Ella had seemed more relaxed after Richard had left with their friend Hampton. But now, with the house quiet and the sun preparing to rise and Richard still not returned, Katherine found it impossible to find the peace that Ella had shown.
She knew that Richard sometimes kept a bottle hidden in their closet, so she’d gone upstairs and felt along the top shelf where he kept his shoes, toes pointed out. The bottle was set in a pair of wingtips, and she closed her hand around its neck and took it down. She shook a cigarette free from the pack on the dresser and went downstairs in search of a glass and matches.
Instead of calming her nerves, the whiskey and the cigarette had done nothing but sour her empty stomach, and now she stood on the front porch staring out at the driveway, watching the night slowly give way to morning.
It was quiet. The only sounds were the calls of birds and the soft breeze that stirred the trees. Although she knew that another shift was about to begin down in McAdamville, that Edison’s Dynamo No. 31 pumped like a heart in the belly of the mill, Katherine felt that she was the only person awake in the world. She wished that Richard were still asleep upstairs. Normally, if it were a weekday, he wouldn’t stir for another hour yet, wouldn’t rise and bathe and dress for the day until 7 a.m. By that time the world would be awake, and she wouldn’t be alone, waiting, like she was now.
Her ears caught the noise of an automobile crawling up the hill. She recognized the sound of it. It was the Essex.
The car rolled through the driveway, its headlights off. Katherine caught a glimpse of Richard behind the wheel. He would not have expected to see her waiting for him on the front porch, and he did not look for her now. Instead he pulled into the garage just as he always did. Katherine all but ran through the foyer, down the hall, and toward the back door.
Richard had already parked and turned off the car by the time she called his name. He did not respond. Instead he closed the garage doors, laced a chain through the handles, and clicked a padlock shut. Katherine knew that something had gone horribly wrong.
Richard appeared ashen except for a dark spot above his right eye. When he drew closer Katherine saw that his face was bruised and his forehead bloodied. She gasped.
“My God, Richard,” she said. “What happened?”
He brushed past her and walked up the hall to the front door. He extinguished the lights in the foyer, walked into the parlor, and drew the curtains over the window. He crossed the foyer and drew the curtains in the dining room as well.
“What’s going on?” she asked. She closed the back door and walked up the hall. “What happened?”
“Turn the lights off in the kitchen,” he said.
She leaned inside the door and flipped the switch. With the lights off the dawn outside seemed even brighter.
She found him standing in the parlor, drinking a cup of cold coffee from the tray Claire had left on the table.
“Richard!” she said. “What happened?”
He poured another cup, drank it more slowly than the first. She looked at his face, the bruised skin, the blood that had dried to a sticky brown. She wondered if he and Hampton had fought.
“Where’s that boy?” she asked. “What did you do to him?”
“What did I do to him? Me? I drove him to the goddamned train station, Kate. Just like you asked!”
It was the tenor of his voice that reminded Katherine that Claire was upstairs. Claire had been away at school so long, that they did not stop to consider whether or not anyone could hear them when they fought. But they weren’t alone now. She looked toward the foyer, pictured Claire lying awake in bed listening to the voices coming up the stairwell.
Richard seemed to know that he’d spoken too loudly. He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair.
“They’re not still here,” he said.
“Who?”
“Those damned women.”
“No,” Katherine said. “They left hours ago. Hours. Where have you been? What happened?”
He walked around the table and collapsed onto the davenport where Hampton had been sitting just a few hours earlier.
“I tried to take him to Charlotte, but he wanted to go back to his boardinghouse. I said no, but he threatened to go back whether I took him or not. And I thought it would be safer for us both if I just drove him.” He looked up at her.
“There were police everywhere, Katherine. Percy Epps stopped my car. He had a detective with him. A Pinkerton, Kate. Do you know what that means? He asked me what I was doing there.” He shook his head. “And I didn’t know what to say because why in the hell should I have been there?”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. There was nothing I could say, and they knew.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands. “They knew something was wrong.”
“What did you do?”
“I drove off. It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“Where’s Hampton?”
“I left him in Statesville,” Richard said.
“Statesville?” She stepped into the room, considered sitting beside him on the davenport, but something stopped her. “What’s in Statesville?”
“The train station, Katherine. Epps said they were checking trains in Charlotte and Spartanburg. Statesville was the only place I could take him.”
She stared at him, wondering if she could believe him, if she should believe him. She remembered what she’d heard Richard say the night of Claire’s engagement party about the child that Ella had lost. Katherine had been so disappointed in him that night. She wondered if he’d disappointed her again.
“Did you really take him to Statesville?” she asked.
He looked up, his face a mix of disgust and anger.
“Of course I did,” he said. “Where the hell else would I have taken him?”
“Did you see him get on the train?”
“No,” he said. “I thought the twenty dollars I gave him would see to his getting on the damn train.”
She stared at him for another moment, finding herself desperate to believe him.
“What happened to your face?” she asked.
He touched his bruised cheek, put his fingers to the cut above his eye. The blood had dried tacky, and when he lifted his hand away he rubbed his finger and thumb together.
“Someone followed us,” he said.
He reached for one of the cloth napkins on the table and dipped it into the water pitcher. He touched the napkin to his head, then looked at the watery, pink blood on the cloth.
“A car swerved around me and slammed on its brakes. Another car hit us from behind, ran us off the road. My head bumped the steering wheel.”
Katherine remembered what Ella had told her about the Council, about her fear of being on the roads at night.
“Who was it?” she asked. “Epps?”
“I don’t know,” Richard said. “It could’ve been anyone.”
“Is he all right?”
“Who?”
“The boy, Hampton. Is he all right?”
Richard tossed the wet napkin onto the table and stood.
“You keep saying ‘boy’ as if he’s some child, Katherine. He’s no child. He’s twenty-five. He’s an adult.”
“So you talked to him?”
“Jesus, of course I talked to him,” he said. “It’s a long drive to Statesville. And we’d almost been killed, twice. Conversation was easy after that.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Is that really important?”