Page 99 of The Widow and the Wanted

“Only stories,” she says quickly. “From the others.”

“I’m sure.”

Her mouth twitches in a way that tells me she hears the rest of what I do not say. She turns us toward a staircase runner soft enough to swallow our steps.

At the landing, she slows. The house changes here. The laughter falls away. The lamps burn lower, steadier. The doors are thicker, the carpet finer. Pearl drops my arm and smooths a hand over her sash, suddenly more aware of herself.

“She’s in the blue parlor,” she says. Then she glances at me sidelong. “She won’t have changed her face much, but don’t let that fool you. She’s just as bad as she ever was.”

“I assumed as much.”

Pearl smiles, then sobers. “She missed you. In her own way.”

The words land harder than I want them to.

Before I can answer, a door opens at the far end of the hall and a woman sweeps out, balancing a silver tray at her hip. She pauses when she sees me, goes still, then bows her head in the faintest, strangest little gesture of respect.

At the end of the hall stand black double doors trimmed in gilt, their brass handles polished bright. Pearl lifts her hand to knock, then hesitates and looks back at me with a flash of the child she used to be.

“You all right?”

“Of course not,” I say.

Pearl nods, as if that is the proper answer. Then she raps twice and opens the door without waiting to be called in.

The room beyond is warm with lamplight and the scent of rosewater and ink. It is less gaudy than the rooms below, but richer somehow—books bound in leather, a decanter on a side table, heavy blue drapes framing tall windows, a fine Turkish carpet. A fire burns low in the grate. At a writing desk near the hearth, a woman in black silk sits with a ledger open beneath one hand.

She does not look up at once.

“Ms. Goldie,” Pearl says, and for the first time since I met her in the hall, her voice holds something like nerves. “You’d best put down your pen.”

The woman sighs, as if interrupted by foolishness she fully intends to punish. Then she lifts her head.

Time is not usually kind, but it has been selective with her. The gold in her hair has cooled, pinned up in a gleaming twist with a silver comb. Her mouth is painted dark red. When her gaze finds mine, she rises slowly.

Pearl retreats a step, suddenly wise enough to remove herself from the center of things. Goldie says nothing for so long that the fire popping in the grate sounds loud as gunfire.

Then, very softly, she says, “Well.”

My throat tightens. I make myself lift my chin. I hate that one word can still do this to me.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Lula Mae Eld. My beautiful baby girl.”

Mother nods to Pearl. “She was damn near your momma till you were saying full monologues.”

At that, Pearl squeezes my arm. “I remember.”

“Slept in a drawer in her room. Remember that, Lula Mae?”

“I do.”

The pain of being left behind—of wondering if I’d ever see them again—rushes back, and a lump rises in my throat. The words spill out, nowhere near as dignified as I’d always planned. “You left me.”

“Pearl, dear, can you give us some⁠—”

“No. Let her stay. She ought to hear it too, since you’ve convinced her I was living in a castle somewhere.”