“They were lucky to find you,” she breathed, and her praise warmed him like the rising sun.
“I let my tenants stay for a time—typically a year or so—and rebuild their lives without worrying about keeping food on the table or a roof over their heads. I do not intend the building to be a long-term solution,” he managed. He rarely had the experience of explaining his project to others.
The first residents had been by reference from the Episcopalian priest who had greeted Ben when he stumbled into the sanctuary, destroyed and desperate to find purpose after fleeing California. The women told others, and word spread in a whisper through the network of Brooklyn Heights, the worst-kept secret in town. Unless you were a man, in which case you would never know what happened on Willow Street.
“Why don’t they find employment? Work in a shop, or in a factory—”
“You can’t bring your baby to work in a shop, nor in a factory. Women must either stay home or entrust the care of their children to relations, often older girls who should be in school. If the children do not receive schooling, they will never find gainful employment and will be trapped in poverty like their parents before them.”
Rose was silent as they rounded a corner, the post office finally in sight. “Are there many women in New York who struggle like that?”
Ben paused his steps and met her eyes. A crease marred the space between her brows, and he wanted to rub his thumb over it, to release her tension. Instead, he exhaled on a huff. “Thousands,” he said, swinging open the post office door.
Rose waited near the entrance as Ben passed off the stamped envelopes to the clerk, glancing behind him occasionally to make sure she was close and no one was bothering her. When he turned to her again, he stopped in his tracks. Her eyes were down, her expression haunted. As though their brief conversation had uprooted her and cast her adrift.
He held open the door for her as they stepped back onto the sidewalk. Ben squinted into the sun, ignoring the tension radiating from the woman beside him. He disliked the visceral response he had to her presence, how he wanted to be rid of her, but could not ignore how she made his blood rush faster. He did not want to remember how she appeared unbidden in his dreams the past two nights, wrapping him in her arms as she whispered soothing words into his ear, moaning softly as he slid her nightshirt up over her hips—
Rose was not the first woman to attract his notice since the death of his wife. A year after he arrived in New York, he engaged in a brief affair with another suffrage worker. Ava, a widow with bright eyes and a kind smile, gave him space to process his pain and start to heal. When she realized he could never offer his heart, Ava moved on to marry a shopkeeper from uptown. His relationship with her had been the longest, and ever since he held himself to brief affairs, lengthy enough to build some modicum of trust but too short to put his heart at risk. These liaisons had given Ben all the companionship he wanted. Most importantly, he drew a strict line at the door of 138 Willow. He would never compromise the women who depended on him—on their makeshift community—to survive.
“How would suffrage help these women?”
Ben was uncertain if she voiced her question to him or the city as a whole, and he slowed his pace to answer her. “Women could elect representatives to take up their cause, to create laws protecting women and children in this city, around the entire country. They could remove men like Linden, those who want to limit their freedom, from power.”
Rose was silent as she digested the information; her mouth opened as though she wanted to speak but thought better of it, and they walked two blocks before she stopped, turning to face him and squaring her shoulders. “I want to help.”
He raised one brow. “You said that before.”
“But I mean it… differently this time.” Her eyes darted from side to side as if she feared someone might overhear her. “I’ve been unhappy for quite some time, forever, if I’m being honest. I thought I’d be going to parties and gossiping here, more of the same life I lived in England, and instead it’s been—”
Above them, he heard the squeal of a window being wrenched open, then watched an overstuffed suitcase sail into the air, its contents—a mix of men’s shirts and trousers, by the looks of it—exploding upon contact with the sidewalk below. A woman’s raspy voice echoed down the street. “If you everthinkof coming home smellin’ like that cheap perfume, don’t even bother!”
Rose blinked and gave him a weak smile. “It’s been illuminating.”
Ben winced but fell into step behind her, averting his gaze when the man he assumed to be the owner of the suitcase scurried out to gather up his belongings, his cheeks blooming a brilliant crimson.
“But going to the rally, seeing those women,” Rose continued, “writing letters and hearing you talk… I want to be a part of something bigger. I want to impact change, and I think I can do that here.”
“You don’t even live here.”You don’t belong. She belonged in London, or the Upper West Side, anywhere but in Brooklyn. Anywhere but by his side on a dirty street, dodging pickpockets and flying suitcases and rodents. He couldn’t protect her here, nor could he stomach his undefinable need to keep her safe.
“But I can take what I learn and bring it to the suffragists in Oxford. I can do more than offer pithy remarks in a coffee shop, but write letters, attend rallies. My father has a seat in Parliament, perhaps I could convince him—”
“We each do our best, taking tiny steps forward and hope that eventually we shuffle far enough to tip the scales in our favor, but there isn’t one easy fix for a problem this vast.” There was no space for a sunny optimist in his world.
She shook her head. “I don’t like to think I could never have an impact.”
Something in his chest turned, dislodged to let in a bit of her sunshine. “Impact doesn’t have to be a crater.” Ben started to walk again, but slowly this time. Rose kept pace, and he suddenly wanted the walk to last longer. “Most of the time, impact causes tiny ripples in the sea. Sometimes they rock the ship, most of the time they go unnoticed. But enough of them can push a ship off course.”
Rose looked up at him, and he felt the heat of her emerald gaze on his face. “You’re so selfless.”
He snorted. “Far from it. In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t look like most men in New York. When one class of outcasts gains more rights, all of us move up, get closer to equality ourselves.” Ben looked to see her cataloging his expression, making note of every detail as though attempting to decode it.
He stared at a point in the distance and answered her unspoken question. “My mother was a Japanese immigrant, my father the grandson of Danish immigrants.”
“And you were born here?”
“In California, but yes. Though I may not look it, I am an American citizen by birth.”
“And you cannot vote?”
