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On their break, Martina usually went to the cafeteria to eat or catch a few minutes of shut-eye in the corner, but not today. Today, she needed to be alone. Just to think, to clear her head.
She hurried out the back door quickly enough that the usual group of smokers hadn’t yet congregated. Good. Better not to hear what they would almost certainly be discussing.“You think anyone here’s rotten?” “Not sure, but we ought to keep an eye out.”
Stop. Think of something else.The Blackout Book Club’s latest pick, yes, that would do. Rosa was so excited that they’d chosen her favorite storybook. She wanted to show everyone her favorite illustration, the one of the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse—
A whistle in the narrow alleyway startled away her dreams of clover fields and playthings in the attic. There was nothing threatening about the sound itself, just the rousing marching tune “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”
It was the person attached to the keening whistle that made her tense.
Patrick.
His lips unpursed, and he rumbled a line of the song, an ironic smile on his face. “‘Praise the Lord, we’re all between perdition and the deep blue sea.’” Planting his feet, he stood between her and the stretch of alley leading to the foundry door. “Isn’t that right, Martina?”
It chilled her, that voice, where it had once warmed her like a shot of Irish whiskey.
“Hello again, Patrick.” A silly thing to say, but what else was she to do?
He lit a cigarette in a smooth motion, the song cutting off as he drew it to his mouth. Even when they hadn’t had money for Gio’s school materials or Rosa’s birthday present, he always found a way to keep packs of Chesterfields around.
Had he found where she lived first or where she worked? How long, how often, had he been following her—or the children?
“You haven’t visited the address I gave you.”
“No, I don’t plan to. What’s this about, Patrick?”
He sighed out a puff of smoke, and she waved it away with a cough. “Listen, I need a loan. Just a hundred dollars.”
She studied him for a moment as he took another drag on the cigarette. A striped tie poked out from the collar of his light-brown trench coat, spotless and new, and his face was still cleanly shaven. Not his usual look when he fell on hard times and came scraping back to her.
“I thought you said fishing was good.” Maybe her reverse miracle had been granted after all, and this slump would move Patrick along, out of Derby.
“It is. This is for a legitimate business expense. I’m expanding my scope, you might say.”
She’d heard that explanation before, the other times he’d slunk back to them after claiming his time as a family man was over. Once, it had been for tuition to welding school, then money for a used car so he could take on work as a traveling salesman. Neither had lasted more than a few months, and who could say where her money had actually gone? Given Patrick’s habits, though, she had some less-than-reputable guesses.
But his “legitimate business” was no longer her business—or her responsibility. From somewhere deep inside her, she could feel a new resolve. No, she wouldn’t let her fear of her husband steal from her children and their future. Not this time, not ever again.
Her voice was steady, almost confident. “I can’t give you the money. I don’t have it.” Not entirely true—she’d saved a good amount from her foundry work—but she certainly didn’t have any to spare. “But I can help you in another way.”
“Yeah?” He perked up, waiting for her reply.
“Danny Maloney, Bond Street,” she said, naming one of her fellow book club members. “He’s a pawn dealer and an acquaintance of mine. He’ll give you a fair price for anything you need to sell to raise the money.”
Patrick’s mouth twitched in disgust. “Do you know howmuch a fuel tank costs? I can’t pay for that by hawking a few odds and ends.”
“You already have a fuel tank.” Her knowledge of fishing trawlers was limited, and Patrick knew it, but she wasn’t so naïve as to think he and his crew would row into the Atlantic.
He ignored that, as if she hadn’t just caught him in a bold-faced lie. “Besides, the circles I run in now ... I need to keep an image up. These threads are part of it.” As he spoke, a cinder fell off his cigarette, landing on his left coat sleeve. Cursing, he batted it away, but not before it left a singed speck on the pristine cuff.
“Stupid woman,” he muttered, “look what you’ve done.”
Martina drew in a sharp breath. She had to remember that later when Patrick was in control of his emotions enough to be charming. He hadn’t changed; he’d only changed what he wanted from her.
“Didn’t tell the kids about me, either, I take it? Is that why you chased after Gio when he saw me at the theater?”
Good, he’d accepted her explanation that she didn’t have money to give. Still, this wasn’t the topic she wanted to move to. “Why would you care? You wanted me to send them away to live with my mother.”
Frustration briefly cracked the suave mask he’d put up. “I just want to talk to them.”
