Des Moines bustled with news that Dreama would be reading for people at an event called The Night for Mothers. It would be held at a grand theater in town. Instead of small readings at private homes or at Miss Violet’s, Dreama was going to pull individuals from an audience of hundreds, all watching, all hoping to be one of the lucky ones brought on stage.
Every newspaper burst with articles, both for and against Dreama and her abilities. Some articles claimed her to be as much a fraud as Madame Smalley had been with her act. The charlatan had hidden assistants under tables and behind thick curtains, embedded them in lines of people waiting to see her to then give information to lure the clients to unload more and more money until their purses were empty.
The part about the assistant hiding behind a curtain was particularly unsettling since Tommy had hidden like that during one of Dreama’s readings. Not that he did anything other than collect information, but he shuddered to think someone might have ripped the curtain aside and revealed him as part of a scam.
Still. He wasn’t so sure Olivia was a scam. He’d felt the connection between her and Mr. Renfrew. As much as he held resentment and a smidge of jealousy regarding Olivia acting as Dreama and her allure for his former prayer customers, he had to admit he’d felt something powerful when he was hidden in the room.
On the morning of The Night for Mothers, Tommy saw Olivia and Violet. They’d been bubbling over, discussing the money that would come in, organizing their fancy clothing, and rehashing the plan to usher people into seats according to the amount they paid.
Even Pearl had caught Dreama Fever. She was going to the event, hoping to be singled out, to learn something about her parents. She said she often spoke to them in her mind, and sometimes she thought she felt their presence. This sensation caused her to wonder if one of them had just walked right past her on the street alive and well or if she’d experienced something otherworldly, their ghostly presence.
“I just want to know what they look like, what they were like, why they . . .” She shrugged. “I just need to know.”
Tommy sighed when she said that. He thought of her Letters to Heaven. He didn’t want to stomp out her hope that she might receive a message from parents who may or may not be deceased. He nearly revealed to her that Olivia was performing as Dreama, and while he was sure he’d felt something powerful during the Renfrew reading, he still didn’t fully believe it was anything more than the mood of the night, the setup, the game.
It surprised him that he thought of it that way, as a game. He wondered if people like Mrs. Schultz’s butler had considered the prayers Tommy wrote for her to be a game, too. There were certainly enough religious phonies to go around.
Tommy surmised that the event, the fact that most people would not be “read for,” and Olivia’s/Dreama’s con would be revealed and Pearl would see that such things were not reliable paths to serenity, that her future didn’t depend on her past.
He scoffed at himself. He’d been tying his future to his past for years. He gently tucked away that little piece of advice, knowing that maybe Pearl just wasn’t quite ready to let go of her parents yet.
He watched her prepare for the post office that day, brushing her hair, knotting it tight at the nape of her neck. “Like your ma wears it. Parted on the side.” She turned to show him. He smiled and nodded.
“Cleaning up extra nice so I can go straight to the theater after work. Want to look nice if my parents are there to see me.”
He nodded. “Sure, Pearl. You look . . .”
She stopped smoothing her hair and turned to him.
Heat rushed up his neck and face. “Pretty. Real pretty.”
Tommy fully understood the trouble with letting go. And so earlier, with his work completed, with the idea of moving forward, his vow to find his next right path, Tommy suggested a business idea to Miss Violet. He argued that with Dreama siphoning off so much of his prayer business, he thought he could stand in the lobby waiting for saddened, unselected, attendees to exit and provide them comforting prayers.
Miss Violet sneered.
Even when he mentioned they could double their money, she shot the idea out of the sky like a straight-shot cowboy, her head nearly spinning off her neck. “Don’t mess with my night for mothers, Tommy. Not one bit.”
He held up his hands. “All right, all right. Just an idea.”