“What can I do to make this easier?”
“Come back tomorrow. I’m here every day.”
He should be out planning how to reinvent the city for the new century. He should be dancing at weddings, teasing membersof the Poison Squad, stirring up the world with one fiery article after another. He didn’t belong locked in a jail, doing laundry.
“I guess this was one way to get you off the Poison Squad.”
Sorrow made his eyes glint. “I feel like I’m letting the other guys down.”
“Don’t,” she rushed to say, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. He was so endlessly generous with his time and his body. Now he was suffering in jail because of her.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Stillman is coming back,” he said and quickly set the ventilation tube back in place. She shifted over to the window fan but pressed against the side of the wall so no one inside could see her.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised.
Twenty-Seven
She met Luke at the laundry vents for the next four days. They were only able to steal a few minutes while his fellow inmate took his break, so there wasn’t much time to waste arguing, but she broached the subject of Luke’s defense at every meeting.
“You don’t even have to use my name,” she said. “Just tell them that someone with connections on the inside gave you the pictures.”
He squeezed her hand through the vent opening. “Never, never, never,” he vowed, his voice warm with affection, and each word felt like a caress.
The prospect of being exposed terrified her, but she wished he would do it. They couldn’t keep meeting like this forever. Their secret meetings would eventually be discovered, and the punishment would fall entirely on Luke. This situation had to come to an end sooner or later, but he would never turn her in.
The only way to help Luke was for her to confess, and she would have to start by telling her parents. Would they let her continue living with them, or would she be banished from the house? At least when Aunt Stella was cut out of the family, she left with a husband. Marianne would be all alone.
She pondered the dilemma as she brewed a cup of gingertea for her mother on Saturday afternoon. Vera’s headache was brutal today, and she lay upstairs with the blinds drawn and the windows closed despite the heat of the July afternoon.
Marianne put a few daisies into a bud vase because Vera liked that sort of touch on a tea tray. She was about to carry the tray upstairs when the swinging door to the kitchen banged open. Andrew stomped inside, followed quickly by Delia.
“You missed the rose competition at the Smithsonian,” Andrew said, his expression sour.
Marianne bit her lip. Delia had brought a potted rosebush all the way from Baltimore to enter the competition. Her sister-in-law was supremely proud of her hybrid roses and had prepared a speech for the judges as part of the contest. Marianne hadn’t been about to miss her morning with Luke to watch Delia preen in a flower contest.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I had to work today. How did the competition go?”
“Work,” Andrew scoffed. “You don’t have to work, youwantto work. You flit all over town to take silly pictures and can’t be bothered to support your own family. You were late to Dad’s speech, and now you’ve disrespected Delia by ignoring her efforts in the rose competition.”
Marianne sent a conciliatory nod to her sister-in-law. “I’m sorry I missed the contest. I had commitments today, and I hope you don’t take it as a sign of disrespect that I couldn’t be there.”
“You ought to try a lot harder,” Andrew said. “You’re only a part of this family because Dad insisted on it. You’re here on sufferance.”
Marianne whirled on Andrew. “How dare you!” She scrambled for other words, but her mind went blank at the horrible comment that touched every one of her deepest insecurities.
“Your mother was an opera singer,” Andrew said. “Dad paid her a thousand dollars to disappear, and she gladly took it. Youwere welcomed into this family even though your mother was little better than a tramp who—”
“Shut up,” she said. “My mother is upstairs. I’ve been looking after her while she has a migraine. I hope you enjoyed yourself at Delia’s garden party.”
“Your mothertook a thousand dollars to go away,” Andrew retorted. “If I’d been there, I could have dickered her down to a few hundred.”
She threw the bud vase at him, but he ducked as it smashed against the wall, spattering him with petals and water. He flicked a few droplets from his cuff and smirked.
“Very classy,” he taunted. “Blood will out, won’t it, Marianne?”
Mortification rushed through her. She was becoming exactly what she feared—someone who threw things and yelled and raged.
The noise brought her father storming into the kitchen. “What’s going on in here?” Clyde demanded, his face a thundercloud as he surveyed the broken vase and water trickling down the wall. Jedidiah followed, making the kitchen uncomfortably crowded.
