Page 58 of Twelve Days and Twelfth Night

“She’ll need to talk to someone.”

Not him. Prescott raised one hand to tell Mr. Curtis to wait. He rose, dismissed bus two, and squatted again. “She won’t want to talk to me.”

White eyebrows lowered. “I heard her crying last night.”

Prescott’s grimace broke through. “We argued.”

“Regardless, she needs to talk, and you’re the best one.”

“I can’t go into the women’s dressing room, and the ladies will do a much better job of listening to her.”

“Not the dressing room. The Lily Pond.”

“The Lily Pond?”

“She always said it’d be a dramatic place for a good cry.”

Prescott had heard her say that very thing. He stood and called for bus three.

“If you won’t go,” Mr. Curtis said, “I will.”

In the pouring rain in the blacked-out night? “No, you can’t go.”

“Then you will? Thank you. That’s my bus.” Mr. Curtis took Mr. Anderson’s arm and made his way down the aisle.

Prescott’s jaw fell open. He couldn’t go to Maggie. Why should he? Let her cry alone. She’d rejected his advice and hurt two friends. Why should he help her?

“Bus four.” A niggling sensation clawed in his gut. What was it he’d said to himself last night? About refusing to turn his back on her?

He hadn’t done so. He’d come to the show and performed his best.

Was Mr. Curtis’s request any different? Asking Prescott to lay aside his pain and help someone?

But Maggie had hurt a lot of people.

“Bus five.” The lines of “Joy to the World” repeated in his head. The world had received its King—and crucified him. Yet Jesus showed mercy.

So should Prescott. He groaned and kept dismissing the sailors.

Two trucks would arrive at ten thirty to take the cast to the streetcar terminal. If nothing else, Maggie needed to be on that truck, or the USO would be in trouble with the Navy.

After the last sailor left the theater, Prescott shoved through the curtain and went to the men’s dressing room. He ignored the chatter, removed his jerkin so the velvet wouldn’t be ruined in the rain, changed into street shoes, and put on his coat and hat.

Outside, he charged forward, his head low, his hat a shield against the rain. Through the overcast, an almost-full moon barely illuminated the path through the arcade in front of a Spanish Colonial building and across a plaza with raindrops plinking on the pavement.

At the end of another arcade, he reached the Lily Pond. Maybe Maggie wouldn’t be there. Then he could say he’d done his best and leave.

Close to the Botanical Building, a walkway divided the upper and lower ponds. A hunched figure sat on the railing.

Prescott grumbled. “All right, Lord. Since this is your idea, let me know what to say.”

As he came closer, the Botanical Building emerged from the mist of rain, long and domed like a railroad station. The rain would be pelting through the thin redwood laths forming the roof.

As he reached the walkway, the sound of weeping beat out the sound of raindrops pummeling his hat.

Prescott leaned back against the broad railing, several feet from Maggie.

Her head jerked up. “Oh no. Why’d you come? To lord it over me?” Only distress distorted her voice, not anger.