Chapter Fourteen
Janesville, 1905
Half past two o’clock
“Didn’t I tell you? I was a fool,” she says.
“That’s not what it sounded like to me.”
“Are you even listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“So,” she says, “now you know one of my weaknesses. I believe the things people tell me.”
“I think we all have that weakness.”
She says, “I don’t know. You don’t seem to believe much of what I’m telling you.”
“Well, these are…extraordinary circumstances.”
She grins at him, almost like a friend. It disarms him. On one hand, that’s not what he wants, but on the other hand, why should it matter? Why not tell her everything? It won’t change what needs to happen. He needs to decide whether to keep her or let her go. Her feelings on that matter, he already knows.
He goes on, “So you fell in love and trusted someone. It happens. At least you learned his stripes quickly enough.”
“It felt like love,” she says. “Or what people had told me love was like. Was your wife your first love, officer? I asked you before, but you didn’t answer.”
“She was,” he says.
“And how long have you been married?”
“Two years.”
“You’re what? Twenty-two, twenty-three?”
“Thereabouts,” he admits.
“Then you’ve loved her longer than she’s loved you.”
She’s uncannily good. By now, this doesn’t surprise him. “Why would you say that?”
“If you loved her in your teens, and she loved you in her teens, you’d have married in your teens. Isn’t that the case?”
“She had another suitor, for years,” he says. “A steady.” Perhaps the story will help her think of him as a young man in love, not just a police officer. Help her open up. Tell him more of the truth, especially when and where it counts.
She cocks her head and smiles up at him. “The young man who came in first at everything, when you came in second?”
“The very same.”
“But you came in first when it mattered. She married you.”
He shakes his head. “Because he married someone else first.”
“Who? And why?”
“A girl named Prudie. The sweetest you’d ever meet. She moved to Janesville when we were all twenty, and the whole story was written from the moment she arrived. Mose would be the leader and she would follow.”
“And your wife—Iris, was it?—isn’t that way? A follower?”
“Not at all,” he says with a fond smile. “She’s like you. She speaks her mind.”
“But you love her and she loves you. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“It should be.”
“It isn’t?”
This part is harder to be honest about. He’s never said it out loud to anyone. “I was always her second choice,” he says. “I can’t forget that. She settled for me because she couldn’t have what she really wanted, and I was the next best. Is that anything to build a life on? And now…”
“Now you’re injured,” she says, catching on.
“As soon as they find out how bad it is, they’ll dismiss me. Force me out. What good is a police officer who can’t physically catch a criminal?”
“You caught me.”
“I was lucky,” he admits. “You’re smaller than most criminals anyway. And now I want to hear more about your magic.”
“What else is there to say? At Biltmore, I suspected that my healing was extraordinary, but I didn’t truly believe in it for years. I know how easy it is to make tricks seem like magic. But I asked Adelaide once if she’d ever heard of people with healing powers, and she had some astounding tales to tell. The mind is stronger than the body, and some minds more than others.”
He’s confused. “Who’s Adelaide?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Her face is stony.
After their easy confidences, her coy resistance now sets him off.
“Listen,” he says, jabbing one finger at her for emphasis, “stop dancing around it. If you want any chance of leniency, any chance at all of not going to prison, you’re going to need to work with me, not against me.”
“You think I’m working against you,” she says.
“Yes.”