“Sarah,” Evelyn said, in as firm of tone as she could muster, “while I’m exceedingly happy you’re pleased with your costume, it’ll be far too cold later this evening at the Fair. You must wear a jacket.”
“Mother, please. Please don’t make me. No one will be able to see it! Please!”
Evelyn watched the tears gathering in the girl’s eyes and knew she wouldn’t be able to stay firm if they began to fall. “No one will see it if you’re too cold to leave the car either, Sarah. I’ll hold it for you while—.”
“Darling? Sarah?” Andrew stopped stock still in the doorway of the great room, quickly taking in the situation and recognizing his wife’s waffling. “What’s the difficulty here?”
Rising, Evelyn let her breath out slowly. “It’s too cold to wear the costume without a jacket—.”
“No it’s not!” Sarah shouted. “She’s just saying that because she’s mean!”
Immediately, Andrew sprang into action. Releasing the startled Peter’s hand, he strode past Eve
“What are you thinking about, darling?” With her eyes following a young family with three children, the eldest about Peter’s age and the rest younger, she smiled as she answered, “All the people here in costume. The children I expected, but so many adults are costumed too. It adds a great deal to the carnival atmosphere on the last day.” Among the children, the cowboys and cops, princesses and angels were always popular. But many children had drawn inspiration from events of the year and Elecktro-style robots giggled with Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. Frank Buck-style jungle explorers jitterbugged with giant jungle cats, and clowns with comic book heroes. Her silvery-blue eyes lingered on an obviously well-to-do couple dressed in bright and wildly colored, sequined and feathered Venetian style costumes with oddly grotesque and appealing masks—his a black and gold, curly-horned, laughing skull, and hers a magnificently plumed, long
“What makes you think it has my name on it?” Andrew asked, staring down his straight narrow nose at his wife, but her attention was diverted down the midway towards the crowds and noise. “Seems a familiar style,” Evelyn replied grimly. With an annoyed huff, she started towards the bench and the envelope that had been left by the colorful and mysterious harlequin. The entire circumstance had lost its glamor for her. There was nothing loving or romantic about lies. Nothing proud or noble about secrets. Not even ones purportedly to protect somebody you love. Miranda Stiles was her aunt, for pity’s sake. Her aunt who had looked her in the face countless times at the Trust and never uttered a single kind word. Who’d been willing to let her plummet to her death with Russell James. The more she dwelled on it, the more it infuriated her. All of them infuriated her. She’d have gladly signed away her right to every penny of the money in Glorietta Moreno’s California bank account for the s
The autumn chill awakened Evelyn even before Andrew’s alarm. Lifting herself up so she could see over him, she glanced at the faintly illuminated face of his clock and groaned. Another hour, perhaps more before the apartment would start to warm up. While his residence was far less drafty than hers had been, she missed her small fireplaces. It had been nice to supplement the building’s giant Octopus coal furnace’s heat for her apartment, and in particular, for her bedroom, and to any extent she desired, as long as she had the firewood. The extra blanket she’d pulled over the footboard from the bench to heap on top of her during the night wasn’t enough to ward off the uncomfortable cold this morning, and sadly, it was only going to get worse. Andrew generated a delightful amount of heat with his masculine metabolism, but in general, she slept too warm for him, and during the night he’d retreat to his side of the bed, often with only the sheet to cover him. Assuming he
The final preparations in advance of the movers clearing Evelyn’s small cold-water flat seemed to spark a renewed awareness and an intensified enthusiasm for packing and planning. Not merely in Evelyn and, by default, Andrew, but also in the children, Mary and Tank, and even Justin and Lily. Which was fortunate, as Evelyn discovered upon arriving at her apartment after she’d spoken to Mickey on Wednesday morning. With only an urgent need and no real design in mind for how to clear her own apartment, Lily with Justin’s help had simply moved anything she didn’t intend to throw away into Evelyn’s apartment across the hall. While they had done a marginal amount of packing—including emptying shelves and cupboards into boxes still standing opened and scattered absolutely everywhere—they’d added exponentially to the chaos by cramming the entirety of Lily’s meager belongings haphazardly into Evelyn’s. It followed then that instead of spending her mornings and early afternoon
With an exasperated huff and a muttered curse, Andrew jerked his head down the stairs and towards the older apartment's lobby. “Let’s go then, Officer Morgan, if you’re going.”At his urging, Evelyn took the remaining steps to the ground level while he pulled on his coat and then followed. She didn’t resist when he cupped her elbow, steering her past the wall of tenant mailboxes near the lobby door and the short flight of external stairs that would take them to the street level. While she was disappointed to be denied even this brief bit of normality and time alone with Andrew, she could hardly fault Will Morgan for his staunch dedication to the duties assigned him.Perhaps he was a bit over-zealous. After all, since Edward Montero's death over the summer, there'd been little else of any threat. Sure, strange people and stories had surfaced, but even the contact from Miranda Stiles hadn't been dangerous. And she had to admit, the poor fell
“Oh! There you are!” Mary exclaimed as Will shoved his way around the door to Evelyn’s fourth floor apartment, each arm laden with a brown paper sack of groceries. “We were beginning to—what on earth happened!?”With Andrew supporting her, Evelyn limped her way into the tiny kitchen of her apartment. Before she could even pull out a chair to sit down, the rest of her ‘guests’ came flooding in to see what the hullaballoo was about. Besides Mickey and Tank, she was fairly certain she saw every other tenant residing in the building standing on tiptoe and bobbing left and right, trying to get a look at her.“Ladies,” Andrew pushed further into the room, arms wide and herding them backwards into what had formerly been her living room, “if you please. We just need a few minutes to get settled, then if you’ve all haggled to your heart’s content, we’ll get started moving furniture.”
With all the windows in the entire apartment thrown open wide to let in the cool night air, Evelyn slumped on the edge of a windowsill. Nearby, an exhausted Mary occupied the dressing table’s stool. Through the kitchen, they heard the return of Andrew, Will and Tank. “We did this wrong,” an exhausted Will said around his hard panting breaths as they entered the former living room in search of the two women. Andrew chuckled mirthlessly, crossing the mostly empty room to perch on the windowsill beside his wife. “Oh, now you tell me.” “Yeah,” Will continued, easing himself to the recently swept and mopped floor, then laying out, spread-eagle, with a low groan. “The stuff that had to go the furthest, we should have taken first. While we were fresh.” “I don’t know. I still think taking the stuff that was heaviest first was a wise move.” Lifting Mary, Tank took the dressing table stool then pulled her onto his lap in an intimate, possessive way. “Th
Tossing the folded piece of paper on the table, Detective Kelly pivoted and faced the two plain-clothes policemen. “Get her out of here.” “How dare you!” Andrew’s chair tipped backwards onto the floor with a loud smack as he vaulted to his feet and began shoving at the men attempting to arrest his wife. “I’ll have your badge for this!” “Mr. James, I can assure you if you don’t get out of the way, we’ll add resisting arrest to the extensive list of charges your wife is facing,” Detective Kelly surged into the fray of struggling men. “Maybe we’ll take you downtown too for aiding and abetting.” “The hell you will! Who do you think gave you that information!? Surely, you can’t be this idiotic! Why would we give you something that incriminated either of us!?” Still struggling to hold off the three men, the larger Andrew snarled, infuriated, “Get your hands off of my wife!” While Evelyn cringed over the table, frantically trying to scrape the papers they’d