I sighed against my wrist and warmed my flesh with my breath. “It doesn’t even matter. We were just kids playing fairy-tale games. It didn’t mean anything.”
I heard a piece of wood creak and I jumped, but I quickly realized the sound came from Joe leaning his head farther back against the wall.
“Do you hope to get married someday?” he asked.
“As long as I don’t fall in love with a man the wrong color.”
He exhaled a steady stream of air through his nostrils. “I think love and wrong are two deeply unrelated words that should never be thrown into the same sentence together. Like dessert and broccoli.”
I laughed.
Joe moved the lamp to the other side of himself and scooted toward me. The sides of our arms and legs bumped against each other.
“No matter what happened the night your father died, Hanalee,” he said, “you need to go to a place that will treat you better.”
“I know.”
“Elston’s got nothing to offer you.”
“I can’t go anywhere before I know the full truth about my father. I don’t care if I get hurt in the process. I’ve got to find out what happened and learn who was there with him. Otherwise . . . I know he’ll keep wandering that road.” I relaxed my shoulders against the wall. “I’ll keep wandering.”
Joe closed his mouth and nodded. “All right. I’m still not entirely convinced Dr. Koning doesn’t own the largest share of responsibility, though. I don’t trust him in the slightest.”
“We can’t kill him, Joe. Not until I find out what happened at the Dry Dock.”
“I know.” He picked at the hole in the knee of his trousers. “What am I supposed to do, then? Just sit here and pretend to be dead?”
“I’ll see if I can get my mother to take me to the restaurant tomorrow morning. I know she doesn’t want to let me out of her sight, so I’ll see if she’ll help me. And then I’ll find you and tell you what I learned. Where do you think you’ll be late tomorrow morning?”
“Here, maybe.” His eyes shifted toward the shadows surrounding the front door. “Or at the pond.”
“Bathing again?”
“I just can’t seem to get the stink of that prison off me,” he said with a chuckle that carried a weight to it.
I pushed my arm close against his. “You don’t smell like prison. You smell of these woods. You smell nice.”
He lifted his face to mine with a startled look in his eyes, and I worried I’d accidentally just sounded as though I loved him.
“I like honeycombs,” I said with a wiggle of my feet, and a second later I burst out laughing.
“What?” he asked with a smile that seemed confused.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just proving that it might not be my skin color alone that’s a hindrance to relationships.” My face sobered. I stretched out my legs in front of me and let his arm warm mine.
We both turned our gazes toward the empty stable in front of us, and we just sat there, side by side, until the oil burned out and the lamplight died without even a sigh of warning. The sudden darkness made a small knot tighten in my lower back. I couldn’t see my own hands and legs in front of me.
“I’ll bring you some oil and food tomorrow,” I said, scooting up to a kneeling position, my knees slipping on hay. “Stay as hidden as you can. I don’t want anyone finding and hurting you.”
He nodded. I couldn’t see him in the slightest, but something about the way he breathed showed me the movement of his head.
I reached my hands into the blackness and found the sturdy slope of his shoulders, and then his neck and the line of his jaw.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a nervous snicker, pulling away a little. “You’re tickling me.”
I leaned forward and kissed his forehead, grazing part of an eyebrow with my lips.
His snickering stopped. He went still below me. I let my mouth linger a moment longer before I pulled away and sat back on my heels.
“What was that for?” he asked in a whisper.
“Christmas Eve 1921 is far too long a time to go without a kind touch, Joe.” I cupped his cheek in my hand, and then I slipped away into the darkness and found my way home.
CHAPTER 20
BE EVEN AND DIRECT WITH ME
MAMA WOKE ME UP THE NEXT MORNING by shaking my right shoulder.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I opened my eyes to find her dangling one of the clipped locks of my hair in front of my face.
“When and why did you cut off your hair, Hanalee?”
I shrugged. “I just . . . I got too warm last night.”
“Hanalee Denney!” She squeezed her fist around the curl. “Every night it’s some new cause for alarm with you.”
“I spent most of yesterday thinking Joe Adder had been murdered. What do you expect from me?”
“Stop worrying about Joe Adder.”
“Everyone in this town who’s different seems to die.”