have a real knack for getting people to do you favors.”
“Only with the ones who care about us,” she said.
She didn’t want to pin Jake down on his longing for Lou just now—it was cruel to make too fine a point—but she would if she had to.
He must have seen she was willing to do it; he didn’t answer.
“I don’t know how to reach them,” he said instead.
She dropped her head into the frame of her hands for a moment, fingertips framing her temples and chin.
But he was thinking things over.
A moment later he said, “I never knew his associates in Chicago—not in the loop out there. But I have a few old friends there—they might know where to find someone who doesn’t mind being found. So if he’s in business or Lou really is at a decent place, I could send someone to look. It’s better than nothing.”
It was more than Jo had hoped for. She’d take it.
Jake looked a little steely across the desk—maybe worried about what Tom and Jo had gotten Lou into—but he was still willing, and it would do.
“What do you want to say?”
Jo said, “ ‘Come home.’ ”
twenty-five
It'll Get You
Doris and company showed up in force at the stairs of the Marquee.
It was good to see them. It was so good to see them that Jo could almost forget the ache of Rose and Lily (still ghosts) as soon as she fixed eyes on Rebecca and Araminta again.
The band was in the middle of a Charleston, and even as Jo made her way to them from the other end of the dimly lit club, she could see Doris’s eyes shining and Rebecca tapping her toes.
Rebecca was in a different gold dress, and Araminta had another long strand of beads wrapped around her neck, and Jo couldn’t help laughing. It was comforting to think that even if some things had changed so much, some things never would.
When Doris saw Jo, she grinned and led the others down the stairs.
(Doris seemed to have gotten pretty good at taking the lead since they’d all run away, Jo thought, trying not to be jealous and almost getting there.)
Rebecca and Araminta threw themselves into Jo’s arms. Jo inhaled the familiar scent of soap and primroses and felt the same unraveling knot as when she’d seen Doris and Sophie and Violet and known that those sisters, at least, were safe.
Araminta pulled back sniffling and wiping her eyes, but Rebecca was only squeezing Jo’s arm and beaming and looking around at the room.
“I can’t believe you run all this,” she said.
Rebecca was still candid, then.
Jo said, “Nah, I’m only the host—you know it’s the bartenders who actually run the place. I like the new dress.”
Araminta groaned. “Can you believe it? I nearly threw it out the window when she showed me. All the dresses in the world and this is the one she picks.”
“It’s not the dress that counts,” said Rebecca, “it’s the dancer. And”—turning to Jo—“Araminta should be happy anyway—at least I bought these.”
She and Araminta each held out one foot, and Jo had the satisfaction of finally seeing her sisters in dancing shoes that fit. Araminta’s were apple green, and Rebecca’s were red, and somehow Jo couldn’t stop smiling.
(They were such a little thing, but they weren’t—they were the freedom that came after the prison.)
“We put them on in the apartment before we came down,” Rebecca said, and Jo heard what Rebecca was really trying to say (we’re happy, we’re safe).
Araminta glanced down and saw Jo’s shoes—black velvet—and smiled. “Not bad,” she said, “even if your dress is still a little old-fashioned.”
“Not all of us work at Bloomingdale’s,” Jo said. “Now get on the dance floor before Rebecca has a fit.”
Rebecca laughed, but she was disappearing into the crowd, already looking for a partner. Sophie wasn’t far behind her, and Violet slid by a moment later, stopping just long enough to peck Jo on the cheek and say “Hi, Jo” on her way past.
(It sounded like the first time Violet had ever called Jo by her name. Jo couldn’t remember if it was.)
Jo realized Sam had come with them, a beat too late to be polite about it—she wasn’t used to looking for men who weren’t Tom or Jake—and when she grasped his hand in greeting he was grinning slyly.
“You’ll get used to me,” he said.
“He keeps saying that,” said Doris, “but I’m still waiting. Where should we sit?”
Jo had set aside their table, and by the beginning of the next song, Doris and Sam were already on the dance floor, and Araminta was getting settled for the long wait before the waltz.
The champagne came right on time (Jo made a note to thank Henry for keeping a sharp eye), and the room seemed to be tending itself well enough that Jo could risk sitting beside Araminta.
Araminta smiled and rested her head for a moment on Jo’s shoulder.
“I didn’t realize how good it was to see everyone,” she said. “When we were all crammed together all you ever wanted was enough room to breathe somewhere quiet fo
r a minute, but when I saw Sophie in that hiring line, I’d never been so happy to see someone in my life; I could hardly stand.”
Jo knew the feeling.
“I cried when Ella said she was leaving,” Araminta said. “Don’t tell Rebecca—she was so happy for them. She said she’d known this day was coming since the first time Ella saw a movie poster, and if Rebecca says it it’s probably true. But it was so close after we found them again, I couldn’t help it.”
“I won’t tell.”
Araminta smiled. “Doris said you were running this place all by yourself. Is it exciting?”
“It is,” said Jo. “And so long as I keep the cops happy, it’s exciting in a good way and not a way that ends with me in prison.”
Araminta raised her eyebrows. “Did you run out of the frying pan and into the fire?”
“Not yet,” said Jo. “If the cops got me tomorrow, I could at least make a phone call. It would have been impossible if Father had still had hold of any of you. Sometimes I think there was no way out of that house but the one that happened.”
“Maybe not,” said Araminta. “But still, now look at us.”
Jo glanced at the crowd, picking out her sisters without thinking.
It had been a long time, and they were different women now than they had been, but she could still single them out of the hundreds; she knew just how they held their shoulders, how their fingers behaved in their partners’ hands.
(She’d been in practice, all this time.)
It was nice that she could still look out for them, even if they weren’t hers anymore.
There was a little empty space, near the center of the floor, where strangers were dancing where Rose and Lily should have been.
“Maybe if I had tried to be your mother instead,” Jo said, “this would be easier.”
The words surprised her so much she actually looked at Araminta as if she had spoken them instead, but Araminta was looking at her with heartbroken understanding.
Jo wished she could pull the words back.
But Araminta only said, “Things will work out, General,” and smiled, and looked out at the dance floor. “Who should I pick for the waltz?”
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club Page 23