Hopefully, he’d follow in the professor’s footsteps.
Simon was long past caring about or for her. He didn’t know she was living in Elms, and she’d never even told him she was expecting another baby. According to Professor Farrow, it wasn’t Simon’s business unless he planned to marry her.
Residents in Elms called her Mrs. Farrow, and she didn’t dissuade them. When Simon first brought her home, she’d thought they were married.
She would give just about anything to go back in time and rewrite that moment when she lied to Simon about her parents’ wealth. And that first night in Cleveland, when she offered herself so naively to him. She didn’t regret her children, only that she’d been blinded by her own ambition to move up the social scales with their father.
The fancy roadster u-turned at the end of town and passed her house again.
Greta lifted her head from her blocks, toddling to her side as they watched the strange car. “Papa?”
“No,” Izzy said. “I don’t know when we’ll see him again.”
Greta called the professorPapa. Occasionally she saidMamaand a few other words, but Papa was by far her favorite.
More words would come soon, her mother assured her, and Izzy could hardly wait. On these long days, she longed for someone to talk to.
A breeze stirred up the sulfur, and Jimmy gasped for a breath.
“Wait here,” she told Greta before slipping through the hallway with Jimmy, into their two-room apartment out back. The conditions were similar, she supposed, to the caretaker’s heap in Winfield, but this small home was filled with people who loved each other.
In the still air, Jimmy’s gasps turned into a gentle cry, and she patted his back until he slept again.
When her brothers came home from school, they would beg for turns to hold the baby and play with Greta. Then Izzy could rest for an hour before she made dinner for the Brooks family.
She returned quickly to the front porch. “I’m sorry that Mommy took so... Greta?”
Her daughter wasn’t on the blanket.
Startled, Izzy glanced around the side of the house to see if Greta had tumbled off the porch. She’d never wandered away before, and if she’d fallen, why wasn’t she crying for help?
Her gaze swept over the scattered wooden blocks, the rocking chair and railing, then to the roadster parked in front of their neighbor’s drive, the passenger door open.
A man stood beside it. Simon—
No, not Simon. This man was built wide like a tank, lugging a burlap bag over his shoulder.
A bag that squirmed against his back.
Izzy swore as she shot down the steps. “Put her down!”
When the man turned, his smile made her shiver. “Hello, Isadore.”
“Louie?” She’d never wanted to see Simon’s associate again, especially not in Elms.
“I’m glad you remember me.”
“Give me back my daughter.”
He laughed like she was making a joke. “You’ve got some nerve, don’t ya?”
“It’s Simon you want,” she said. “Not us.”
“You’re a smart girl, Isadore. Wish you weren’t wrapped up in this.”
But she didn’t understand what Simon was tangled up in. Or why Louie had taken Greta. “Wrapped up in what?”
Her daughter’s hand reached out, but she didn’t cry. Quiet like her dad when he was angry.
