He was ashamed to think of food when Miss Mollenoff was dead, but he'd left his breakfast on the table when the news came spreading down the street hours ago, and he hadn't eaten since.
Old Mrs. Whittier had shown up around eleven or so. She'd been surprised that the doc wasn't there, but she'd rolled up her fancy sleeves and joined right in with the other ladies, ordering him around, telling him to go here and go there and do this and do that. He didn't mind much, though, since it gave him something to do.
He wasn't really sure why he was even there, except that the doc had been good to him. And then again, he sure didn't want to be home when his da got back. Not the way he'd been carrying on since Miss Mollenoff had been taken to the hospital. Davis was pretty sure from the looks of them that his father had broken a couple of fingers when he'd slammed his fist against the wall.
"Put this just outside the door," Old Lady Whittier told him, pointing to a small table covered in more of that thin black cloth.
He pointed toward the door and cocked his head. Whyever did she want the table outside?
"I've no idea," she whispered with a shrug, and gestured with her head toward the old women. "They said it had to go outside. And they want a basin with some water there too."
He wiped his hands on his pants. The doc's side table was a real nice one, with turned legs and carved roses around its edges. Miss Mollenoff was always rearranging the gewgaws on it and the doc was always telling her to leave his books where they were. Davis backed away from the table and right smack into the old woman, nearly knocking her over.
"Take it outside," Mrs. Whittier told him. "And put a towel out there too."
Atowel? Was someone gonna bathe out there?
"And don't argue."
Was he arguing? He hadn't said a word. He didn't suppose anyone was going to tell him where the doc's towels were kept.
Like it had a dozen eggs upon it, he lifted the table carefully, moved it a few inches, and put it down. It wasn't all that heavy, there was no question he could move it, he just didn't want to bang it into any walls or anything.
"I'll help you," a young woman said, and took up the other side of the table. She was dressed like the older women but she didn't seem to Davis to be more than fifteen or sixteen. Except maybe around her eyes, where she looked a lot older.
He took a deep breath in the hopes of spilling out all his words at once, but by the time he was ready to answer, she had the table halfway out the door. As fast as he could he wiped his hands dry and grabbed on to the opposite side, more trouble than help, he supposed. Carefully they set the little table down together, and she went after a bowl while he searched around the kitchen for a towel.
"He deserves better," the girl said, sniffing back her tears while Davis put the cloth beside the bowl just as the doc's carriage pulled up at the front stoop. Dr. Mollenoff came out of the carriage slowly, his steps even heavier than they usually were—and that seemed like he had lead in his boots.
Two men, all in black like the women, with hats and overcoats and solemn faces, hurried down from the coach and stood by the doctor's side while more men—there were two carriages full of them—escorted him up the stairs and waited while he washed his hands in the water the girl had put there for him and then dried them on the towel Davis had found.
"So you're learning the rules of shivah?" the doc said to Davis, cupping his chin and twisting his head gently this way and that, as if Davis's bruises were the only thing on his mind. "Ach. Does it hurt much? No?" The doc shrugged and moved slowly toward the door. "Later we'll have to see to that cut."
Behind the doctor each man stopped to wash his hands before they, too, went into the house.
Davis followed them, dipping his hands quickly in the water and wiping them on the damp towel. Before he did it, washing seemed like a pretty dumb thing to do, but when he walked into the house clean, it made him feel good. He could almost remember his mama's voice telling him that cleanliness was next to godliness.
He took up a position against the back wall, as far from the happenings as possible, and closed his eyes. Around him, men and women cried and he felt the tears well up in his own eyes too. Because his mother had been swallowed by the sea, there'd been no body for the wake. Miss Mollenoff was already buried, so here again, there was no way for him to say good-bye. And a ride up to Mountain View on the horsecar would cost him a dime, which was ten cents more than he had.
Across the room he saw Charlotte and fought the urge to run to her. He was too old to bury his face in some woman's skirts. Even if the woman was an aggie. He didn't know when Charlotte had slipped into that pile, only that she was there, like his ma. One of the ones you just wouldn't think of trading. Sometimes though, like with his ma and Miss Mollenoff, the "keepers" got stolen away.
"Ah, that's the Yortzeit," some man in black said softy to him, pointing to a candle that the doc was lighting. "That will burn for seven days. All through shivah. You remember that."
Shivah. Yortzeit. It was a stupid religion that had words that sounded like sneezes, but he kept the thought to himself.
He was keeping more than ever to himself these days.
***
Charlotte waited for the candle-lighting ceremony to be over before seeking out Kathryn. She was certainly in no hurry to tell the woman how court had gone that morning. Bail revoked. Bail denied. Just as Cabot had said. And jury selection to start the next morning.
Without her.
Not only didn't he want her at the defense table, he didn't want her in the courtroom. Bring her again, he'd told Cabot as the guards were taking him back to his cell, and I'll change my plea to guilty.
Cabot had just nodded.
And she had had to stand there as if her heart weren't bleeding on the floor, as if Ash's were just another case, as if she didn't know that he was trying to protect her.
Not ten minutes later a clerk informed her that Virginia Halton's case had finally been scheduled. Oral arguments would be heard at ten the next morning.
Of course, Cabot could have made that happen all along. He'd chosen now to get her out of the way. And if that was the way he and Ash wanted it, that was the way it would be.
Kathryn was busy with Eli, her hand on his arm as she spoke. Eli was nodding at whatever it was she was telling him, and he stopped to lift a stray hair away from Kathryn's eye.
It was nothing. An innocent gesture. And yet it was so intimate that the breath burned in Charlotte's throat.
"Want some?" Davis asked, appearing suddenly at her side and holding out a glass of wine to her. When she took it, he wrinkled up his nose a bit and rolled his eyes. "Kosher," he warned.
She took a small sip. The wine was thick and sweet, and felt heavy on her lips. It coated her tongue and she felt it inch down her throat and disappear.
"The mister?" Davis asked after a big intake of air. Cabot was making great progress with the boy. For a second she wondered if Davis would like to have Liberty.
Wonderful. She already had Ash tried, convicted, hanged, and was giving away his things. The reality smacked her hard enough to snap her head back. Frantically she gulped for air. Davis, clearly alarmed, nearly pushed her into a chair while people looked on sympathetically, most of them in tears themselves.
Selma was dead. Sweet, tough Selma, who wasn't afraid of anything. Even in the hospital she was more worried about the contributions for "the cause," as she called it, than she was about herself.
"Are you all right, dear?" Kathryn asked, Eli having left to go off with nine other men to pray. "Was court an awful scene?"
"Kathryn," she said, taking the woman's hand in her own, "things look very bad."
"Cabot will take care of it," Kathryn said, refusing to look at Charlotte. "He always has and he always will."
"I'm sure he'll do his best," Charlotte agreed.
At that Kathryn raised an eyebrow. "Of course he will. Why wouldn't he?"
"Excuse me," a young girl said, bending over w
ith a tray of food for Charlotte and Kathryn. "Aren't you Mrs. Whittier, the lawyer?"
Charlotte nodded, for all the good being a lawyer did her. He'd banned her from the courtroom! Her courtroom, to which she'd fought so hard to be admitted.
"Oh, Miss Mollenoff just thought the world of you! And now your husband's brother has gone and... I mean... not that you can be blamed for that... It's just... Well, it's really nice of you to come, considering..."
"I thought the world of Miss Mollenoff too," Charlotte said. "As did my brother-in-law. And Ashford Whittier wouldn't hurry a squirrel out of his way, much less hurt a woman. I hope you'll remember that, despite anything you hear."
Charlotte wondered how many times over the course of the next few weeks she'd have to say those same words. And whether there would ever come a time when everyone would know that Ash had had nothing to do with either fire. Even Cabot had wondered after the first fire— not that she felt he was justified. But the second fire had to have convinced Cabot, and everyone else, that a man like Ash wouldn't have risked hurting Selma for any amount of money.
"Are you a friend of hers?" Charlotte asked the girl.
"I know the doctor," she answered, her cheeks reddening while she busied herself examining the little fish balls on the platter she held. "He—"
Charlotte stopped her. She didn't want to know what Eli had or hadn't done, or which one of the women this young girl was. Was she the one whose father had brought her to him bleeding and near death from another doctor's attempt to rid her of a problem? Was she the one who had punctured herself with a coat hanger? Was she the one who had swallowed a bottle of Nature's Own in the hopes of helping nature take the course she wanted it to?
"He's a good man," the girl said. "A good doctor."
Charlotte agreed wordlessly.
"Still, he's lucky to have a minyan today to say Kaddish," she said, pointing to the group of men who stood rocking on their heels and mumbling. "In our faith it takes ten men to pray for deliverance."
In Ash's case it would take twelve men—a jury—to give him the same.
***
Hell. That was where he was. And if he'd ever thought he was there before, he was a fool.
Oh, the look on her face when he said he didn't want her at the defense table! At least, as far back as she was, he couldn't see her face when they'd started hurling charges at him. Couldn't see her expression when the district attorney brought up his associations with women all over the waterfront who might help him run if he wasn't locked up like some animal. They certainly hadn't been leaping to his defense yet.
He paced off his cell again, making sure it hadn't gotten any smaller in the last few minutes. Twelve steps in one direction. Eight in the other.
What must she have thought of him when Brent pulled out his record and listed the brawls, the public drunkenness, the lewd and lascivious conduct charges?
And Cabot! Had his brother used his objections any more sparingly, Ash would have suspected he was sleeping with his eyes open. For all the help he was, his brother might just as well have spent the whole day at home drinking himself into oblivion as he'd planned.
At least Ash had made it clear that Charlotte wasn't to be in the courtroom again. Cut the ties. Let her loose.
Eight feet in one direction, twelve in the other. He took the knife from his dinner tray and scratched one short vertical line into the wall over his cot. And then he lay down on the bed, shut his eyes, and watched the tears course down Charlie Russe's face until he finally fell asleep.
***
Cabot was waiting in the foyer when Charlotte and Kathryn came through the door. "How were things at Eli's?" he asked.
"Charlotte tells me it didn't go well in court," Kathryn said, ignoring Cabot's question.
"I suppose Eli was beside himself with grief," Cabot responded.
"She says that your defense is tenuous at best." Kathryn allowed Rosa to help her off with her shawl but waved the girl away when she tried to lead her to a chair.
"Was the boy there?" he asked Charlotte. "He was just beginning to like Selma, you know. Said something about her maybe not being an aggie, but still he didn't think he'd trade her."
"An aggie?" Charlotte asked. Cabot and Davis had actually had a real conversation? About Selma Mollenoff? Her Cabot? And Davis? She was too stunned to hear Cabot's answer. "What?" she asked, realizing he'd asked her a question.
"Marbles," he said. "You ever play marbles as a little girl, Charlotte?"
"If you can just get him out on bail again," Kathryn said, "he could escape to the islands. A person could lose himself there forever, don't you think?"
"I cannot get him out on bail while he is on trial, Mother," Cabot said. "Nor do I relish the thought of my brother as a fugitive from justice."
"Do you suppose he should have run? I mean now, with hindsight?" Charlotte asked him. She wished with all her heart and soul that he had, and more than a small piece of her wished that she had run with him, no matter the cost.
"As I was saying," Cabot said, "aggies are marbles. They're the special ones that no self-respecting marbles shooter ever trades away. They're the ones you don't bet because you feel their loss for a long, long time."
"Then he won't be home tomorrow either?" Kathryn asked, finally sliding down into the chair as if the strength in her legs had deserted her.
"No, Mother. He will not be home tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that. He's on trial for murder, and these things take time. You know that. You've seen me through a hundred like cases."
Kathryn took the cup that Rosa held out to her, leaving the girl to hold the saucer. She took a sip of the tea, her eyes keeping contact with Cabot's over the rim. Slowly she replaced the cup without looking down. "None of those involved my son," she said sharply.
A heavy sigh, a brief moment with both eyes closed, and then softly, with a small sad smile curving his lips, Cabot shook his head. "Yes, Mother," he said in answer. "Every one of them did."
***
After a cold supper that they all just picked at, Charlotte had helped Kathryn up to bed. Reality was hitting Kathryn hard, and Charlotte wasn't sure she had any strength left to lend her mother-in-law. But then she'd helped her to undress and saw the paper-white skin hanging in tiny, empty pleats around the woman's bony frame. Kathryn, with her fine features and lovely silver hair, hadn't been able to cheat time as well as she pretended, and as Charlotte tucked the older woman beneath the covers and kissed her forehead, Kathryn had reached out and clutched Charlotte's hand.
"Promise me you'll do whatever you can," she begged.
Charlotte swore she would, surprised that Kathryn thought she needed to ask.
"Whatever it takes to make Cabot win," she said, gripping Charlotte's hand more tightly. "Whatever that is."
Charlotte agreed to that as well.
"I'll check on you later," she promised Kathryn, then returned to Cabot's office to help him prepare for the next day's voir dire for the jury selection.
He looked up, startled when she came into the room, almost as if he didn't expect her to be there at all. Motioning for her to sit across from him, he put down his pen and rubbed at his forehead.
"Was the boy very upset?" he asked.
"Davis? He seemed to be all right. For a child his age he's had too much practice, don't you think?" she asked.
"His appeal comes up next week," Cabot said, flipping pages on his desk calendar. "I'm going to ask Hammerman for a short recess so that I can argue it."
"Have you any use at all for me?" Charlotte asked. "Perhaps I can carry your briefcase between courtrooms for you."
Cabot gave her yet another sad smile. Each one seemed to cost him, but still he offered them. "We haven't that good a shot at either, Charlie. And you take losing so to heart. Sometimes I'm sorry I ever agreed to any of this. You were such a happy little thing when you first came here—so full of passion and excitement."
"You may be sorry I'm a lawyer," she s
aid, shocked by his honest assessment of where they had been and where they'd come to, "but I'm not."
"What if you were to lose the boy's case?" Cabot asked. "The last loss cost us your lovely hair. What will be next, Charlie, your little fingers?"
"I'm going to win his case," she said evenly, understanding what she'd done wrong the first time. "You see, it's not the judge I need to convince. It's Ewing Flannigan. He, not the court, is going to give us that boy."
"And if you lose, Charlotte? Can you live with yourself?"
She nodded. "And you, Cabot? If you should lose Ash's case? Can you live with yourself then?"
There it was again, that sad smile. But instead of nodding he shrugged. "The real question, Charlotte, is, if I lose, could you still live with me?"
With her heart lodged firmly in her throat she nodded.
"Ah," he said. "That's a comfort."
She rose, ready to say good-night, but turned when Cabot cleared his throat.
"And what if I win?"
She'd already made the promise in her heart. If Cabot wanted her to, she would stay with him forever, forsaking all others just as she had vowed. Anything, to see Ash walk out of the courtroom a free man.
She nodded once again, but this time the sad little smile was hers.
CHAPTER 23
The sun was just rising when Charlotte gave up trying to sleep. She threw the covers off and rose to stand by the window from which she had seen Ash watching her. The carriage house looked empty, abandoned, which, of course, it was. There was no smiling Ash, no serious Moss, not even irreverent Liberty, whom Moss was seeing to on the Bloody Mary.
She put on her robe and slippers and headed downstairs and out across the lawn for the papers she had promised to look at. Promises. She was good at making them, even better at keeping them, and undoubtedly best at allowing them to strangle her to death.
As she pushed open the door to the carriage house, she took a deep breath. Knowing he wouldn't be there filled her with warring emotions. More than anything she wanted to see him, be held by him, touched by him. But not at the cost of facing him. The fact that she'd been banned from the courtroom had become a comfort in its own way. At least she wouldn't have to tell Ash that she had promised to stay with Cabot in exchange for his freedom. Would he understand that Cabot was their last, best hope? That she'd had no choice?
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