“No one is dead,” her father assured her. “Your mother and I want to talk to you. I heard from Micah from the IWW. He says that you have been going to the strike at Jake Marlowe’s mine.”
“Doesn’t Micah have better things to do than act like an old gossip?” Mabel grumbled as she perched at one end of the sofa.
“Mabel. Is this true?” her father pressed.
“Yes,” Mabel said, her stomach sinking.
“It’s that riffraff, Arthur Brown. It’s his fault,” Mrs. Rose said, the ghost of her former aristocratic life creeping into her tone. Mabel wished she could tell her mother how much she sounded like Nana Newell just now.
Mabel folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t know him.”
“I know of him. He’s got more passion than sense,” Mabel’s mother snapped. “The last thing we need is Arthur and his hotheaded friends in there making a mess of our efforts.”
“Why? Because they’re not your acolytes? Because it wasn’t your idea to go out to Marlowe’s mine?”
“Mabel Rebecca. Apologize to your mother,” her father warned with rare sternness.
Mabel looked down at her hands in her lap. “Sorry, Mama. But you don’t know the whole story.”
“Mabel, darling.” Mrs. Rose moved closer to Mabel. With both hands, she swept Mabel’s hair back and cradled her daughter’s face with her palms, like she’d done when Mabel was a little girl. Mabel had spent her life running to catch up in the hope that her mother would notice her. But not anymore. She wasn’t living in her mother’s shadow. She’d moved past her. Mabel was the future, and the future was with Arthur and the Six.
“Darling, rules exist for a reason. Even within disobedience, we need order,” her mother said.
“Do we? It seems like all you ever do is fight at these meetings, and change is too slow. Meanwhile, people are starving and freezing in tents! They’re being beaten up by bullies hired by the rich!”
“I appreciate your passion, my shayna, but you must marry passion to purpose and purpose to reason. Change takes time.”
“That’s what you always say, and it feels like we never get anywhere. Papa, Arthur got those people food. And he helped to set up a small school for the children. He even found a doctor to see to some of the pregnant wives. He’s making—we are making a difference.”
“We?” Mrs. Rose scoffed. “I see. Did you know he’d been in prison?”
“You mean his brother,” Mabel said.
“No. I mean Arthur.”
It was as if her mother’s words had cut off the oxygen in the room. Why hadn’t Arthur told her? Above all, she didn’t want her mother to suspect that she hadn’t known. “You and Papa know plenty of people who’ve gone to jail!”
“For peaceful protest. Arthur and his brother blew up a factory! A foreman died in that explosion. A man with a family.” Mrs. Rose’s eyes glinted. “This is what comes of reform without rules: chaos. And children without their fathers.”
Mabel’s stomach hurt. Arthur wouldn’t do that. He was so very kind. He’d been looking out for her, protecting her. From the start, he’d taken her seriously, brought her in, respected her ideas. She was sure he’d been waiting for the right moment to tell her about his time in prison. No doubt it was embarrassing for him—why wouldn’t he want to keep it hidden? Mabel would let him know that she was his true friend, that he could trust her. If her parents had meant to dissuade her by blurting out this bit of gossip, they’d miscalculated. If anything, she was even more committed to Arthur and their mission. They were treating her like a child.
“I forbid you from seeing Arthur Brown,” her mother said, as if Mabel had absolutely no say over her own life.
“Isn’t that what your mother said to you when you wanted to marry Papa?” Mabel shot back.
“Mabel!”
“Shayna, we don’t want to see you get hurt,” her father said, the peacemaker again. “If you want to work the picket line, you can volunteer with the IWW or the AFL. They always need help.”
“They’ll have me making coffee. Not on the front lines.”
“The front lines. Do you hear yourself?” her mother said. “As if this were a war!”
“Isn’t it?” Mabel asked.
“Sweetheart—” her father started, but Mabel had had enough.
“You don’t understand! You don’t know me! You only see me the way you want to see me—as another part of you. Well, I’m not you and I am not a child! I am my own person. And I wish you could see me, the true me.”
Mabel stormed from the apartment with no clear idea of where she was headed. She walked to Fifty-seventh Street and boarded the train, and before she knew it, she was running up the back stairs of the Bohemian Reader and pounding at Arthur’s door.
He opened up, rubbing his eyes. “Heya, Mabel. Sorry. I was asleep. What is it?”
“When were you going to tell me about the explosion at the factory? The foreman who died? About the time you spent in jail?”
Arthur chewed at his lip, then opened the door wide. “I suppose you’d better come in.”
Mabel took a seat at the table. Arthur lowered the blinds halfway, then poured Mabel a cup of lukewarm coffee from the percolator and sat across from her.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what you’d think of me. I was afraid you’d stop coming around.”
“I …” Mabel didn’t know what to say. The inside of her was at war: He wanted her around; he’d killed a man. There should be no balance between the things weighed in those two scales, but she liked Arthur. She liked him a lot.
“You killed a man,” she said quietly.
“I know. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret that choice. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish that man were still alive. Not one, Mabel.”
His eyes were pained. She believed him. Mabel got up and moved across the room to the safety of the window. “You should have told me,” she said, turning to face him.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“What you did, that was terrorism.”
Arthur’s eyes flashed. “What do you call it when they shoot up our camp with machine guns and terrify the workers? Why does no one hold them accountable? Where are the prisons for them, huh?”
Mabel wanted to say something, but she had no easy answer. It was all so confusing.
Arthur came toward her with his loping boxer’s stride. “You want the truth, then here it is: The time for placards and peace and newsreels is gone. We have a plan. We’re going to sabotage the works at Marlowe’s mine.”
Mabel’s head was light, as if it had come loose from her neck. “What … what do you mean, sabotage?”
“We’re going to blow up the mine and the company store so they can’t keep hiring scabs. We’re sending a message to Marlowe.” Arthur cupped Mabel’s face in both hands. “More than anything, I want to share this with you, Mabel Rose. But it’s all or nothing from now on. No half measures. So I need to know: Are you in? Or are you out?”
Mabel broke from Arthur’s caress, but already she wanted him back. On the windowsill, a pigeon pecked for what it could get. Mabel watched it hopping around and thought about something Jericho had asked her once. He’d asked her if she’d ever faced a true moral dilemma, and she’d had to admit that she never had. And now, here she was, trying to figure out what was right—or the least wrong. If there was one lesson Mabel’s parents had drilled, it was this: Never stoop to violence. But how did you fight an enemy who never fought fair? Didn’t you have to break the rules to win against the Devil? Mabel’s head was spinning. They were trying to keep Jake Marlowe from hurting the workers. That was good, wasn’t it? They were destroying property. That was bad. Wasn’t it? If you did the wrong things for the right reasons, did that make the wrong things right? Or did that just mean you had turned your back on finding a more right way? And once you justified violence, did that make it easier the next time and the next, until you’d become the villain of your own story?