Night put an end to the day that brought such fear for Tommy—seeing Pearl in tears and homeless and then the incident with Yale wandering. He was too unsettled to eat and glad that he would soon sleep.
Back at the shed, Tommy fluffed his mattress. He gasped with each reach and pull, the movement agitating the bruises given to him at Rupert’s. He pulled the spare quilt Mama had traded seeds for the other day over the mattress, liking the homey look, his privacy, and the proximity to his family.
Soft clanging noises from outside drew his attention. The sound stopped, and he kicked out of his boots. He opened the loft door and called Frank inside. The bird landed on the edge of the window. “Inside. Time to sleep,” Tommy said, petting Frank’s feathers.
“Up, up.” Tommy jerked his head toward the rafters. Frank flew away, settling into the old nest Tommy had put up there for him. Finally Tommy snuggled into his bed. He pulled the quilt to his chin, the cold night air seeping into his bones as he relaxed into the straw bed.
Drifting toward sleep, the jangling from outside started again, growing louder, closer. He pushed up on his elbow, straining to discern what would make that sound outside. He pushed the loft window open, listening, peering into the yard. Flashes of light came near the hedges, then the arborvitae rustled and spread as lantern light pushed through, followed by a head and the rest of a body. It didn’t take long to know who it was. In the glow of the lamp and moonlight, red hair dangled from its pinnings, shining. A thrill trembled through him.
Pearl.
She straightened and pulled on a rope. “Come on, girl,” she said clicking her tongue. A dog appeared, and she patted its head. Pearl moved closer to the shed, the clanking tin bowls were attached to a rope around her waist. Tommy’s heart beat harder at the sight of her.
“Psst,” he said. He knew the darkness hid him.
Frank landed on Tommy’s back. “The girl,” he squawked. Pearl raised the lantern and her gaze shifted up toward Tommy. The dog whined and sat on her owner’s feet.
“Tommy?” Pearl squinted. “That yer bird? That Frank? You up there?”
He nearly giggled at the sight of her, exhilarated and relieved that she was all right. “Pearl! You’ll wake the dead with that racket.”
She pulled something out of her smock pocket and thrust it into the air. “Got another letter fer ya.”
Tommy got to his knees, the movement making him gasp. “Another?” He yanked on his boots, scrambled down the ladder, and was out the door as quickly as his pain would allow. So soon? Maybe his father was nearly back to town and he had been waiting to let him know he was done with the seven seas. The dog growled and Tommy stopped short, hands in the air in surrender.
“Fern, no. Tommy’s good people. Fine young man.” The dog took that as direction to lay on the ground and roll over. Tommy petted her belly, and Frank landed on Tommy’s shoulder. Fern lifted her head.
“No, Fern. Frank’s a pet, not dinner,” Pearl said.
“Definitely not dinner,” Tommy said. He looked Pearl up and down, noticing that she seemed sturdy again, like her old self. She pulled the loose end of a wool shawl tighter against her body.
“She won’t bother Frank none,” Pearl said. “Fern’s got manners. She’s a lady. Like your ma.”
“My ma, er, Mama? Comparing a dog to my mama?”
“In a good way.”
Tommy chuckled. His blood pounded through his body, and his nerves lit with what he knew to be affection, not simply attraction. The sight of Pearl soothed him even amidst the excitement she sparked in him. His chest warmed, as though his innards were lit like candles. Pearl was so strong, determined to make a better, particular life for herself. Seeing her feeling better made him feel stronger, like maybe he could be the knight she thought he was. There was something so open about her, forgiving, forgetting. She saw everything in him that no one else ever had.
“You’re safe,” Tommy said.
“’Course.” She spread her stance and lifted her chin. Tommy wondered if he’d imagined her tearful, fragile demeanor at McCrady’s earlier. He wiped his hands on the front of his night pants, then grasped his ribs.
“Heard what you did,” Pearl said.
Tommy nodded toward the shed. “Got your bag in there.”
“Leon said as much.”
“So you’re all right?”
“Right as raindrops in April.” Pearl handed him an envelope. “Stopped at the post office after I saw ya.”
Tommy studied her again, searching for signs of the vulnerability he’d worried about all day. “You’re not going back to Rupert’s, are you?”
She lifted her arms to emphasize the load she was carrying. “Nope.”
“So then—”
“San Diego,” she blurted out.
“What?”
She stared at the letter in his hand. “The letter. Best read it.”
He turned it into the lantern light and noted the postmark. He started to walk away. “Thanks, Pearl. San Diego again, I see.”
He strode up the porch, eager to dig into the letter. Pearl let out a big sigh, causing her things to jingle again.
“Well, you ain’t a princely gentleman. Not one bit. I dang near . . . Well, I thought you were a good man. And for a mother fancy as yours and—”
“Fancy?” Tommy turned. Mama hadn’t been fancy in years.
“Mannerly. A society woman.”
Tommy admired again how Pearl could see beyond a person’s dress to a deeper kind of worth. He smiled and stared at Pearl, suddenly wanting to tease her like he always did when his heart raced too fast in her presence. “I asked if you were all right. You said you were dandy. How am I not a gentleman?”
“You ain’t even offered to quench my thirst.”
“Ohhh. Right. And your bag. You need that. Come on. I forgot you required an engraved invitation.”
She scoffed. “Hardy har,” she said clanging behind him.
He poured water into a tin cup and gestured to one of the chairs at the tiny round table near the fire. “That chair rocks due to a short leg. And these two are missing slats, so until I fix them, it’s really more of a stool. Help yourself.”
She tried the wiggly seat and then hopped to one of the slatless ones staying put. She sipped her water. “Read me your letter?”
He stopped midway through ripping into the envelope. “That’s what you want?”
“Please?”
Tommy rubbed his forehead considering the risk. She’d shared something private with him earlier. He could trust her. Yet baring family wounds still seemed impossible.
She lifted her hands and dropped them, making the dog dishes reverberate. “Got my entire wealth, minus the bag you rescued, and I still managed to personally deliver your letter. I deserve to hear it.”
“Pearl.”
“Tommy.”
“You really all right? When I saw you—”
She shushed him.
“I saw Rupert’s place and where you had to sleep, and Leon said—”
“Shush. Better I leave the thoughts of that place back there. Luxury of sadness isn’t mine no more than fox-fur coats and summer silks.”
Her eyes shone with tears he knew she didn’t want to cry. Tommy felt another rush of admiration for the strength that must have filled her from the inside out. She was like no one he’d ever known. Special. Like an angel sent to him . . . Or had he been sent to her? He shook his head.
He could at least read her a letter. He could trust her. He sat on the shaky chair, set the lantern on the table. The fire crackled sending sparks up the chimney. He blew out his air.
“Dear Tommy, thinking of you as I set off. Soon as I have my treasure, I’ll return. Love to Katherine and the others, for I do indeed . . .” Tommy glanced up at Pearl. Her head was cocked to the side and her hands clasped in her lap as though she was trying to will the letter to say the words Tommy needed to hear. He shifted, making the chair wobble in the silence.
“Love you all.”
Tommy folded the letter, empty. He cleared his throat. Pearl didn’t move. Yes, he felt good that his father loved them all, but the lack of information, the letters from those holding his debt, that his father had told them to contact his son for payment, his foolishness that he had believed in him when Katherine and Mama had not, stung as much as anything he could imagine.
He immediately thought that he would write back and tell his father to come now, that they could solve his problems together, that there was another man sniffing around their family and Tommy needed him. He shivered. He held the letter against his chest and focused on the line about loving all of them. All this did was confuse Tommy, especially in regard to Mr. Hayes. The longer Father was gone, the more this man slid into their family.
Yet Tommy’s own feelings had changed toward his father. He’d been disappointed too many times. The lack of that sense of desperately believing his father was just a week or two from showing up in Des Moines left a crater in him that he wasn’t sure would ever be filled. He never imagined he could feel worse than he had in anticipating his father’s arrival, always worried for the man’s safety.
Pearl didn’t press him to discuss the letter. She straightened and pushed her hand into her pocket and pulled another letter out. “Read this one.”
“Whose? Pearl.” He eyed the envelope. “No. Are you crazy?”
“She’s dead. The woman the letter came to.” Pearl shrugged. “No harm in reading dead people’s mail, is there?”
Tommy searched her face for some clue as to what this all meant to her. He crossed his arms making the chair rock. “Return to sender.”
“Already did. Came back again. Meant for me. Wouldn’t you say?”
Tommy sighed, though he welcomed the distraction. “You already have an arm’s-length list of words and places to go. Do you really need more illegally gotten letters?”
She gaped at him, a smile coming, bringing her even more back to her former self. “I ain’t . . . I mean, I haven’t even begun to gather enough words for my future ladyship.”
“Ladyship? That a word?” He liked that they could lighten the mood, together.
She shrugged. “Someday I’m gonna be a lady like your ma, like Mrs. Calder, like . . . Well, reading these letters, it’s like studying. I hear their fancy, polite voices in my head, I learn about all the ways a woman of means should—”
“It’s against the law.”
“You keep saying that. But I ain’t the only one breaking laws round here.”
Tommy drew back.
“Now,” Pearl said with a forced, but soft voice. “Read it like, well, read like you talk when you run into Mr. Hathaway, the way you talk when you forget you ain’t rich and important anymore.”
Tommy pulled the envelope toward him. He didn’t realize how obvious it was that his language and manners shifted according to who he was with. Gone were the days when high manners and perfect discourse were the only way he interacted. And the trappings of that life, the food, the warm beds and white-glove service right in his own home . . . It did hurt when he allowed himself to consider the way his life had been before, when they had everything.
He understood why Mama had forced him not to tread in too many thoughts of the old days. Submerging in thoughts of everything you lost made living with what you had even harder. What struck him was that Pearl, who never had anything, seemed to be inspired by tales of excess, not depressed by them. “Feels creepy reading a dead lady’s mail.”
Pearl shrugged, stood and motioned for Tommy to stand. “Switch chairs with me.”
He shrugged. “All right, Goldilocks.” She settled into the wobbly chair, her head to the side as Tommy’s reading washed over her.
When he finished, she looked directly at him. “I want to go to school.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Well, all my money from clerking at the post office went to room and board at Rupert’s. Couldn’t save enough to pay for two weeks of high school, let alone years.”
Tommy reimagined the room with all the mattresses and the boys who slept there with her.
“Can’t go back there,” she said. “Got to make new plans.”
Tommy nodded.
“Thinking I might sleep in the woods.” Pearl’s words dropped from her lips as sleep began to take hold of her. “Like you did a ways back. That spot by the beaver dam to hide meat. Something ’bout that place draws me there in the summer. Should be fine for winter as well.”
“You’ll freeze first night in.”
She shrugged. “You don’t understand what it’s like to have nothing worth having. Suppose I could ask that Miss Violet next door to your house if I could have a room.”
“No.” Tommy bit the inside of his mouth, surprised at his forceful response. Miss Violet was providing his family with a clean, safe place to live, but something gave him pause about the bathing ladies who lived in the rooms on the third floor of Miss Violet’s, the condoms they used when “needed.”
Pearl straightened, narrowing her eyes on Tommy. “It’s clean. She’s smart and training women in finance. Don’t you see the write-ups about her and the ladies in the paper?”
Tommy leaned forward, gasping with pain. He patted his ribs. “Whoa, there. You said Miss Violet might be up to no good. And I—”
Pearl leaned forward. “I was mistaken. Des Moines’s leading citizens are taken with her. Even her competition’s stumbling over their feet to compliment her work. Maybe that’s a good choice for me. She can give me my schooling. I won’t have to pay the school system that way. Overheard Miss Olivia talking at the post office the other day.”
“No.” Tommy covered her hand with his.
She snatched it away, pushing both her fists into her armpits. “Ya don’t think I’m good ’nough to work fer her.”
He shook his head, exhausted, unsure of exactly what he did think. Being with Pearl tangled his thoughts, making what he believed feel different every time she came down his path. But whatever he labeled his feelings for her, they grew more intense, slowly over time, then instantly when he saw her at McCrady’s. “Here,” he said.
“Here, what?”
“Stay here. There’s room upstairs, it’s warm. Until a room at the women’s hotel opens.”
She smiled and took the letter from Tommy, folding it into her pocket. She handed him the money he’d given her to spend at the women’s hotel. “Thank you, Tommy Arthur. I knew you were a gentleman. A true prince. Like Prince Aeriel in that there book you brung me.”
Tommy nodded and picked up the sack he’d carried from Rupert’s with her things. “Book’s in here with whatever Leon put in it.”
She took it from him.
“Dog stays outside.”
“That bird of yers stays inside, I’ll bet ya.”
Tommy shrugged, making him wince. “He’s house-trained.”
“So’s Fern.”
Tommy looked at the dog lying at Pearl’s feet, the firelight dancing on her dark fur. She did seem sweet. He sighed and led Fern toward the ladder to the loft. Fern put her front feet on the ladder and tried to step up, but the rungs were too narrow.
Tommy glanced at Pearl. She gestured upward.
“You want me to carry her? She’s a hundred pounds.”
She shrugged and looked around. “Nah, wouldn’t want her to fall trying to come down. Pearl squatted and rubbed Fern behind the ears. “How ’bout you sleep by the fire and keep us all safe?”
Fern closed her eyes, falling into the comfort of Pearl’s scratching. “Well, all right. That’s our plan.”
Tommy climbed up the ladder and readjusted the quilt.
Pearl appeared over the edge of the loft and surveyed the space.
“You’ll take one side of the mattress. I’ll take the other.”
She stared at the mattress.
He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m a gentleman, Pearl. All the way.”
“I know it,” she said.
She went back down to untie her rope with the bowls attached and removed her shawl. Back in the loft, she lay down stiff as a board, not removing anything, not even her boots. Tommy acted as though it were perfectly normal. He’d slept plenty of nights fully clothed, knowing he might need to run or wake up fighting.
He pulled Mama’s quilt over Pearl and tucked it around every inch of her. “Sleep here. Save your money for proper schooling, if that’s what you’re after. Good to have goals.”
He closed the loft door, laid down on his side, and pulled his coat over him for a blanket. Pearl turned her head to face him, her eyes lighting the space between them. “Thank ya, Tommy,” she whispered.
Tommy was about to say you’re welcome, but instead he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. She stared at the ceiling, a sliver of a smile pulling at her lips.
A surge of protectiveness like he’d felt earlier that day filled Tommy. Frank landed on him and brushed his head against Tommy’s hand. Tommy stroked the bird for a bit. “Up, up, Frank. Time to sleep.”
Tommy took a final look at Pearl, her relaxed expression, the sweet slope of her nose over parted lips. He tucked the blanket around her again, then turned his back to her, falling asleep content to know he now had Frank the crow and Pearl to care for, filling him with a sense of worth that made him glad to be alive. He was no longer alone, a lost bird himself. And though he yearned for the way things used to be, before . . . he felt good moving forward in life. Mama and the girls were near, but he was beginning to see that the past he’d been glorifying wasn’t allowing him to really grow up the way he wanted. No. It was time to accept the world had moved on, and so should he.