The granite bricks of the jail had never looked so gloomy as she approached. She glanced around the prison yard, but there didn’t seem to be any guards patrolling the premises. She didn’t even know if what she was doing was legal. Was it illegal to wander off the path and communicate with a prisoner through a laundry vent? At least the camera she clutched would be a convenient excuse should anyone question why she’d strayed from the path.
There was no shrubbery to hide behind as she approached a set of three vents sticking out from the side of the jail. The lawn was lumpy and uneven as she picked her way across it, but soon she was on the scrabbly limestone pebbles that abutted the jail.
Damp heat and the rumble of machinery came from the low metal vents. One was about the size of a pie plate, but another much larger opening was a square fan flush with the bricks. She squatted down to peek through it. The blades of the fan spun so quickly it was almost as though they disappeared, letting her see the huge rotary drums and aluminum tubing inside the laundry room.
Near the back of the cinder block room, she spotted Luke wearing a striped prison uniform as he unloaded a mass of wet sheets from one of the rotary drums into a basket. Were there other men nearby? She couldn’t see any, but she dared not call out to him.
She gave two quick claps of her hands, and he immediately looked up, spotting her through the vent. He held a finger to his lips to convey silence, then casually spoke to someone else in the room. A moment later, a man dressed in the same prison uniform left the laundry, and Luke darted to the vent.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said through the opening. “Wait there while I open the other vent.”
He disappeared, but she heard scraping from the pie plate vent a few feet away. She went to stand before it, and Luke’s hand came through the opening. She fell to her knees and grabbed it, pressing kisses to his palm.
“Watch out, I smell like bleach,” he cautioned. “We’ve got about five minutes before Stillman gets back from his toilet break.”
That didn’t leave her much time to pry the truth out of him. She withdrew her hand and squatted low so she could see his face through the vent. She drank in the sight, amazed at how happy he looked to see her.
“How did you figure this out?” she asked.
He snorted. “I spotted the possibilities the first hour I was assigned here. I’ve got nothing better to do than plan various means of escape.”
“But you won’t, will you? Luke . . . it will go worse for you if you run.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on how things go.”
A lump of dread settled in her stomach. “This is my fault, isn’t it?”
“Never,” he said fiercely.
“I know what the charges are. I know it’s because of those studies and—”
He reached through the opening and laid a finger on her lips. “Shh,” he soothed. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”
But his finger trembled, and she sensed his anxiety from that single bit of contact. She pulled his hand away from her mouth so she could see him again.
“Why didn’t you tell them it was me?”
His smile nearly broke her heart. “It would have killed a piece of me to do that,” he said in a ragged breath.
“I want you to. If they bring charges against me, I’ll be okay. I’m not afraid of enclosed spaces. I’ll be okay.”
“So will I.” But for once he didn’t sound like his usual brash self. His tone was pale and thin, and he sounded exhausted.
“What can I do to make this easier?”
“Come back tomorrow. I’m here every day.”
He should be out planning how to reinvent the city for the new century. He should be dancing at weddings, teasing members of the Poison Squad, stirring up the world with one fiery article after another. He didn’t belong locked in a jail, doing laundry.
“I guess this was one way to get you off the Poison Squad.”
Sorrow made his eyes glint. “I feel like I’m letting the other guys down.”
“Don’t,” she rushed to say, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. He was so endlessly generous with his time and his body. Now he was suffering in jail because of her.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Stillman is coming back,” he said and quickly set the ventilation tube back in place. She shifted over to the window fan but pressed against the side of the wall so no one inside could see her.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised.
Twenty-Seven
She met Luke at the laundry vents for the next four days. They were only able to steal a few minutes while his fellow inmate took his break, so there wasn’t much time to waste arguing, but she broached the subject of Luke’s defense at every meeting.
“You don’t even have to use my name,” she said. “Just tell them that someone with connections on the inside gave you the pictures.”
He squeezed her hand through the vent opening. “Never, never, never,” he vowed, his voice warm with affection, and each word felt like a caress.
The prospect of being exposed terrified her, but she wished he would do it. They couldn’t keep meeting like this forever. Their secret meetings would eventually be discovered, and the punishment would fall entirely on Luke. This situation had to come to an end sooner or later, but he would never turn her in.
The only way to help Luke was for her to confess, and she would have to start by telling her parents. Would they let her continue living with them, or would she be banished from the house? At least when Aunt Stella was cut out of the family, she left with a husband. Marianne would be all alone.
She pondered the dilemma as she brewed a cup of ginger tea for her mother on Saturday afternoon. Vera’s headache was brutal today, and she lay upstairs with the blinds drawn and the windows closed despite the heat of the July afternoon.
Marianne put a few daisies into a bud vase because Vera liked that sort of touch on a tea tray. She was about to carry the tray upstairs when the swinging door to the kitchen banged open. Andrew stomped inside, followed quickly by Delia.
“You missed the rose competition at the Smithsonian,” Andrew said, his expression sour.
Marianne bit her lip. Delia had brought a potted rosebush all the way from Baltimore to enter the competition. Her sister-in-law was supremely proud of her hybrid roses and had prepared a speech for the judges as part of the contest. Marianne hadn’t been about to miss her morning with Luke to watch Delia preen in a flower contest.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I had to work today. How did the competition go?”
“Work,” Andrew scoffed. “You don’t have to work, you want to work. You flit all over town to take silly pictures and can’t be bothered to support your own family. You were late to Dad’s speech, and now you’ve disrespected Delia by ignoring her efforts in the rose competition.”
Marianne sent a conciliatory nod to her sister-in-law. “I’m sorry I missed the contest. I had commitments today, and I hope you don’t take it as a sign of disrespect that I couldn’t be there.”
“You ought to try a lot harder,” Andrew said. “You’re only a part of this family because Dad insisted on it. You’re here on sufferance.”