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“Very late. Or very early. Depending.”
On the other end, Evie was fighting to stay alert. Mabel could hear it. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much. You a’right, Mabesie?”
Mabesie. With one word, Mabel was pierced. She wanted to tell Evie everything—about the raid. The dynamite. How exciting it had been. How Arthur Brown had looked with the fire behind him—a terrible angel, a beautiful monster. About what they had done in his bed. What she wanted was to hear Evie tutting that Mabel worried too much and to go to sleep; everything would look better in the morning. She wanted to hear of Evie’s trivial troubles: A dull party. A runner in her favorite stockings. Sarah Snow. But their lives were worlds apart now. Mabel and the Six were fighting for real change; Evie and the others chased down ghosts. Mabel had never even seen a ghost. She’d taken Evie’s word for it that ghosts existed. But maybe it was time to stop taking Evie’s word for things. Maybe if you didn’t believe in ghosts, you didn’t see them.
Mabel had called Evie out of habit, she now realized, like trying to suck your thumb when you were long past its comfort and feeling foolish for it.
“I’m fine,” Mabel said. “I’m with friends.”
“What friends?” Evie sounded hurt.
Mabel ignored her. “I just wanted…” To say I miss you. To pretend that we could be best friends the way we used to be. “I just wanted to see how you were getting along.”
“At six thirty in the AM?” Evie mumbled sleepily.
“Sorry. Go back to bed.”
“Wait!” Evie said. “Mabesie, I miss you. I’m sorry ’bout what I did.”
Mabel blinked up at the ceiling. It was leaking. She moved the garbage pail into place with her foot.
“Say, let’s make a plan, mm-kay? A won’erful, won’erful plan,” Evie murmured.
Mabel blinked faster. “Sure. We’ll do that. Go back to bed.”
“Okay, then.” Evie yawned. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” Mabel said, and hung up.
Mabel crept back into Arthur’s flat. Dawn was struggling to be born.
“Mabel?” Arthur called. “Where’d ya go?”
“Nowhere,” Mabel said. He was so handsome and rumpled.
Arthur reached out to her with one hand. He folded down the covers. “Come back to bed. I’ll warm you up.”
You’ve made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it, Mabel’s grandmother had said to Mabel’s mother once upon a time. Mabel had made her choice. There was no going back.
She slipped between the sheets and into Arthur’s arms.
Everything was different now.
In the early dawn, Jake Marlowe’s mine still smoldered. The wisps of gray smoke joined the mist dancing along the tops of the blue hills. The day’s first light shadowed the canvas tents where, inside, the miners and their families slept and dreamed. On the edge of the camp, the militiamen gathered. They passed the guns down the line, hand over hand until all were armed.
The foreman pulled back the chamber on his rifle.
“Let ’em have it.”
FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE
“I hate to say good-bye,” Mabel said as she leaned against the doorway of Arthur’s garret. She wanted nothing more than to lead him back to bed and spend the day in his arms. But she’d been gone too long as it was.
“That makes two of us,” Arthur said, kissing her deeply. “See you tonight?”
Mabel nodded. Tonight and tomorrow and forever, she wanted to say.
Arthur stood at the window, looking down. Mabel waved up at him and he waved back as she went on her way. Across the street, the man in the brown fedora stood under the street lamp, staring up. He tucked his newspaper under his arm and turned up Bleecker Street. Arthur slipped out of the bookshop and followed the man, keeping a safe distance all the way to Bedford Street, where the man knocked at number eighty-six: Chumley’s. Arthur waited a few minutes, then went in. The brown-hatted man was already at a table in the back, a drink in hand.
