May 1936
Wilmington, North Carolina
By the time a week had passed, Cecily was made of lead entirely.
“Jesus, Jackie, you’re not dead,” Louise told her. “You might as well smile and get on with it.”
Cecily didn’t think she would ever smile again.
Evelyn’s baby had arrived safely, and the infant girl had gone off with another well-dressed couple in a fancy car, leaving Evelyn behind in a pool of tears. (“I’m just relieved!” she wailed, but Cecily could not imagine that was entirely true.) Two more pregnant girls were arriving tomorrow to move into Evelyn’s and Cecily’s rooms. Evelyn’s mother was coming to fetch her, and Miss Peters would be coming for Cecily at 10 a.m. “sharp,” after taking the early train from Wayward.
“You’re hardly well enough to be up and about, Jacqueline,” Mrs. Oglethorpe fussed, when she saw Cecily limping out the back door to the garden with Sense and Sensibility.
Cecily thought, if Mrs. Oglethorpe and Dr. Addington were truly concerned with her recovery, with how she was still bleeding and could hardly stand up straight, let alone walk, they wouldn’t be sending her back to Wayward tomorrow to work in the hogpen.
But she had not complained, she had not said a word, she had not let on even the tiniest bit that she’d read her file and knew what they’d done to her, how they’d failed to save her baby, then butchered her to be sure she’d never have another.
It was a matter of simple pragmatism: She needed the bed, the clean sheets, the food, for her recovery. She needed the clothes they’d given her, including the maternity dress made of blue cotton flour sacks printed with tiny red flowers that she was wearing now.
But she was not going to let these people have the run of her any longer than she absolutely had to. She was done trusting anyone to have her best interests at heart. She was done trusting anyone to take care of her, even in any small way.
“It’s my last day. Please,” Cecily said. “I just want to sit among the flowers.”
Mrs. Oglethorpe pursed her lips, then nodded. “Sit, though. No walking, except straight to the bench.”
“Yes, of course,” Cecily said.
At the stone bench, she sat and caught her breath. She opened Sense and Sensibility to the middle and pulled out the snapshot of Lucky, reading a line she’d underlined yesterday on the page the snapshot marked: I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself. She found the Saint Jude card among the pages.
But she was done praying for impossible things. She was done praying at all.
She watched a goldfinch hop from path to bush then flutter out beyond till it disappeared among the flowering trees.
She figured long enough had passed that Mrs. Oglethorpe would have moved on from watching her.
She filed Saint Jude back inside Sense and Sensibility, set the book on the bench. She slid Lucky’s picture inside her bra, inside the thick strap under her arm, where the drops of useless milk leaking from her breasts wouldn’t harm it, and she stood and walked out the back of the garden, into the alleyway.
And she was gone.