I sag against the counter, not trusting my legs to support me. “What did they say?”
“They showed him the door. Then today, this shows up.” She pulls out the newspaper she’d been reading to Etta Rae. It’s the Constitution, with its distinctively wide pages and dense columns. The leftmost article grabs my attention.
MISS SWEETIE, AGONY AUNT OR ANT-AGONIST?
Atlanta has been beside herself to discover the identity of the rabble-rouser, whose biweekly column in the Focus has aroused many a heated discussion in our peaceful city. While a few welcome the controversies, many wonder if the Miss Sweetie column is a ploy for attention by a newspaper many consider “too loosely wrapped.”
My thumbnail dents the page. Whoever wrote this clearly has not seen my letters of admiration. Where false light falls, a monster grows.
Perhaps those who know Miss Sweetie’s identity would do our fair city a favor to expose her for the troublemaker she is.
“You okay? You look a little pale.”
I refold the paper and set it back into the basket. “I’m fine.” Of all the weeks to stop eavesdropping.
Merritt’s breakup must really have put a stone on Mr. Payne’s tracks. If he wants to shut down the Focus, all he need do is cut off its paper supply. By orchestrating a witch hunt, he exacts a little humiliation to boot. He can’t know the kind of public scorn they would face if the truth were known: that a Chinese girl had duped everyone. But of course that won’t happen. It can’t. Only Lizzie Crump knows the truth, and while she might be slow in the foot and frivolous, she is not cruel.
I fetch a mug. Miss Sweetie will not be intimidated, not after she’s come this far. The Focus has nearly reached two thousand subscriptions, and once the sponsors see the newspaper’s success, surely alternative paper sources could be found.
“You waiting for me to put change in there?” Noemi eyes the empty mug I’m strangling.
I set down the mug and pour the coffee, hoping she does not see the way my hands shake. “That Miss Sweetie’s sure stirring up trouble.” For herself and everyone around her.
Noemi scrapes away the silver skin encasing her meat. “I like her. In fact, I’m fixing to write her my own letter about those suffragists. We got the same working parts as those other women, but their hate’s more important than getting the vote.” With a flick of her wrist, Noemi chucks the tough skin into the slop bucket. “Course, that Miss Sweetie is white and probably wouldn’t answer me.”
“Even if she doesn’t write back, I bet she’d agree with you.”
“You think?”
“Yes, I do.”
* * *
—
I CARRY MY tray up to Caroline’s room, noticing the door to Mrs. Payne’s study is closed. She rarely closes the door. It is the melancholy at work, no doubt.
Caroline’s vanity is back in its corner, but she’s staring out her window when I enter her chambers. I wonder if trouble looks less scary when glimpsed through a pane of glass. “Are you well, miss?”
She doesn’t answer, but her gaze drops from the window to the floor. There’s a restlessness to the way she moves, and the dimple in her cheek seems to have changed overnight into a permanent pinch.
After setting her tray before her, I straighten her bedsheets, having my own frown lines to mind.
“How does it feel to be a nobody?” She taps at the shell of her soft-boiled egg.
My temper flares. “How does it feel to be an overstuffed porcupine?” The words fall before I can catch them. It occurs to me that with Mr. Q out of the picture, I no longer have leverage to demand reasonable treatment. The good news is, I’m pretty sure our agreement made no difference in how Caroline treated me, anyway.
“I don’t know why I put up with an ill-bred hussy like yourself,” she snaps, though her words lack the heat of true indignation. Sighing, she sets down her spoon. “If the rumor is true, Mama and I might have to move to the country. Perhaps it will be nice to live in anonymity. I won’t have to pretend I like anyone, and I can go about as I please. Grandpapa has many horses.” Her eyes follow as I arrange her pillows.
“Most nobodies I know don’t have horses.”
She scoops a spoonful of egg but, instead of eating it, lets the golden treasure drip back into the shell. “I think I would enjoy the simple life. I might even take up drawing. Or horticulture.” She eyes her potted violet. “I raised that one from a seedling. Almost got the bud to bloom, too.”
I crisp the corners of her bedsheets. “Most nobodies I know don’t have time for horticulture.”
“You are drear.”
I shake out a petticoat she has left on the floor. “Most nobodies I know are drear.”
Her mouth buckles, and then she aims her gaze out the window again. “Would you come with me?”
She holds herself very still, and a cloud draws a shadow on her face.
The memory of how the kittens destroyed her mother’s study scratches at me, and my laugh sounds bitter. “You despise me, don’t you remember?”
“I despise everyone.”
“Why?”
She snorts. “Who knows? I wanted her to myself.”
Mrs. Payne left when Caroline was two, too young for her to remember, but maybe the heart remembers what the mind is too young to grasp. Perhaps that is why Caroline hates Noemi so much. Her mammy’s own child took priority. But me? I was just a poor orphan to whom Mrs. Payne was occasionally kind. Maybe in her young mind, Caroline considered every nod to someone else a snub to herself.
“Old Gin believes I should take a husband.”
“Marriage? But who would marry you?”
I bristle. “Someone with exquisite taste, obviously.”
“I mean, there are no Chinese in Atlanta.”
“There are some in Augusta.”
“Ugh, no, not those commoners.”
Plumping one of her overstuffed pillows, I toss it against the carved headboard, where it makes a satisfying oomph! like a gut being punched. “We have a saying. The superior man thinks of virtue, the common man, comfort.”
She trills her fingers at me. “Virtue is overrated. Papa worked hard for every dime we have, and says that we . . .” Abruptly, she turns from me and stares out the window again. I can’t help wondering if she just remembered her father might not be the man she thinks. “He says that we deserve to live in comfort,” she finishes softly. “Take the tray. I’m no longer hungry.”