Alma looked as if she might burst into tears. “I’ve told him for months not to host that club of his, and not to admit any new members. It’s just too dangerous. Anarchism is a dirty word now. People are going to jail.” Her face paled. “Oh, God, what if they take Fritz to jail?”
Francesca’s heart thundered in her chest, and the heat pulsed around her. The wraps under her frock were too tight. She wheezed—clawed at the buttons at her neck, desperate for air. Suddenly disoriented, she stumbled on the hem of her dress.
Alma caught her around the middle to steady her.
Francesca gasped at the impact and her vision blurred.
Her friend’s eyes went wide as her hands felt the now-sizable lump at Francesca’s middle.
“Francesca? Are you… Is this… What’s happening?” Alma said, blood draining from her cheeks.
A graininess invaded Francesca’s vision at the shock, the fear, the heat. “I… It’s… I’m sorry—”
And then all went black.
41
Alma and Helene directed Francesca to the front steps of a nearby church. After a few seconds, she came to, her pallor disappearing. Alma dropped onto the step beside her. Alma couldn’t believe it. Fran was pregnant! She’d noticed her friend looked healthier than when they’d first met, even almost plump, yet Fran had done a good job of hiding her stomach. Alma wondered when Francesca had planned to tell them the truth.
Alma grappled with the news, trying to wrap her mind around it. And then another thought struck her. Was Fritz the father?
“Was it… Did Fritz…?”
“No.” Fran shook her head, eyes dark. “He would never do this. Oh, Alma, if only it were his baby! He would do the right thing by me, and…and I love him!” She burst into tears. “I love him so much.”
Helene stood awkwardly next to them, riveted by the scene. “Should I go? I can leave you two alone.”
“No,” they said in unison.
“I may need your help getting her home,” Alma said, voice shaky. If Fritz wasn’t the father, then who was? She felt a stab of anger on her brother’s behalf. Who had Fran taken to her bed, if not him? Alma was fairly certain Fritz was in love with Fran, too, and this would devastate him.
“I’m not fragile,” Fran said, standing. “It’s all right. You can go. I can see myself home.” A fresh wave of tears rushed down her face, and though she wiped at them furiously, they kept coming until her shoulders began to shake with sobs.
Alarmed by Fran’s uncharacteristic outburst and also by the revelation, Alma didn’t reach out to console her friend. “Tell me what happened.”
“You won’t believe me,” Fran said tearfully. “What I mean to say”—she wiped her face on her sleeve—“you won’t believe it! Oh, Alma, what am I going to do? The Lancasters will fire me and where will I be? On the streets with a baby?” She covered her face with her hands and cried harder.
Helene patted Fran awkwardly on her back and looked over Fran’s head to meet Alma’s eye.
Alma squirmed, unsure of how to console her friend as Fran’s desolate eyes met hers. How in the devil would she tell Fritz the woman he was in love with—or at least liked very much—was pregnant by another man?
She urged Fran warily. “Please, tell me what happened.”
Fran wiped her face and sucked in a steadying breath. “I care for Fritz very much. This has nothing to do with him. You must know this happened before I…before I met your brother.”
“Still, it has very much to do with him,” Alma replied. “He’ll be devastated. I think he’s in love with you.”
Fran’s face crumpled, and for a moment, Alma thought she might cry out in pain. Instead, she ducked her head, clutching her sides. “Yes,” she said at last without meeting Alma’s eyes. “And he makes me feel like I’m different from everyone in the best way, special somehow. I’ve never felt unworthy or unwanted around him.”
“Then how did this happen?”
Fran stuck out her chin. “It was the inspector’s price, and I paid it.”
Helene gasped.
Alma’s eyes went wide. “The inspector? I don’t understand.”
Fran clasped Alma’s hands tightly in hers. “This is so difficult to say. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“Fran, who was it? An inspector at Ellis Island?”
“Yes, I… The child is John’s, Alma. John Lambert’s. He was the inspector who signed my papers.”
The breath left Alma’s lungs.
John’s child. The baby was John’s.
Her mind tried to reconcile the image of her coworker—her future husband—seducing Fran. The very same woman who had just kissed her brother in public, who had been to many picnics and had become friends with her family. Unwelcome images flitted through her head, and she squeezed her eyes closed. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t understand how this could have happened.
Fran had slept with her fiancé.
And then suddenly, she remembered that day in the park when Fran had become sick as soon as John had arrived. How she’d insisted she was ill and left immediately.
She glanced at Helene, who covered her gaping mouth with her hand.
Alma couldn’t believe it, yet her mind raced to fill in the gaps of her understanding.
“You…you had relations with John Lambert,” Alma croaked.
“Yes,” Francesca said, voice weary.
“But how could you!” Alma’s voice rose to a near-hysterical pitch. She didn’t love John—in truth she didn’t really know him well—but this felt like a betrayal, both to her and to Fritz. To her entire family.
A terrible thought bubbled up from some dark well within, the place where she’d banished the hateful ideas about immigrants she’d learned as a child. And yet, the thoughts were still there and they returned, unbidden, echoing in her memory. Perhaps all of the rumors she’d heard about Italian women—and other immigrant women—were true. They were loose, easy to fall into bed, and didn’t care about propriety or what was right and good. They were more like animals than humans. Feral and filthy and of the very lowest class.
She glanced at Fran, at her slightly swollen stomach and at the regret reflected in her eyes, and knew that was the view her parents would have. Though Alma had been programmed to believe such things at one time, too, that didn’t make them true.
Ashamed she should doubt her friend or even think such a thought, she felt her own eyes fill. Dashing away the tears with her sleeve, she asked the question she really wanted to know.
“How could you lie to me all those months?”