Page 51 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
“If you go quickly, she won’t see you,” Margie said, voice hushed.
With a swell of gratitude, Fern darted to the staircase. By the third floor, her legs felt ready to fold at the knees. Finally, in her room, door closed and locked behind her, she let them fold. She collapsed onto the floor. Minutes passed. Maybe a quarter hour. Every time she resolved to get up from the floor and get changed, a stronger resolve to keep lying on her side on the carpet won out. It was dark, the shadows lengthening across the floor, whena knock landed on her door.
“Miss Fern?”
Margie.
She turned her face toward the ceiling. “What is it?”
“Dinner is ready. I wanted to see if you need any assistance…before I leave for the night?”
Dear, sweet Margie. She really was a kind person. If her mother hadn’t originally hired her to be her friend, Fern might actually have wanted to be friends with her.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes. And I’m fine. Thank you, Margie,” she tacked on.
There was no avoiding her parents any longer. Fern got up, pulled off her ruined dress, and scrubbed her hands and face in her attached bathroom. The water had turned brownish pink by the time she was through.
Arms shaking, she pulled on a long-sleeved, dark green dress, which helped cover her scraped elbow. The neckline was too low to hide the bruised love bite on her neck, but a silk scarf, worked into a thick bow, took care of that.
So much to hide. So much to cover up. All because of Cal.
Her stomach twisted, and a flare of tension in her shoulders made her long for the carpet again. Cal wouldn’t curl up and hide from the world. He’d get up, go down to dinner, and drink his glass of milk. A small laugh escaped her lips.
Margie wasn’t waiting in the hallway when Fern emerged. In the brief time it took to walk to the dining room, she tried to come up with a believable story for how she’d scraped her forehead. To her surprise, Buchanan was seated at the table. Their mother sat atone end, and their father at the other. By the expressions on their faces, they hadn’t expected Fern to come down for dinner. Her father’s instant scowl, and the way he couldn’t hold her eyes for more than a few seconds, made Fern reconsider having joined them.
“Goodness, your temple!” her mother exclaimed.
“I went on a walk and tripped and fell,” she blurted out, apparently having settled on a ridiculous, though slightly believable, lie. “I’m fine.”
“A walk?” Her mother shifted in her chair as Fern ladled soup into her bowl from the tureen in the center of the table. The three of them had already started eating.
“Yes. I’m too cooped up these days,” she replied. It was the furthest thing from the truth. Father and Buchanan knew it too. Her brother also knew what the scarf obscured from view.
Fern’s hand shook as she lowered her silver spoon into the soup.
“That’s wonderful. Fresh air is excellent for you, but I do worry?—”
“The girl is fine. Let us eat,” her father snapped, cutting her off. Her mother threw him a startled glance but said no more.
Silver clinked against china for the next several minutes, allowing Fern’s pulse the chance to calm. She couldn’t stop thinking about Cal, though, and whether Dr. Levy had been able to stop the bleeding. Her father and brother were mumbling to one another—or perhaps Fern’s ears were only muffled to their conversation—when one word stood out:shot.
“What did you say?” she asked, eyeing first her father, then Buchanan.
Neither of them wanted to speak to her, or so the scowls on their faces hinted. Buchanan’s jaw hardened. “We heard Clean Calvin got shot up outside his factory today.”
He waited for Fern’s reaction, holding her stare the way only a petulant older brother could.
“Buchanan, this is unseemly dinner conversation,” their mother said, pushing her bowl of soup aside.
“Has he been killed?” Fern asked, wondering if they had heard any news that she had not.
It felt like she had a pair of hearts in her chest instead of just one, each one pumping out of rhythm with the other.
“No word yet.”
Her father wiped his mouth. “The man’s a snake, sneakier than his crazy brother. Let’s hope the Jacky Boys sent their best.”
Fern’s pulse stuttered, and air twisted down her throat painfully. “How do you know it was the Jacky Boys?”
