“Where will you live?” he asked. “Geographically?”
I imagined he was worried I’d want to live close to him. “I haven’t figured that out yet,” I said. “Probably in Maryland, but far from Baltimore.” How would I ever leave my mother? I was going to break her heart, in so many ways.
“Are you sure the baby is mine?” he asked. “I remember your ring.” He looked at my bare hand. “You were engaged, weren’t you?”
“My fiancé and I never had…” My cheeks burned. “You were the only one.” I wondered if he remembered that small, bright red stain on the bedspread.
“Have you told him?”
I shook my head. “He would never understand. I’ll need to break off our engagement.” I was amazed my voice didn’t crack. If Henry had any idea what that meant—my life as I knew it coming to an abrupt, sad end—he gave no indication.
“Let me think about this,” he said. “I’ll help, of course,” he reassured me quickly, then lowered his voice. “I regret that foolish night more than you could possibly know,” he said. “I’m … ashamed of it. We’d both had far too much to drink. I should never have let it happen.”
I was surprised—touched, actually—that he took responsibility for that night, and relief washed over me. He wasn’t going to fight me about my plan for the baby. My need for help.
“But I have to think of the best way to arrange the money,” he continued. “To figure out the amount you’ll need. Are you staying in town?”
The tension in my body was slipping away. “I need to find a hotel,” I said. “Just for tonight. I have to get back to Baltimore.”
“Go to the Hotel Hickory,” he said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll call you a cab. The hotel’s back in town.” He pointed to my left. “You should be able to get a room now that the holidays are over. If they give you a hard time, say Hank Kraft sent you.” He looked out the window for a moment and I saw those downturned eyes that had struck me when we first met, the eyes that gave him a sad look despite his handsome features. “Actually,” he said, “better not use my name, all right?” He gave me a quick, anxious smile, and for the first time I saw his nerves betray him.
He spoke into the phone, arranging the cab, then got to his feet. “I’ll call you at the hotel,” he said. “Tonight, or more likely in the morning. Stay by the phone if you can.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Kraft,” I said, getting wearily to my feet. He seemed like a stranger to me. It was nearly impossible for me to believe I’d been intimate with him.
I waited only a minute or two outside the building for the cab to arrive. Thank God. It was so cold and I needed to lie down. I was glad when the driver turned out to be the quiet type. I didn’t have the strength for conversation.
We pulled up outside the tall, handsome redbrick hotel. The driver carried my suitcase inside for me, and I was given a room without any questions being asked. It was two in the afternoon and the exhaustion caught up with me as I lifted my suitcase onto the dresser in my room. I undressed down to my slip, then crawled into the bed, my eyes on the phone on the night table. What if I didn’t hear from him? What if he’d told me he would help with no intention of doing so? But I knew where he was. I wouldn’t leave without some money in hand. I shut my eyes and was asleep within seconds.
10
At nine the following morning, the hotel manager called to tell me “Hank Kraft” was waiting for me in the lobby. “He says to bring your coat,” he said.
Henry wore no smile when I came into the lobby in my coat and gloves, my handbag over my arm. No greeting at all. Instead he took my elbow and pointed me toward the door.
“We can’t talk here,” he whispered. He led me out the front door and onto the bustling street, where he pointed to a butter-yellow Cadillac parked at the curb. It was without a doubt the prettiest car I’d ever seen. He opened the passenger side door for me and I slid in. The car smelled of his delicious pipe tobacco and I breathed in the comforting scent. Henry said nothing as he got into the driver’s seat, and he remained silent as he drove a couple of blocks from the hotel. Then he turned onto a side street and pulled to the curb.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his hand on the key. “I can leave the heater going.”
“Thank you,” I said. I folded my gloved hands in my lap, apprehensively waiting for his decision.
He studied my face for a moment, long enough to make me squirm under his scrutiny. “I believe we should get married,” he said finally.
I stared at him in shock. “Get married!” I said. “We don’t even know each other.”
“Well, we knew each other well enough to…” He motioned toward my stomach.
“But that was—”
“I thought about it all night long,” he interrupted. “I don’t want you going off to who-knows-where with my son or daughter. Someday you’d meet and marry another man, and I don’t want that man raising my child. This child”—he motioned to my belly again—“is my rightful heir. I can afford to take care of you both. Very well.” He looked hard at me as if to be sure I understood exactly how well my baby and I would be able to live. “You’ll have no worries. You’ll never have to work. I recently bought land near the house I grew up in, and my architect has finished drawing up plans for a house of my own. Until that house is completed, we’d have to live in my family home with my mother and sister, but—”
“Henry,” I said, shaking my head in astonishment. “That’s so kind of you, but it’s … it’s unrealistic.”
“Your plan is unrealistic,” he argued. “Moving somewhere where you don’t know a soul? Inventing a husband in the military, a husband who will never come home? You’ll be living a lie for the rest of your life. How realistic would that be?”
“Don’t you already have someone special?” I asked. He was good-looking. Clearly wealthy. He obviously had power and prominence in this town. I was—and we both had to know this—far beneath him when it came to social status.
“No one special,” he said, so sharply that I knew there was a story there. A story he did not want to tell.
He reached into the pocket of his tweed coat and withdrew a small black box. Holding it in front of me, he opened it. The sunlight caught the glitter of the largest diamond I’d ever seen. I sucked in my breath.
“You already bought a ring?” I was shocked.
“Please marry me, Tess,” he said. “Let’s raise our son or daughter together.”
I was too stunned to respond. This was crazy! Yet, as I sat riveted by the ring, I thought of Mimi and Pop. Their marriage had been arranged. They hadn’t even met one another until a month before the wedding when Mimi was introduced to Pop at a family gathering, knowing he was to be her husband whether she liked him or not. And look at them now. One of the most loving couples I’d ever known. They’d started out as strangers but the love grew between them.
Vincent’s smile slipped into my mind and I pushed it out. I couldn’t afford to let him into my thoughts right now. There was no hope there, and thinking of him would only derail the future I needed to make for myself and my baby.
I looked into Henry’s blue eyes. There was hope in them. How many men would respond this way, wanting to take responsibility for their mistake and make things right? Henry wanted our child in his life. He wanted me in his life. This was more than a way out, I thought. It felt like an extraordinary sign from God.
“Yes.” I let a smile come to my lips. “Yes. I’ll marry you.”
11
We spent the rest of the day making plans in his office. Henry had locked the office door, opening it only to answer questions from a few employees and to speak briefly to the custodian, that colored man Zeke, who seemed overly interested in my presence. Henry sat behind his desk while I perched on the hard wooden chair, making the whole exchange feel like a business transaction. Which I supposed, in reality, it was.
“We need to get married quickly,” he said, “if we hope to convince people that th
e baby was conceived after our marriage. It’s unlikely anyone will believe us, but at least we can put on a front,” he added with a smile I could only interpret as sheepish.
I nodded, ignoring the feeling of being swept into something outside my control. He was right. If we were going to do this, we needed to do it fast.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wear the ring?” he asked.
I shook my head, looking down at my bare ring finger. There was a slight pale strip of skin where Vincent’s ring had sat for so long. I couldn’t replace it with this new ring from Henry. Not yet. I would have felt as though I were stealing it. Sitting there, I thought about the strangeness of our plan. He seemed almost happy that I’d shown up in his life. He was becoming more attractive to me every minute, especially when he smiled, lifting the downcast look of his eyes. Certainly he didn’t possess Vincent’s head-turning good looks, but he had beautiful, symmetrical features and a gentle countenance. And yet there was no woman in his life? Perhaps he’d been hurt in love. The way I was about to hurt Vincent. My stomach twisted at the thought.
“I’ll pick up wedding bands for us both,” he said, then added with a chuckle, “Obviously, I’ll have to wear mine on my right hand.” He held up his two-fingered left hand.
I smiled, uncertain quite how to respond to his openness about his missing fingers.
“I’ll arrange a roomette for you on the train back to Baltimore,” he said, “and another when it’s time for you to return, which I hope will be very soon.”
“Thank you,” I said. A roomette would make the long hours on the train more bearable.
“We’ll need to get blood tests,” he said, “so do that as soon as you can. Hopefully we can have this all sorted out by next week. Give me your phone number and I’ll call with the details.”
I felt momentarily overwhelmed. He was a take-charge man, no doubt about it, and protective to boot. Already he was taking my needs into account and I didn’t know whether to be pleased or resentful that he thought I needed to be coddled. I remembered the licensing exam I’d been studying for. I’d need to look into the requirements for licensing in North Carolina.
“I’ll want to get my nursing license here,” I said. “Then when the baby gets a little older, I can work.”
He looked surprised. “Tess, don’t you understand?” he asked. “You don’t need a degree or a nursing license, or any other license for that matter. Other than a marriage license,” he added. “You are never going to need to work.”
“I’d be bored.”
He laughed. “I don’t think you have any idea how busy you’ll be with a baby. Although we’ll have a nanny for him. Or her. Of course. But my mother will get you involved in all sorts of clubs and such. You won’t have a minute to breathe once you’re involved in Hickory life.”
“A nanny?” I was stuck on the word. “I don’t think we’ll need a nanny. I don’t know anyone who has one.”
“Well, you’re going to meet plenty of people who do now,” he said. “So listen. Give me your phone number in Baltimore and I’ll let you know when you should come. Bring whatever belongings you want to have with you in Hickory, but you don’t need much. We have department stores and you can find anything you need here.”
“All right,” I said.
“I’m afraid I won’t have time for a honeymoon or anything like that,” he said. “I assume that’s all right with you, given the”—he motioned toward the middle of my body—“pressing circumstances?”
I nodded. Vincent and I had talked about Niagara Falls for our honeymoon. That was the most we could afford and I’d been looking forward to it.
“Once we’re married, we’ll move into the house I grew up in, as I said. It shouldn’t be too awkward. There’s plenty of room. My mother has a bad knee and almost never comes upstairs, where Lucy and I have our bedrooms.” He looked toward the window, thoughtful, then spoke as if thinking out loud. “There’s just a twin bed in my room,” he said, “but I’ll bring in a second twin, and as I said, it will only be six months or so before my new house is ready to move into.”
“Have you cleared this … living arrangement … with your mother?” I asked.
His expression was a little bit haughty. “I don’t ‘clear things’ with my mother,” he said. “I’ve been the man of the house for the ten years since my father’s death. Since I was seventeen.” Apparently, he ruled the roost and was proud of it. I pictured his mother as a sweet woman who bent to her beloved son’s every wish.
“How old is your sister? Lucy?” I asked.
“Twenty,” he said. “She’s in college.”
“You said a girl doesn’t need a degree,” I said, baiting him.
He looked at me. “Are you the argumentative type?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or expressing a genuine concern.
“No,” I said. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“Education is always good,” he said. “Women need to be able to carry on a conversation about something other than diapers and housecleaning. But I can’t picture my sister actually working.”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet her,” I said. A sister-in-law. I imagined having a warm relationship with her that would last all our lives. I knew I was romanticizing my future, but it felt like the only way to endure this huge, irreconcilable step I was agreeing to take.
“And your mother?” Henry asked. “How will she take this? If you want to invite her to the wedding, you can, of course, though it will only be with a justice of the peace. He’s a friend of mine.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t think … She’s not going to be happy about this.” How would I ever tell her about my plans? How would I ever tell Vincent? I would write to him. Somehow, I would have to find the words that would end both our romance and our friendship. I couldn’t bear to think about it. My heart pounded hard in my chest, painfully so, at the thought of writing that letter.
“Tess DeMello,” he said suddenly, looking thoughtful. “Is that your full name?”
“Theresa Ann DeMello,” I said.
He shook his head with an uncertain smile. “DeMello,” he repeated. “I can barely believe I’m marrying an Italian girl.” I could tell that the idea didn’t please him. “You’ll stand out in Hickory with that thick black hair and those exotic big brown eyes.”
“Where I live,” I said, “everyone looks like me.” I raised my chin an inch, challenging him to make an issue out of my heritage.
“Well, it’s all right,” he said, getting to his feet. “You’ll be a Kraft soon enough.”
12
Henry planned to take me to the train station late that afternoon for my return trip to Baltimore, but as we were leaving his office, a very young man—a boy, really—burst into the room.
“We’ve got a problem with the power in the kiln room!” he said, his blond hair flopping over his forehead.
Henry wore a look of dismay. “I’ll be right there, Mickey,” he said, and the boy left the office at a run. Henry looked at me apologetically. “I need to deal with this,” he said. “I’ll call you a cab, or”—he looked thoughtful—“wait a minute.” He motioned to the chair. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.” He left the office at a run, just like the boy. I sat down and waited, hoping I wouldn’t miss my train. A few minutes passed and Henry returned with the boy—Mickey—at his side. Mickey wore a wide grin.
“Mickey here is going to drive you to the station,” Henry said, and I noticed the reason for the boy’s grin: the Cadillac’s keys were in his hand.
“All right.” I smiled at Mickey and got to my feet. Henry had pulled his wallet from his pants pocket and counted out a few bills which he pressed into my hand. His fingers brushed mine, the touch of a stranger. “This is enough for a roomette on the train from Salisbury to Washington. Get some sleep, all right?”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said.
“I’m going to see if I can get the power back in the kiln
room.” He headed for the office door again. “Have a safe journey.”
Mickey carried my suitcase out to the small parking lot at the side of the building and put it in the Cadillac’s trunk. I got into the passenger seat beside him. He was still grinning as he ran his fingers tenderly over the dashboard. “I always wanted to drive this car,” he said.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
He turned the key in the ignition and pressed the starter button and the car came to life. “Purrs like a kitten,” he said.
“How long have you been working for Mr. Kraft?” I asked, making conversation as we drove toward the station.
“Two years,” he said, “since I was fourteen when my father enlisted. I quit school and started working. Got a bunch of little sisters and we needed the money. Hank pays good.” He glanced at me with a grin. “He says you’re his fiancée.”
“Yes,” I said, still filled with disbelief that this was happening. If Henry was telling people, it made it even more real.
“Does Violet Dare know about that?” Mickey asked.
Who on earth was Violet Dare? I thought Mickey was carefully keeping his eyes on the road as he asked the question.
“Who is Violet Dare?” I asked.
He gave me a quick glance. “I reckon Violet’s fancied herself Hank’s fiancée most of her life,” he said.
Oh no. Henry did have a girl in his life. I had no idea how this news was going to complicate our plans. I would have to ask him about her. Was I stepping on another girl’s toes?
“Well,” I said, “Henry told you we’re engaged and I’d say he should know best.” Why was I talking to this forward little teenager about my private life? His probing had made me feel defensive. I was relieved to see the station come into view. “And here we are,” I said, sitting up straighter.
Mickey parked in front of the station and got out of the car. I didn’t wait for him to open my door, and once I was on the sidewalk, he lifted the trunk lid and handed me my suitcase.
“Good luck with Violet, now,” he said, giving me a little salute as he turned, grinning, to get back in the Cadillac. I watched him go, wondering what he knew that I didn’t.
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