“I love you,” she said. “I love you so much, but this is not how things were meant to be.”
Ada wasn’t an idiot. She knew that the tale of the queen from the beautiful, wild lands of northern Mozambique and the foreign prince who fell in love with her was a romanticized version of the truth, removed from the context of four hundred years of colonization, but her mother had taken such care in preserving the tale that Ada couldn’t bring herself to imagine anything different. And this wasn’t how that story was supposed to end.
“I’m sorry,” Ada said.
“Go back to the Cast Iron,” Nyah said, waving her hand. She was not looking at Ada now. “Maybe you are safer there, and that is where you want to be.”
The words were blows that only her mother was capable of delivering. Ada closed her eyes briefly. She knew she should stay, apologize more, make things right somehow. But she was hurt and angry and the apartment suddenly felt very small.
She gave her mother a hug and left without another word.
The walk back to the Cast Iron was bitingly cold, and Ada concentrated on her icy nose to avoid dwelling on anything that had just happened. She didn’t think she was being followed, but it was hard to know for sure.
It should never have gone this far. She and Corinne had lived and worked for years in peace, pulling the occasional con when business was slow without the regs being any wiser. But the Harvard Bridge had tipped the scales. Councilman Turner’s proposed bill for banning hemopathic activity had suddenly gained unprecedented support, and it had passed two months to the day after the Bengali banker job. Corinne insisted that the law would have passed anyway, but Ada knew it was their fault. They had reached too high and brought a storm down on the hemopaths of Boston. There would be no peace for them anymore.
Ada cupped her hands over her mouth and nose and blew into them. Her mind still turned in queasy circles as she opened the alley door and stepped into the relative warmth of the Cast Iron’s storage room. When she saw Charlie there, leaning against the wall and chatting with Gordon like it was any old day, her mind went blank.
“Morning,” he said.
Ada blinked.
“Morning,” she said, after a few seconds’ delay.
“Can we take a walk?” he asked.
Ada studied his features in the dusky light, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes from his habitual grin, the crooked length of his nose, though he swore he’d never broken it. He didn’t look like he wanted to argue with her. He looked relaxed. She nodded.
“You kids be careful,” Gordon said, spitting out a sunflower seed.
It was the first time Ada had seen Gordon express concern about any of the Cast Iron’s goings-on. She wasn’t sure how to respond to him. Charlie gave him a cheerful wave and opened the door.
“See you later, Gordon, old pal,” he said.
Gordon made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt and spat out another seed. It was the closest to a farewell that Ada had ever received from him. When she told that to Charlie, he just laughed.
“Gordon? He’s a big softie. Just ask him about his cat sometime. He’ll melt like butter in June.”
Ada hadn’t known that Gordon owned a cat. She stared at Charlie’s profile, trying to detect some hint of sarcasm, but it wasn’t there.
“What?” he asked, looking at her. “I got something in my teeth?”
She shook her head. They walked toward the street, elbows brushing every few steps. Ada wanted to take his hand, but she wasn’t sure how he would react to that. Their last conversation still hung between them, barbed and broken.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” Ada said at last, unable to stand the silence.
“I heard about what happened last night. I was worried about you.”
Ada hugged herself against the rising wind. Across the street a nun was leading a gaggle of orphans down the sidewalk. Trailing a block behind was an elderly couple, both with canes. The man was chuckling and clutching his hat in the wind. The woman reached out with a shaky hand and brushed something invisible from his shoulder. Ada looked away from the simple intimacy of the moment and sucked in a short breath. She stopped walking and pulled Charlie to face her. The question burned her throat, but she had to ask it.
“Charlie, was it—was it Carson? At the docks?” She searched his face. Corinne swore that deception was always in the eyebrows, but Ada wasn’t sure what to look for.
Charlie shook his head. She didn’t know if he meant that it wasn’t Carson or that he didn’t know.
“There’s a lot they don’t tell us, Ada,” he said.
“They?”
“Carson. Johnny Dervish. I know it feels like a family sometimes, but it’s not. You can’t think that.”
“What do you mean?”