Her eyes bleary with tears, she began her long drive back to Pennsylvania.
It wouldn’t be long, she feared, before Izzy’s husband was drafted too.
After Easter, she would send Izzy an invitation with her phone number and address. If the woman needed anything while Simon was gone, she could contact Olivia in Catawba.
28:Isadore
APRIL 1942
“I’ve never been so embarrassed!” Professor Farrow shouted, the words hammering through Greta’s nursery.
Greta, thank heavens, had learned to sleep through the noise.
The professor was often frustrated, but Izzy had never heard him erupt like this. Something about Olivia Belle’s visit had sent both him and Simon into a tizzy.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Simon said calmly in the parlor below. “She was confused.”
“Mrs. Vane is never confused.”
“Not her,” Simon replied. “Olivia.”
Izzy curled up on the carpet, her knees drawn to her chest as she leaned over the grille. When the men argued, the professor usually chided Simon for being gone too long, telling him that he needed to provide better for his family. The professor had asked him to find steady work in Winfield, but Simon didn’t want to leave his current position.Promising, always, to her and his father, that more money was coming soon.
After she and Simon argued last month, when she threatened a return to Elms, he surprised her with a new coat and saddle shoes and a proper crib for Greta. He’d even taken her out to dinner and to the theater to seeThe Taming of the Shrew.She was skeptical, like the professor, about Simon’s work, but she’d enjoyed his generosity this spring. For now, she and Greta had what they needed.
A shadow swept under the vent, probably the professor pacing since Simon often turned into stone when he fought with his father, like he was battening down the hatches to wait out a storm.
“I don’t understand.” Professor Farrow lowered his voice as he moved across the parlor and then turned. “How could you get married?”
Izzy rocked on the floor. How could he have forgotten that she and Simon married more than a year ago? Poor man. It was such a shame to hear him losing the rest of his mind.
“I’m allowed to marry who I want,” Simon insisted.
“Not when you’re married to someone else.”
Someone else?
She must have misheard. Or the professor was even more confused than she imagined. Simon hadn’t married another woman. He would be hanged or something for having two wives.
Izzy leaned forward, waiting for Simon to contradict him. Tell the old man he was senile. Of course, he hadn’t married twice.
Then again, Simon knew it was senseless to argue with a man who forgot the most basic things these days. Two wives. It was funny really. She and Simon would laugh about it later.
The professor’s voice filtered up to the nursery again. “I keep giving you chances, Simon, and you continue to deceive us. I won’t let Izzy and Greta be caught in your web.”
“There is no web.”
Simon lied to her at times, she knew that, but he’d wanted to marry her. And she agreed to become his wife before she was expecting a baby. Some days she felt stuck here but trapped in a web?
Oh, she was so confused. In desperate need of air.
“You have to leave Winfield,” Professor Farrow said, a quake with every word.
Izzy waited for Simon to tell him their arrangement would no longer work. Clearly, the professor needed more care than they could provide. Not a move to the cottage out back. He needed to relocate to a home for the elderly.
Instead, Simon said, “If I leave, I’ll take Izzy and your little Angel with me.”
“No, you won’t.” The professor had regained his strength even as her heart sped out of control.
