AFTER THAT, Fleurette ceased her theatrical performances, and Norma returned her injured bird to the loft. Its wing had mostly healed but its delivery career was at an end. Fleurette, who hated chores and usually refused to do them, became remarkably obedient following her talk with the sheriff. She patched a hole in the coop where mice were getting in to steal the chickens’ feed, and she painted the fence around the vegetable garden and cleared a patch for spring peas.
Sheriff Heath had his men watching the house, but they weren’t there all the time. They would stop late at night on their way home from tending to some other criminal matter. I grew accustomed to the sound of an automobile idling in the road after midnight. This was why the sheriff warned us not to fire directly at anyone. He was afraid we’d shoot his own deputies. They seemed to understand that too, because they never stopped in front of our house. They always rolled a few yards past our driveway and parked in a wide, bare spot under an oak tree.
I thought a lot about Lucy going to work every day in the dye factory and taking the wages she earned and handing them back to Mr. Kaufman in rent. And I pictured that baby, wherever he was. He’d be learning to talk by now. Someone would be calling to him with their hands outstretched the way people do with little children, but what name they called him I didn’t know.
I did wish there was something I could do for Lucy. But it seemed like every advance I made against Henry Kaufman invited another brick through our window.
“WHO IS HENRI LAMOTTE?” Fleurette said one afternoon as she brought in the mail.
“Let me see it,” I said.
“Not until you tell me who he is.”
“Is the letter addressed to me?”
“I don’t know. It’s addressed to Miss Kopp. It might be for me.”
She stood over my chair with the envelope in her hand. “You’ve already opened it, haven’t you?” I said.
She held it out to me reluctantly. “It could’ve been for any one of us.”
“You know better,” I said.
October 1, 1914
Henri LaMotte, Proprietor
LaMotte Studios
Dear Miss Kopp,
I have found some photographs that may be of interest to you. They were taken last year at the building that was the subject of your inquiry. One of my men had been engaged to photograph the goings-on at that address for several weeks, but the attorney who hired us never paid for his pictures. I had forgotten that we had them until they reappeared just now. If you want them, I will hold them for you until Tuesday. After that I must destroy them. We prefer not to become a repository for unclaimed photographic evidence, although I have apparently let my standards slip. I shall right the ship and sail on!
Au revoir,
Henri LaMotte
“What does it mean? Photographic evidence of what?”
I looked around to see if Norma was within earshot. She must have been outside. I read the letter again.
“It has to do with Lucy,” I said at last.
Fleurette gasped and slid into my armchair, half perching on the arm and half sitting in my lap. She hadn’t done that in years.
“We’ve found a clue, haven’t we?” Fleurette breathed into my ear.
There was a sugary smell that hung around Fleurette, like the crumb tarts we used to bake when she was a little girl. I closed my eyes and the memory of it came over me. I used to tell her that she was good enough to eat, and she would shriek and run to Mother in mock horror.
She twisted around to look at me directly. “Would these pictures help her get her baby back?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll forward the letter to her. She can decide what to do about it.”
Fleurette jumped out of my lap. “But there’s no time! He said you have to come and get them Tuesday. That’s tomorrow. We have to take this to her now.”
I shook my head. “You heard what the sheriff said. We have to be very careful around strangers.”
“But she isn’t a stranger,” Fleurette said. “Just go over there and drop it in her mailbox.”
I turned the envelope over in my hands. “I don’t think I should,” I said. “I believe Norma’s right this time. We need to stay out of Henry Kaufman’s business.”
“But don’t you care about that poor girl?” Fleurette said, a little desperation in her voice. “Try to imagine for one minute what it would be like to be a young mother and lose your baby like that. How would you feel?”
I bit the inside of my lip. She’d never come this close to the truth, and I didn’t want her getting any closer. I’d made my own kind of peace with the past and was not eager to reckon with it again.
But Fleurette was right. Lucy was living with a kind of loss I had never known.
“Don’t tell Norma where I’m going,” I said.