“Would you like something to eat? Some tea?”
Jasper shook his head. “I came to tell Merinda that they don’t think there was a specific police target for the blast. That we theorize this particular automobile was chosen because it was parked in plain view and that J-Jones”—he tripped on the name—“had accidentally left the passenger door unlocked, making it even easier for them to enter and rearrange the wires.” He continued while looking at Jem and never once glancing in Merinda’s direction. “The wiring was such that it should have exploded the moment the door on the right was open, but it was faulty.” Jasper wiped his hand over his face. “I asked Jones to drive me there. He had just left his shift, and I didn’t want to be responsible for the automobile for the entire day. If she”—he nodded in Merinda’s direction—“hadn’t said what she said, I wouldn’t have impulsively dashed after her.”
“Jasper,” Jem said sorrowfully, “it’s horrible what happened to poor Jones, but it isn’t your fault. Nor is it Merinda’s. Nor Benny’s. Yes, yes,” she said, noting his raised eyebrow. “Benny was here before you, and he feels just as guilty. We have to be able to accept that a terrible thing happened to someone we cared about. And we should spend our energy not in anger with each other but in pursuit of a solution… before more innocent lives are taken.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A bachelor girl is not constrained by the domestic duties that take priority in the day of a married lady. With all of the additional time available to the single woman, she should spend her day in pursuit of activism and charity. Funds for missions and afternoons at orphanages or soup kitchens are some ways in which the Bachelor Girl can demonstrate a softened heart toward the needy.
Dorothea Fairfax, Handbook to Bachelor Girlhood
Staying with Merinda, Jem found it far too easy to fall back into their routine of old. It was second nature to have Merinda at the helm—bellowing for coffee, ordering more pastries, leaving her shoes and coat on the floor in the front hallway. There was a relaxation and familiarity even around Merinda’s frenetic ways. Her recent worries abated somewhat in a sitting room now awash with newspapers and periodicals. Who had time to fret about finances when bombers were on the loose? Only hours after showing Jasper to the door, they had diagrams on bomb building and every leaflet or article Kat and Mouse could find on Emma Goldman. With Jones’s untimely death, it seemed more adamant than ever that they find a solution—and Jonathan.
Now the girls sat on either side of the hearth for a short reprieve before they set out to a meeting Merinda had learned of from the intoxicated man at the rally two nights before. It was too warm for a fire, of course, and the evening stretched long and lemony outside the open window. They were quiet, considering the activities of the day. After Jasper had departed, they’d spent the late morning and early afternoon hours scouring the Ward, finding pockets of anarchists rampant in the immigrant community, Jem trying to keep pace even as her head still smarted.
“Remember the man with the funny moustache?” said Merinda. “ ‘If you cannot overthrow oppression in a great country like Canada, then the journey here is not worth the hardship.’ These men are so much like DeLuca. But he never joined them.”
“I think he always ascribes to a higher power. God. The law,” Jem said.
“You mean he submits. But look at these men. They’re saying, ‘We have a voice, even if our English is broken. We deserve a life better than the one you have doled out to us.’ ”
“You’re in a passionate mood, Merinda.”
“I understand them, Jem. I want to fling off every restriction I run into as a woman. I identify with that need to be able to find a platform and speak and yell!” She pumped her fist a little and then fell into the safety of her wingback chair. “You wouldn’t think it. A woman like me with an education and my father’s money at the drop of a hat. But I identify with them, Jem. I want my independence and my voice too.”
Jem watched Merinda even as her mind trailed back to the house in Cabbagetown. Ray often promised to get his friend Lars to fix the window in their bedroom. It never quite closed shut. When she reminded him, he’d wave a hand and say he had forgotten. But with the baby coming, they’d need to fix the window once and for all, or else that cold wind would whistle through.
She sat up suddenly, wondering why her thoughts had drifted to the window.
“I know that, Merinda. But some of what they do is dangerous.”
“If people aren’t going to listen to you any other way, sometimes you have to speak louder than words.”