Tommy was on a hunt to find a job that would allow him to make substantial changes in his life. Since making a slow slide into melancholy upon realizing his father’s limitations, realizing Mama was moving on in her life, sending money to the family in San Diego, and quitting school, Tommy finally began to feel as though he was emerging from a mud pit.
Pearl came home from work to let the dog out and have an apple for supper. She set her bag on the table. “Never guess who came into the post office this morning.”
Tommy washed his hands at the basin. Before he could venture a guess she was talking again. “Aleksey Zurchenko and your sister.”
“That’s nice.” He dried his hands and hung the cloth near the fire.
Pearl pulled her word list and a pencil out of her bag. “Two of ’em were snug as bugs, but without the rug. ’Course, so in love they didn’t need a rug to wrap them up tight. The magic between ’em kept ’em tight as anything. Beautiful pair, those two. Love flooding all over the place. Like when summer sunrays lift off wood planks in heat waves. Like that. I felt it.”
“They’re just pals . . .”
She put her hand up. “Didn’t have the chance to ask about their status since he helped Mrs. Ryan out with her packages. But didn’t look like pals to me,” Pearl said. “Looks like they’re meant to be, like two plants with crisscrossed roots. That’s it. They’re rooted together, their happy green leaves all intertwined.”
She’d been reading a lot of fairy tales if this was how she was thinking about them. But it made Tommy think. Maybe their friendship had turned into something else. “They did go through a lot when we were on the prairie. A lot.”
“Tell me.” She perched on the slatless chair.
He recounted how Katherine had painstakingly taught Russian-born Aleksey to read on the prairie. “Not just to read, but he devoured our science and literature and philosophy books. He liked it all so much she gave them to him to do the job when she wasn’t there to teach. Mythology, everything. I shunned it. Isn’t that strange? I was born to it and turned away. He couldn’t get enough.”
“Hunger for what ya don’t have’ll do that.”
Tommy agreed. “And then there was Anzehla, Aleksey’s sister. She got lost in the high grass and disappeared when Aleksey and Katherine were watching her.”
Pearl’s eyes teared up and she mouthed the word, no.
“Happened on the prairie frequently.” He hadn’t thought about that in years. Now the weight of it sat heavy on him. “And there was when Aleksey saved Katherine and Yale during the blizzard that killed James and so many of the Zurchenko brothers and other neighbors. Only thing Katherine lost was part of her finger to the cold. Aleksey was . . .” He shook his head.
“Her hero,” Pearl said.
Tommy added wood to the fire.
Pearl’s face alight, she put her hands to her cheeks as she took it all in. “They have so much history, don’t they? No wonder they’ve fallen in love quick as the dickens. The love’s been living between them for years, even if they were miles and miles apart. A true-life fairy tale.”
Tommy sighed and sat at the table. He took Pearl’s hand and stroked the back of it. “Now that I look at it, yes. The Zurchenko family saved the lives of the Arthurs a bunch of times. Why, Mrs. Zurchenko was even there when Yale was born early. Too small, like a hairless prairie chicken. We didn’t think the little bird would make it.”
“Yet here she is,” Pearl said.
“Yes.” All of this moving on for his family sank in, and he decided to reset his goals. His path. It was time to be intentional about which one he took. What Mama said was right. He needed to let go of sending money to rescue his father. He couldn’t make up for what his father was doing.
“Time to get back to the post office for afternoon shift,” Pearl said.
Tommy stood. “I’ve got chores at Miss Violet’s.”
The two of them stood there for a moment, an awkwardness between them that he’d never noticed before. When he’d taken her hand it felt natural, but now . . .
“Well,” he went past her. “See you later.”
**
Tommy entered Miss Violet’s cellar, a full set of condom materials waiting for him. He made short work of them, having mastered tiny stitches despite stabbing himself a few times, but they were works of art. Not one bit of test water seeped through. Miss Violet had been pleased with that, but she had also been angry that Tommy hadn’t told Katherine not to come to work that day.
When had she asked him to tell her not to come? Had he run into her when drunk?
“I’m sorry. I . . . I drank too much last night and . . .”
Miss Violet grabbed his arm. “I’m doing my best to protect her, to keep her innocence in every way. But if I can’t depend on you to help me then I’m not sure if this will work, you all staying here. And I can’t protect you either if I can’t trust you.”
She pulled herself up tall, a bit of spittle at the corner of her mouth. He almost wiped it away but decided not to push the boundaries of polite behavior even if he was tasked with impolite work.
“Heard you were at the saloon again.” She paced. “Colt Churchill told me. You get blind drunk and next thing you know you’re compromised and forced to give up information.”
“What information?”
She grew frustrated with him, calling him naïve.
“Yet you have a girl in the back. There’s that. It’s all an act, isn’t it? We all have secrets . . .” She rolled on and on without even really waiting for a defense from him, as though she preferred holding Tommy’s secret rather than not. “Trust is everything.”
It was true that Tommy knew Olivia played as Dreama, something the public was scrambling to know. He’d seen Judge Calder there for a reading, kissing and hugging Miss Violet, and he knew about the condoms, but he had no intention of revealing any of that information to anyone. He’d explained he doubted whether she could trust the judge, but she felt fully invested with trust in the big, oppressive man. Tommy left it at that, knowing if anyone could manage him, it would be Miss Violet. He wondered who would win in a battle, Miss Violet or Mrs. Calder. Both were iron strong. Tommy did his best to convey his loyalty as he didn’t want to be on Miss Violet’s bad side. He was looking to earn more money, not less. He’d dropped the entire conversation just as soon as she’d let him.
“Trust, trust, trust,” she’d kept repeating. And though he liked Miss Violet, appreciated the home she let them board in, that he could use the shed, he felt cold when she exposed her mean streak that told him he couldn’t completely trust her, not when there were many puzzle pieces missing to her work, even if he wasn’t sure what he didn’t know.
“I understand,” he’d said when she harped on trust again. She’d twisted and manipulated him, and by agreeing to continue to work for her, he was agreeing to let her do that. So which of them was truly more calculating? Who could be trusted, really?
Tommy was beginning to wonder if anyone besides Pearl was worth the word.