“Is it true about Cecily?” he says. “I keep praying it ain’t.”
She holds a finger up to her lips and eyes the smithy. “Can you walk with me a little bit?”
Gilbert nods, then follows her toward the slip. When they are a few dozen feet from the shop, she looks behind her, then starts to talk real fast. “Who told you about Cecily?”
“Moses.”
“What he say?”
“Just that she was at the theater and she didn’t make it out.”
Della looks over her shoulder before saying another word. “She did, but as far as you know, she didn’t.”
“What?”
“Cecily ain’t dead,” says Della quickly. “But she meant to be.”
“You gotta slow down a minute,” Gilbert says. “I’m not following.”
Gilbert often has this feeling, talking to Della. Like they are two strangers, trying to understand each other. Most of the time, he blames this on the fact that Della is so much older than him and was sold away from their mother so much earlier. But he also has to remind himself that they’ve led very different lives as a result of their circumstances. In their early years in Richmond, while he was learning a trade and beginning to save a littlemoney, Della was fighting for the essentials and—he suspects—fending off the elder Mr. Price at every turn.
Della looks tired, and when she speaks, slower this time, she sounds tired, too. “Cecily was up in the gallery.”
“And she made it out?”
“Yes.”
“Praise God.”
“Don’t go praising God just yet. Not until you hear what I got to say.”
Gilbert studies his sister’s face—her tight mouth, her narrow eyes. Whatever’s coming ain’t good.
“Cecily’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Things haven’t been good with her and Master Elliott for a long time.”
“Your Master Elliott?”
“No,” says Della sharply. “The son.”
“Go on.”
“He’s meant to be getting married New Year’s Day. But now he says he’s taking Cecily with him to his new place in Church Hill.”
“And she don’t want to go?” It’s not that Gilbert isn’t sympathetic. He is. It’s just that stories like this one are so common, it’s hardly worth getting worked up about them.
“She can’t go,” says Della. “It’ll kill her.”
“Della,” says Gilbert, “what’s this got to do with the theater?”
“I ain’t told anyone this. Not even her own papa. So, if you can’t help, I’m trusting you to keep quiet.”
Gilbert can’t begin to predict what she is going to say. “You know I will.”
His sister takes a deep breath. “Cecily’s been hiding. Ever since she got out.”
