“I admire your mother.”
No response from the child. Mrs. Reed didn’t mind. She knew she could be intimidating. How many grown men came to her with their heads bowed? Most. She liked to believe it wasn’t simply her wealth that steered their eyes toward the floor. The Busy Bees often addressed her in the same manner, no matter how many times she urged them to treat her like a peer, like a friend. As a woman of authority, she felt there was a particular loneliness to her position. Her husband never seemed to suffer from it. He had more friends than fingers and toes. McNamara and Marlow might as well be appendages. Had she started the weekly gatherings at the opera house simply to enjoy the company of others? Why bother with questions whose answers would only sting?
“Well, where is she then?” Sam asked. “My mother. Are you giving her a medal?”
Mrs. Reed led Sam from the first floor of her home up to the second. She couldn’t help herself, she liked this child.
“You don’t hide your feelings for anything, do you?” she asked.
Sam trailed one step behind Mrs. Reed on the stairs.
“My mother says I risk sounding rude.”
Mrs. Reed reached the second-floor landing and waited on Sam. Right down this hallway lay a bedroom where Sam might stay, the bedsheets freshly made. But it would be too easy for Mrs. Price to find the child there, so Mrs. Reed meant to take Sam a little higher up.
Sam reached the landing, and when he did, Mrs. Reed continued on.
“Where is my mother?” Sam asked.
Mrs. Reed waved for Sam and Sam followed. They reached the stairs leading up to the third floor. Mrs. Reed ascended the stairs. There was no landing at the top, just a single door. Mrs. Reed waved Sam up and again Sam followed. Far below, on the first floor, a door opened and shut. The sound of footsteps on the stairs.
Mrs. Reed found a key in her coat pocket. The key was tied, with a bit of old leather, to a small baby’s rattle. She unlocked the door, opened it.
“You don’t hide your feelings,” Mrs. Reed said. “But there’s something else you’ve been trying to conceal.”
The third floor was an attic. A single room, long and low. Even this space had been fitted for gas lamps, and much like the opera house next door, the work hadn’t been done perfectly. No one had been to this attic for quite some time, so the gas lamps hadn’t been updated, as they’d been in the floors below. When Mrs. Reed turned on the lamp, a faint leak began. But this was undetectable at the moment, though eventually it would become quite clear. Mrs. Reed walked into the dark space with ease, authority, familiarity.
Sam stayed at the threshold. It seemed for a moment as if Mrs. Reed had disappeared; only the sounds of her shoes, thumping on the wood floor, told Sam any different. Then the rattle of a matchbox, the soft scratch that led to a flame. There she was. Mrs. Reed lifted a small glass globe on the wall and touched the match to the gas jet.
Light.
She slipped the glass globe back over the flame to tame it. Then she replaced the matchbox on a side table along the wall, turned to Sam. Sam remained at the threshold. Were those really footsteps on the stairs behind him? Someone reaching the second-floor landing? It wasn’t his mother’s step; he could recognize the sound of her anywhere. So who was it? It was this that made the child quick-step into the room. Choosing Mrs. Reed over the faceless figure below.
“It’s been some time,” Mrs. Reed said. “I used to come up here more often.”
The attic was large, bigger than the cabin Sam shared with Grace, but there were only a few items inside. A bed and a trunk pressed together at the far end. And closer, one item. Mrs. Reed stood beside it.
“A crib?” Sam asked.
“Cast iron,” Mrs. Reed said. “Brass knobs on the corners.”
“I didn’t know you had a kid.”
“I didn’t.”
The crib had no mattress, no pillow or blanket; it looked closer to a cage than a bed. Mrs. Reed touched one of the brass knobs, then pulled her hand away quickly.
“We had a wicker basket ready, but then McNamara and Marlow got this into the store and Jack had to have the first one.”
Sam moved around the crib slowly, having never seen one of these either. Grace had slept him in the bed with her until he’d graduated to a bed of his own.
“I gave birth in this house,” Mrs. Reed said. “In our bedroom. That’s what made it easier.”
“Made what easier?”
“To hide it.”
On the second floor, footsteps. One person. Would they climb the stairs to the attic?
“Not but three women in the room. One was my mother and the other my sister. Both of them long dead now. I do miss them.”
Sam watched her face, shadowed despite the gaslight.
“They showed Jack before they showed me,” Mrs. Reed said, looking off toward the nearby bed, as if into the past. And for a moment Sam could almost see two women, holding a small bundle, arms extended toward its father, Jack Reed.
“Did you have a boy or a girl?” Sam asked, beginning to understand Mrs. Reed’s expression as grief.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Reed said.
Sam felt confused now. “How could you not know?”
Mrs. Reed looked at Sam closely. “I said I admired your mother and I meant it. She ended up with such a wonderful, healthy child. I’m glad for her good fortune.”
She took one of the child’s hands in her own and tapped each finger lightly, counting them.
“Mine didn’t have fingers,” Mrs. Reed whispered. “It had claws.”
Mrs. Reed let go of Sam’s hand and Sam struggled to grasp what the woman had just said. In that moment Sam remembered the women at the table, listening to Mrs. Henry tell her story. Sam wanted to tell Mrs. Reed, You’re not the only one. But then Mrs. Reed said something else.
“Jack took it from my mother and throttled it in the corner. I heard it die.”
Sam stepped closer to Mrs. Reed, pressing against her in the way Grace found so welcome at times. The child’s embrace.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said.
But Mrs. Reed pushed Sam away. “Sorry?” Mrs. Reed said. “He did what was necessary.”
Sam turned and put a hand on the crib for balance.
She said, “He did what was right.”
Mrs. Reed had already composed herself. She moved now to the other side of the attic, to the bed.
“I want to speak with you now about what’s necessary, my dear. About what’s right. All of us in town knew your father, and no one judged your mother for the decision she made. He was a man of low quality.”
She leaned over the mattress and lifted something that had been lying there.
Sam took three steps away from the crib; it would be more accurate to say Sam stumbled back.
“But we couldn’t be quite as forgiving about some of her other choices.”
Mrs. Reed held up a dress.
Dark blue silk and Irish crochet.
“I had this made for you, the day after you were in my home.”
“The day my mother slapped you?” Sam asked, feeling scared and angry. “That day?”
Mrs. Reed’s hands gripped the dress fabric tightly, shaking it, but she said nothing.
Sam looked back toward the door. “Where’s my mother?”
Sam reached the door and grabbed its handle.
Mrs. Reed spoke firmly, “Samantha Price.”
Sam stiffened at the door. It took a moment to respond, so Mrs. Reed said it again.
“Samantha Price. That is your name.”
“Princess Volonsky,” Sam said.
Mrs. Reed said, “What are you talking about?”
Sam turned back. “Princess Volonsky, the Russian, who dressed as a man so she could fight in the war. Do you remember reading to us about that? You said she was brave. You asked us all to say a prayer for a person like that.”
Mrs. Reed laughed to dismiss him. “You aren’t comparing a woman in a war to me asking you to wear this dress, are you? Please now, you’re a smart child.”
Before Sam could say anything more, someone knocked, from the outside, and Sam let go of the door handle as if it burned.
“Come in,” Mrs. Reed called, and the door opened, softly.
A boy peeked inside.
“Am I too late?” he asked.
“No,” Mrs. Reed said. “You’re exactly on time.”
The boy stepped inside. He wasn’t much larger than Sam. Sam couldn’t speak because he recognized the face.
“Samantha Price,” Mrs. Reed said. “I want you to meet Joab Reed.”
The boy startled as if he’d been slapped, paying no attention to Sam.
“Joab Reed?” he said. “Really?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Reed said. “It was Mr. Reed’s idea. And I agreed with him.”
Mrs. Reed started toward Sam and Joab, carrying the dress in two hands. She handed it to Sam and Sam felt compelled to take it. Too stunned to do anything else.
Mrs. Reed opened the door now and stepped outside, waving Joab out, too. She’d said they had no children, none that lived, so was this boy her nephew? Was it her nephew who shot Sam’s mother?
“You took my shoes,” Sam said.
Mrs. Reed didn’t understand the significance to the words, but that boy sure did. He looked at Sam with a sudden coldness, worse than if the roof came off this home and the Montana wind blew in. Mrs. Reed only seemed confused.
“But you’re wearing shoes, dear,” Mrs. Reed said.
Did that woman ever look stupider than she did just now? Sam almost laughed at her but couldn’t find enough air in his lungs to do it.
“You will change into proper attire now,” Mrs. Reed said, poking the dress Sam still held with one finger. “Then I’ll send Joab back inside. He’ll keep you company tonight.”
Joab watched Sam coolly.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked Mrs. Reed.
“Just welcome Samantha to the family.”
“I already have a family!” Sam shouted.
Mrs. Reed pulled the door closed. Sam heard the pair out there, waiting for him to put on the dress. Mrs. Reed pressed her face to the door and spoke softly, even warmly.
“You have a better one now,” she said.