Edna wasn’t sure at first what it meant, but the idea was starting to dawn on her. Now she understood the fur collars and the velvet hats.
“Is this—is this the cost?” she asked, a little tremulously.
“Why—yes, for the passage. It’s always something around a hundred dollars, but they change it all the time. And then fifty each month while you’re there, because of course the relief organ-izations raise funds to feed the refugees, not the volunteers. But you only have to put up one month in advance. They’ll just send us home if the rest of the money doesn’t arrive!”
That brought another laugh from her friends down the front row, who were all busy conferring with one another over dates. Edna tried to restrain her shock, but it must have shown.
“Oh,” said Ruby, reaching over to put a hand over hers. “We don’t all have fathers paying our way. I hope you didn’t think that. Some of them flatly refuse.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Edna mumbled.
“Not at all,” Ruby went on. “Some of us are raising the money ourselves. We hold little parties, and ask every guest to sign on for just one dollar for every month we’ll be away. Fifty of those, and you’re ready to go! Have your mother invite her friends. Ladies like that can always put a dollar toward a good cause.”
“My mother?—”
“Yes, exactly!” Ruby said cheerfully. “Now, I want to sail in April, and I want you to be my bunk-mate. Won’t we have the best time? Can you be ready to go by then?”
Edna felt a little dizzy at the idea of it. A hundred dollars for the voyage, and fifty a month after that—it would cost seven hundred dollars for one year in France! She had no idea that she’d be expected to pay her own way. She didn’t earn anything close to seven hundred dollars in a year, and she spent most of her paycheck on room and board. The whole business was impossible.
Ruby was leaning over her expectantly. She had the prettiest blue eyes and a perfect little nose. When had anything not gone according to Ruby’s wishes?
“You will, won’t you, Edna? Say you’ll come with us in April. You’ll speak to your father and mother, and arrange it all?”
Seven hundred dollars. The war would be over before she saw seven hundred dollars. But hadn’t Ruby said that she only needed to raise the first month’s fee? Would they really send her home if the money didn’t arrive for the second month? A hundred and fifty dollars sounded almost manageable. She couldn’t imagine where she would get it, but wasn’t she obligated to try?
“Of course I will,” Edna heard herself say. At just that moment, she almost believed it.
31
CONSTANCE DIDN’T SAY a word about Minnie’s confession when she returned from the reformatory. Sheriff Heath hadn’t asked, and she didn’t see it as her obligation to repeat every word an inmate said to her. There seemed to be no way, under these changed circumstances, for Constance to help Minnie, but she didn’t want to make things worse for her, either. A girl who pretended to be married to one man while going around with two or three more was exactly the sort of girl who ended up in a reformatory. Constance felt certain that the punishment was too harsh, and unjustly penalized the girl for a crime that required a man’s willing participation as well. But what was she to do about it? For the moment, she could stay quiet about what she knew. That, at least, was within her power.
She’d spent too many nights at the jail lately and desperately wanted a proper bath, but by the time she returned from the reformatory, it had been too late to go on home. So she spent another night in her cell and would have started for home in the morning, had not a guard come up the stairs to inform her that her sister was waiting for her outside.
“Which one?” Constance asked as she stuffed her feet into boots still wet and stiff from last night’s snow.
“The unpleasant one,” the guard said. All the guards loved Fleurette because she flattered and teased them. They’d hardly ever seen Norma, but she nonetheless had a singular reputation among them.
Norma insisted on waiting outside, so Constance threw on a coat and met her in the driveway. She was standing apart from the jail, looking up at it grimly. From underneath her mackinaw, an old gray sweater bunched up awkwardly around her neck. She hadn’t exactly dressed for a trip to town.
Norma was not a woman inclined to go out for the purpose of talking to anyone, her sister included, which was why she so rarely turned up at the jail. Once or twice she’d sent Constance a postcard, always with a cryptic message pasted across it. She used to send such messages via pigeon-mail, but both Constance and Fleurette refused to accept messages from Norma’s birds anymore. It displeased Norma to resort to postcards, but there was no other way.
She cut them from newspaper headlines, and Constance and Fleurette were meant to puzzle out their meanings. “Good Works Not Promises” would arrive if Constance had agreed to help with some chore and then stayed away for too many days in a row. “Lunch Refused” turned up one day when Fleurette insisted on making her version of Italian soup, which was nothing but boiled macaroni in chicken broth and smothered in grated cheese, along with, as Norma liked to say, enough garlic to defeat the Germans.
But this, apparently, didn’t warrant a postcard. “What’s the matter?” Constance asked as she walked across the drive.
“Was Fleurette here yesterday?”
“Well, I wasn’t here myself yesterday, but someone would’ve told me if she’d been by. Why?”
In the time it took Constance to answer, a chilly understanding crept over her.
“She didn’t come home last night,” Norma said.
Constance took her by the arm and pulled her toward the jail, but Norma refused to go.
“Are you sure? Couldn’t she have stayed overnight with Helen? What did she say when she left?”
“Nothing. She left sometime around noon yesterday while I was in Ridgewood,” Norma said. “I assumed she went to Mrs. Hansen’s. That’s where she always goes. Why would I have thought otherwise?”
“You wouldn’t,” Constance said, with a panicky sort of impatience.
“I spent all afternoon putting that back fence together and went to bed with a hot water bottle around eight. I was going to stay awake until I heard her come in, but the next thing I knew it was morning. I checked her room right away. She definitely hasn’t been home since yesterday.”
Constance choked on the blustery morning air as she tried to get some sort of answer out. Minnie Davis’s predicament was all too present in her thoughts. She’d only just been imagining what she’d do if Fleurette ran off like Minnie did. One part of her mind was busy denying that any such thing could ever happen, and another part was already organizing a search party.
“There isn’t any note,” Norma said. “And I haven’t seen evidence of any other kind of trouble. No letters or postcards from men, no cigarettes, no liquor?—”
“Liquor and cigarettes! What exactly do you think she’s been up to?”