“He told me he went prematurely gray while he was in his thirties,” Elaine defended in a low voice.
“And how many decades ago was that?”
It was a pointless question, for her parents already knew that at fifty-two, Walter was twenty-three years older than Elaine. Of course, Walter’s biggest crime was his intention to marry Elaine, ensuring that Maude’s eldest daughter would never return to Kansas.
Maude and Roy would be staying in their tiny apartment for the duration of the visit, and it was going to be a tight fit. As soon as they settled their luggage at the apartment, Walter drove them all to his neighborhood so they could tour his grocery store.
“I’m already learning how to pickle all kinds of salads and vegetables,” Elaine said as they entered the shop.
With its gleaming wood floors, colorful displays, and huge variety of delicacies, Annabelle thought her parents would be pleased with the shop and Walter’s ability to support Elaine, but her mother continued to find fault.
“Four dollars for mustard,” Maude said, aghast, as she held an elegant glass jar.
Walter was polite. “It is imported from France and made with fermented cranberry wine. There’s nothing else quite like it. I’d be happy to serve some at a meal while you are visiting.”
“I wouldn’t ask that of you,” Maude said, setting the jar back on the shelf. In Kansas they ground their own mustard seeds with a little vinegar and called it a day. The luxury in Walter’s store was an affront to Maude’s thrifty soul.
Their father didn’t care about mustard prices. He was too fascinated with the spigot on the delicatessen sink and how it could supply water even though there was no well behind the shop. The concept of a municipal water system was a new and marvelous thing for Roy. Long after Maude had her fill of the shop, Roy asked Walter all kinds of questions about the plumbing, the cash register, and how the electric lamps worked.
Their father was endlessly curious about the city, wanting to know how the streetcars stayed balanced on the sunken tracks and who paid for the streetlamps. That evening Annabelle warned her parents that they would need to lower the shades on the bedroom window or else the streetlamps would keep them awake.
“They leave them on all night?” Maude asked. There was noneed for window shades at their farmhouse, where only owls and raccoons roamed the night.
“All night,” Annabelle confirmed. “It’s for safety.”
“Good heavens,” Maude exclaimed. “If I’d known it was this unsafe in the city, I would never have consented for my girls to come.”
Maude had resisted their move to Washington from the moment Elaine raised the possibility. Maude and Elaine had always been unusually close, but after Elaine lost her sight, Maude had continually hovered within a few feet of her daughter. The moment Elaine rose from a chair, Maude would be at her side to walk her across the room, pour her a glass of water, or cut her meat. She didn’t believe Elaine could function without her and threw out one excuse after another to stop her beloved oldest daughter from leaving. She usually cited the cost, for there was never enough money on the farm.
Roy had sold the milking goats to raise money, then bought two train tickets without consulting Maude. Once the tickets were purchased, Maude could find no more excuses for standing in Elaine’s way, but the night before they left, Anabelle heard her mother quietly weeping on the back porch. She’d never heard her mother cry before that night, and it was upsetting.
In her heart, Maude believed their sojourn to Washington would fail and it was only a matter of time before Elaine would return to Kansas. Walter had ruined that, and Maude could find nothing about Washington that pleased her.
Just before they all turned in for the evening, Roy beckoned Annabelle over to show her an article in the newspaper. “It says here there’s a skeleton of a mastodon in the Smithsonian. What’s a mastodon?”
She searched for the words. “It’s like an elephant, but bigger.”
Roy gazed into space. “I can’t even imagine such a thing. Is it interesting?”
Her heart turned over. How much her parents had sacrificedto send her and Elaine here. In the past six months, she’d started to take these marvels for granted, but Roy certainly didn’t. As soon as the wedding was over, she’d be sure her parents saw the mastodon and anything else they wanted to experience in this wonderful city.
She could only hope that by then, she would have shaken off this despondent sense of feeling like a flightless bird at the same time Elaine had found her wings.
Thirty-Four
Gray rarely took the time to readThe Washington Postfirst thing in the morning. Early morning hours were his most productive time, so he couldn’t explain his compulsion to sit in his parlor and open the newspaper. The story that jumped out at him was a two-page spread.
Family of Saboteurs, Socialites, and Spies
The article was a kick in the gut. He battled a tightness in his chest as he read the article, a direct assault on his motives for undermining the misbranded Magruder applesauce. It painted the applesauce story as a carefully orchestrated takedown of his business rival, using the auspices ofGood Housekeepingto carry out a personal vendetta.
Fury made it hard to see straight. He had to set the newspaper down and draw a few breaths while his vision cleared. He’d never trusted Dickie Shuster. The man would stab his mother in the back if it would make for a juicy story.
Gray forced his ire down as he picked up the newspaper to keep reading, but it only got worse as Dickie turned his attention to Caroline and Luke.
Luke Delacroix is currently incarcerated in a Cuban jail, awaiting trial for espionage and consorting with the enemy. While there have always been traitors skulking in our nation, rarely do those villains have siblings who work within arm’s length of the American president. Caroline Delacroix is the personal secretary to our country’s first lady, meaning she spends most of her time inside the White House, possibly wielding undue influence over the infirm Mrs. McKinley.
He didn’t care about the rehashing of his feud with the Magruders, but something needed to be done to quell the damage to Caroline, and it needed to be done fast. This was the first time news of Luke’s arrest had reached the general public, and it was going to devastate Caroline. They’d always known that sooner or later this story might leak, but he’d hoped for more time.
