“Is that my consolation prize? He’s never around, and he’s engaged in things that get him shot, but I should feel lucky that he talks about me.”
“He’s trying to be a good man.”
“Then Leroy Knight and I will have another come-to-Jesus meeting, because I didn’t marry him so I could live alone and raise my sons without a father.”
“We live in hard times, Tuesday. A man can’t find a job worth more than the shirt on his back. I believe Leroy is doing his best to provide for his family.”
“Is getting shot part of the plan? What about the WPA? Plenty of men make money on President Roosevelt’s program.” Tuesday slowed and turned toward him. “I don’t buy into this notion of thieving and robbing because a good job just don’t pay enough. Honesty is worth far more than a dollar, Doc. I’d a-soon he washed fish guts off the boats or picked oranges than run with folks who get him shot. The next bullet might not miss his heart.” She brushed acold tear from her cheek. “Besides, I can’t remember the last time he showed up with any cash.”
“Like I said, times are rough.”
“Tell me, are you a real doctor?”
“I studied but never finished. My father died, and I had to take care of my mother and siblings. By the time my youngest brother left the house, I was thirty years old and ready for adventure. I worked my way across the Atlantic on a merchant ship. Got a job in London as a doctor’s assistant. By some miracle, I married a beautiful, charitable English heiress and had two stunning daughters.”
“How do they feel about you running around with hoodlums?”
“They’re dead.” Said so succinctly she almost didn’t believe him except for the grief in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry.”
“My wife was from a long line of lords and ladies. One of her uncles was a British general during our Revolutionary War. Her family, the great Traffords, had people in New York and wanted my wife to bring our daughters over for the summer Season. That way, when they made their American debut, they’d have made the right acquaintances.”
“Seasons and debuts,” Tuesday whispered. “Sounds like a Jane Austen novel.”
“My wife booked passage for the spring, and I was to follow a month later. After all, I was still a working man. Once I arrived, we’d spend a month with my family and sail home together. I stood on the dock, watching them board the HMSTitanic. ”
“Doc.” Tuesday grabbed his arm. “Weren’t they rescued?”
“Betsy, my wife, was the most generous soul. She had gone to steerage to help a sick family. So like her, my Bets.” He sighed and walked on. “The girls woke when the ship started listing and tried to find her, probably ended up belowdecks or trapped somewhere. They were eleven and nine.”
“I cannot imagine,” Tuesday said with a shiver against the chill.
“Yes, that’s the thing, isn’t it? What we imagine. I had somerelief when the wife of the couple in the stateroom next to my girls wrote to me, told me what she believed happened.” Doc gazed toward the sound of the waves. “Two years later, when the Great War broke out, my wife’s uncle recruited me for the Royal Army Medical Corp. I was forty years old. My two brothers died in 1918. The Battle of Belleau Wood. My mother succumbed to the Spanish flu, and my sister married and moved west. In the blink of an eye, I was utterly alone. I sailed back to the States, sold the family home, and hopped a train. Found a life on the rails, hoboing, doing odd jobs, doctoring folks who might not want a real doctor or hospital to know what they’d been up to. Helped a few gals in trouble, who got in the family way.”
“Doc—”
“I am not proud. Not at all.” He glanced at her. “How’d you meet Lee?”
“At the Starlight. I worked there. Lived there too, in that very room where you fixed him up. My mother was sixteen and unmarried. My grandparents raised me, but Mamaw was done raising kids after seven of her own. My mother was the youngest. Probably why she got in trouble. When Gramps died, Mamaw packed up and left. Prince Blue at the Starlight saved me. Then I met Leroy.”
“Lee was real proud when he gave you the rink.”
“You knew him then? Did he tell you what I really wanted was a diamond ring?” She smiled softly. “But the Starlight is a marvelous substitute. Incomparable, really.”
“Can I give you some advice?” Doc waited for her answer, a somberness about him.
“Go on.”
“Leroy may not be living up to what he promised you as a young man in love, but sometimes love requires taking it as it comes and in the manner it’s given. You can choose to accept or reject it. I’ve lived a good many years, Tuesday, and my advice is to see Leroy’s love as he gives it. Then, like the rest of us, do what you must to fill the cracks.”
12
HARLOW
When her alarm buzzed at five in the morning, she rolled over and slapped the off button. Yeah, this jog wasnothappening.
She’d never been athletic, let alone a jogger. When she shot a sneaker commercial in the early eighties, they hired a coach to help her move like an athlete.
