Tommy couldn’t heal Katherine, but he could get Yale back. He raced to the shed and jotted down every compromising thing he’d seen Judge Calder and Reverend Shaw engage in. He considered writing down the things Miss Violet had done, too, but didn’t. He had to keep an ally in case his plan went wrong.
When he finished writing, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. As he bent down to pick it up, something glittering from across the room caught his eye. He crawled toward the object that caught the little bit of sunlight coming through the small window near the door. When he got close, he saw it was a cross made from mother-of-pearl. The creamy base was swirled with pinks and blues that made it appear as if made of liquid. Frank landed next to the cross, startling him.
“You brought this?”
Frank pushed the cross toward Tommy with his beak.
Tommy picked it up and ran his thumb over its smooth surface, tracing the shape. He thought of all the mother-of-pearl things Pearl owned and wondered if it was hers.
The quiet moment gave him a chance to feel the full weight of Yale’s loss. The pain in his chest was like fire, alive. He thought of Mama praying at Katherine’s side. He clutched the cross, taking huge, choking breaths spurred by desperation. A fresh bout of it not fueled by past captivity, but by pure sadness. He reached for the trunk where he kept his booze. He slid over to it and flipped the latch.
No.
He shook his head. Not that. Breathing heavily, he couldn’t think of anything that would take away this trouble except a miracle.
He went back to the table, took another piece of paper, and wrote a prayer.
Please, God. A miracle. Something for us. Something small, something to let me know it’s possible that Yale will come back to us. Please. I won’t even pretend I have something to offer of the same value in exchange. This will have to be pure grace from you to us. I don’t deserve it, but Yale does. She is pure goodness, and for her, please help me.
Tommy couldn’t believe he’d just written his own prayer, not bothering with scripture or bargains, that something in him wanted to believe in a force greater than himself. He traced the cross Frank had brought him onto the paper and folded it up in thirds, tucking it and the cross into his pocket.
Once he’d done that, he felt a release, a whisper of faith that allowed him to breathe, to move.
Action.
He ran to the courthouse, where he paid a little boy a couple pennies to distract Judge Calder’s clerk. Tommy slipped into the chambers, closing the door with a soft click that made the judge look up from his desk. He yelled for his clerk, but Tommy knew the man couldn’t hear him.
Tommy whipped the list of sins out of his shirt. “This should be enough for you to bring Yale back here. She’s innocent, loved, and wanted, and what you’ve done in taking her is beyond any trouble between us.”
The judge leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.
“Let me see that list,” the judge said. Tommy handed it over, and Calder laughed as he read each item. “Gambling, adultery, abuse . . . That’s it?” He shook his head and tossed the paper on his desk. Tommy snatched it up.
“You’re involved in all those crimes,” Calder smirked. “You think I don’t have reams of notes on you? You think there’s one person in this town who’d verify your accusations against me? You’d appear as crazy as Bayard and Hank, the purity pushers, Madame Smalley, every shrill housewife we put away. You’ll be tossed in jail in seconds.”
“Mrs. Hillis,” Tommy said. “She’d believe me, I know it. She knows people are up to no good.”
Judge Calder leaned forward, clasping his hands on his desk. “She’s in Louisiana. Sick sister or aunt or something. Amazing how things worked out as though God Himself or maybe that Dreama, something or someone intervened to create the perfect situation for all this to transpire. It’s out of my hands, this business with Yale.”
“I’ll tell the papers.”
Judge Calder leaned forward onto this desk, a flash of fear coming over him for once. “That sin list of yours? It’s not nearly complete as far as what the Arthur family is up to, Tommy. You think you’re the only poorly behaved Arthur? You burn that goddamn list or you’ll find the rest of your family tossed in the clink with you. Then Yale’ll be lost forever.”
Tommy swallowed hard. What was the man talking about? The scandal? That was hardly news. He couldn’t chance that the judge was telling the truth, that Calder could make it appear as if Mama and Katherine were involved in something illicit. He nearly said Katherine was sick, that the judge should stay away from them, but he didn’t want to offer any information that might be used against them.
“Out of my chambers. And if you ever come back, I’ll take it as a request for a jail stay.”
Tommy had nothing else to threaten with or use as a weapon. He thought of the prayer in his pocket with the cross. The surrender it took to write it nearly made him want to curse his idiocy. Nothing he had to offer was worth anything to the judge, or anyone who had control of his life at that moment, including God himself.
**
Tommy fled into the hall and ran right into Aleksey Zurchenko.
“You all right?” Aleksey stopped Tommy from passing by him.
Tommy grimaced, embarrassed on top of everything else. Aleksey put his hand out to him. He took it. The sight of Aleksey relieved Tommy, buoyed him in much the same way that he’d been after writing the prayer.
He grabbed Aleksey’s arm. “Yale’s been taken to Glenwood. Katherine’s sick.”
Aleksey’s face flashed with fear. “What’s wrong with Katherine?”
Tommy wished he knew exactly. “Not really sure, but one doctor said maybe pneumonia.”
Aleksey suggested he could get a doctor to the house, but Tommy told him there was already a second doctor on the way.
“She need anything at all?”
“A magic wand. You have that?”
Aleksey gave a little smile along with his concerned expression. “You look awful.”
Tommy thought of all he’d been doing wrong, how it must have been seeping into his skin, putrefying him from the inside. “Mine’s my own making,” he said.
Aleksey explained that he was working with his boss, Mr. Stevens, and anyone else he could find to help Yale. “Saw her name on a list for Glenwood, and I nearly fell over.”
Tommy straightened. Aleksey was helping? Tommy was embarrassed at his failings, but most of all he was reassured. In the same way Aleksey’s father had lent strength and reassurance all those years ago, Tommy felt that from Aleksey now.
“My boss thinks there’s a way to move things along for Yale at Glenwood.”
Tommy had never been so glad to know a person studying the law. “I just took my eyes off Yale for one second. She was sitting on a tree limb, and she fell in a blink, and her arm . . . I just can’t . . .”
Aleksey grabbed Tommy’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself so you don’t get sick. I’ll be to your house just as soon as I can get some answers.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” Tommy said.
Aleksey tilted his head in confusion. He scratched the back of his neck. “If you were standing there, why’d they take Yale away?”
Tommy could have handed over his list of terrible deeds, explained that the judge hated him, that he deserved derision to some degree. But the conversation he’d just had with Calder led Tommy to believe the taking of Yale had a bigger motivation than he was aware of.
He shook his head and finally gave a big shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve surely made my own messes from time to time, but this . . . I’ve no idea.”
It may have been Pearl standing closest to Yale when she fell, but it was Tommy’s fault, that he knew deep in his bones.
**
Tommy started for home. He stopped under a streetlight and took out his prayer. Snowflakes dotted his list. A miracle. Aleksey Zurchenko having the resources to look into Yale’s situation was about as close to a miracle as Tommy could imagine. The prayer had worked. The prayer had put Aleksey right in Tommy’s path when he needed him.
But action. That was part of prayer, as Tommy saw it. Why was he relying on the judge or even Aleksey to get Yale back? She was his sister. Her predicament was his fault. He should solve the problem. As he passed a boardinghouse, he noticed two horses hitched out front. What was he waiting for? He looked into the sky, pincushion stars glimmering down on him, even with snowflakes popping into existence, the stars shone between clouds, evidence a person’s worst darkness contained light of some sort. Pearl, Aleksey, people like them. They were light in the face of darkness.
God, please, help me. Make me useful for once.
No sweet words, just a simple request whispered into the wind. One of the horses whinnied, nosing him, encouraging him to pet her.
He almost hopped on it and rode it away, justifying the “borrowing” as being okay in this one situation, this emergency. But as he grabbed the reins, the horse whinnied again.
Please, God.
He would do this right. Tommy entered the boardinghouse and explained the situation to the owner without revealing anything damaging to the players involved. He sounded as though he himself should be admitted into Glenwood. As the owner listened, his face changed from interest to surprise to anger, but then he shook his head. Of course the businessman wouldn’t just lend out a horse to a penniless man, even with the story Tommy had told. The man pointed to the door, making Tommy’s eyes fill with the sorrow that pulsed in his chest.
Tommy backed away as the owner’s wife stepped into the room from a darkened hall. She pushed her husband’s hand down and told Tommy to take the black horse, the friendly one. “Clover’s her name. Great in snow. The brown one’s horrible once it freezes.”
“Just a little snow. It’s not bad right now.”
The woman looked past Tommy who then turned to see snow cascading like water.
He doffed his hat and promised to repay them for the inconvenience, for the borrowing, for whatever they wanted as he backed out the door.
Outside, Clover whinnied again, and Tommy slipped the reins from the post and took off in the direction of Glenwood. He was going to get his sister.