They sat down to a dinner of small potatoes, fresh carrots, and an herbed chicken superior to anything he had tasted since his last visit to his grandmother’s farmhouse table. As they ate, she voiced her lingering concern for Jemima with a few comments as to her friend’s safety. Then she followed it up with, “I have to start trusting her more. I do! She is just as strong as anyone… ” Immediately after one of these trails of thought, she would supply him with an anecdote explaining Jem’s ability to take care of herself. After the third such example, Benny was unsure if Merinda was attempting to convince him or herself.
Midway through dinner, she unfolded one of the papers she had secured* from her earlier errand for David Ross.
“It’s more ridiculous than one of DeLuca’s articles in the Hogtown Herald.” She assessed the curt, bold font. It wasn’t unlike the pamphlet that had led her to Ross in Toronto and her fortuitous meeting with one of his followers on the streetcar.
Benny bit his lip. “No, it is authentic. It is similar to what I assumed lured Jonathan into their clutches,” he said, remembering a similar missive in the barracks in Regina at about the same time that Jonathan began attending the meetings.
“He uses such strong language when he speaks,” Merinda said as their eyes searched the leaflet together. “Explosive. Change. Earth shattering. Freedom.” She stabbed at a word on her own pamphlet as he simultaneously moved his own finger to highlight the same word and their pinkies touched. Merinda, as if touching fire, jerked her hand away as he read, his voice surprisingly steady after the whisper-touch of their fingers. “War.”
After their dinner was finished, she excused herself to change into clothing appropriate for their evening’s mission.
He waited at the table with a cup of coffee he was too distracted to touch, opting instead to fixate on a plastic plant erupting from a bronze planter directly in his line of sight, wondering why his fingertip still tingled as if deliciously burned from its fleeting touch with her.
But pleasant thoughts soon peeled back, leaving his earlier encounter with Jonathan in their stead. “It’s safer this way.” Benny heard Jonathan’s voice in his head. He reeled at his inability to spring into action even as his cousin had been standing right before him and his duty clutched at his chest. Moments later, Merinda arrived, dressed as a man—and almost convincingly so.
She chatted excitedly about finally being a part of Ross’s grand plan as they wound the dark streets. She told him everything she’d deduced about the man’s sad life in Poland and his susceptibility to Goldman’s words.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Jonathan there tonight, Benny. He’s obviously involved in the PLM. We’re getting closer and closer.”
Benny couldn’t help but smile in the midst of his uncertainty. She was dressed in the black clothing that Ross had apparently insisted on. Her curls were tucked under a bowler positioned at a jaunty angle. The clothes suited her flat, slight figure and made her legs seem even longer as she kept pace, swinging her walking stick beside her in excited rhythm.
“Men’s clothes become you,” Benny said. He’d say anything to keep his brain from racing back to Jonathan.
“Are you teasing me, Benny?”
“Why would I tease you?”
Merinda grumbled something. It might have been “Thank you.” Benny couldn’t tell. They walked a bit farther before turning in the direction of the warehouse, sloping down toward the lake. “I like how your tie is always straight,” she said lowly. “DeLuca always has his collar open. Doesn’t bother with ties.”
“Are you teasing me, Merinda?” Benny asked with a glint in his eye.
“Cracker jacks!” she fumed. They walked a few beats in silence. Then she revisited her earlier preoccupation with Jem. “Who would have thought it, Benny? Jem just ups and goes to find DeLuca on her own. Sends me a telegram! Can you believe it? Well, I hope she doesn’t get in too much trouble. You know she needs me in these moments to be able to… especially now that… ”
“I saw my cousin Jonathan.” Benny stepped on her sentence.
Merinda stopped in her tracks. “I’m sorry?”
“I saw Jonathan. Here. Earlier today.”
“We came all this way to find him, and you have already seen him? Well, I assume then that you marched him straight to authorities!” Merinda gave a decisive nod.
“He said… he said he’ll find me again when he needs me.”
“Benny.” Merinda spat. “We’ve just spent the past hours in each other’s company and you had the audacity to expound on the fascinating winter patterns of the lynx while keeping this information to yourself!”
“I still haven’t worked it out myself.”
“But you let him go?”
“He’s not gone. I mean, he said that he will find me again, and I trust him.”
“Benny Citrone, this is the man responsible for numerous lives lost. A young officer, a friend of ours… And you trust him?”
“A man is only as good as his word, Merinda. And he as good as gave me his word. I believe him.”
Merinda fell into silence.
Benny was even more at odds with himself now that Merinda’s green eyes bored into him. If he wasn’t doing his duty by the law, he had trouble making sense of anything. It was more than unorthodox to let Jonathan go when he should have arrested him then and there. But perhaps his bending of the law would result in something good.