I had a little bit of time. Not much. Nate wouldn’t come by with the reporters here. He’d head for Providence in the morning. I had a day or two to figure out my next move.
I’d have to find a new place to live, pack my old suitcase, and get out of here. I had enough money for a month, maybe two if I went back to eating apples for dinner. If I was lucky, Daisy would believe me about Nate. Or else she’d think having a mobster boyfriend wouldn’t be a drawback in a roommate.
Then I could write Billy a letter, give him my new address. And hope.
Is this what Delia had done? Had she sat here, making plans to get away from Nate? Had he caught her before she’d had a chance to run?
Twenty-nine
Providence, Rhode Island
April 1945
I waited until after school the next day and then I stood in front of the door so that Jamie couldn’t go out to play.
“We’re going to fix this,” I told him. “We can’t depend on Da.”
“How can we fix it?” Muddie asked. Jamie just eyed me in that way he had, waiting for the payoff.
“We’re going to the only person we know who can make this go away,” I said.
Muddie still looked puzzled as she bent over to buckle her shoe. But Jamie nodded.
“Mr. Benedict,” he said.
“We’d better leave a note,” Muddie said. “Da will be back before we are. He’s coming straight home from work now.”
“We never leave a note,” I said.
“Things are different now,” Jamie said, and he got out the pencil and paper. “Now we’re the perfect kids, remember? What if the social worker comes again, and Da doesn’t know where we are?”
By the time we reached Atwells Avenue, we were hungry and my socks had disappeared into my shoes. We stood outside the plain brown building, hesitant. I had been expecting an office building, something impersonal. This looked like someone’s house. The gold lettering on the window, NATE BENEDICT ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, made everything seem too serious. Would he help us?
I walked to the house, stood on tiptoe, and tried to peek through the slats of the blinds. I got a fractured image of a man sitting at a desk.
“Come on,” I said to Jamie and Muddie. “We’re here, so we might as well go in.”
And before Muddie could think of a reason not to, I rapped on the door.
The door opened, and there he was, standing in his shirtsleeves and looking at me in surprise. “Kitty Corrigan,” he said.
“Maybe you remember my brother, James, and my sister, Margaret. We’ve come to…” I hesitated. Why would he let us in if he didn’t know we were serious? I had a sudden inspiration. “Hire you.”
“I see. Maybe you should come in, then.”
I beckoned fiercely to the others. We walked into a dark foyer. There was a closed door on one side, and a staircase facing us. To the left, the office door was open. Nate gestured for us to go in.
We stood uncertainly on the rug until he gestured again to a couch against one wall. We sat. He pulled up a chair and tilted his head to one side.
“Now. What seems to be the problem?”
I liked that, what seems to be the problem, like maybe the problem was in our heads and could be easily solved by someone like him.
“It’s about our Aunt Delia,” I said.
He reared back a bit, then knotted his fingers together. “Go on.”
“She wants to take us away.”
Nate got up abruptly and went to the table near his desk. “Would you like some cookies? I have cookies.” He was already opening a bakery box and putting the cookies on a plate. With his back to us, he said, “Please go on, Kitty.”
“She says Da is unfit, and she wants us,” I said. “We don’t want to go!” Muddie burst out. “She thinks we’ll be better off,” Jamie said. “But we won’t.”
“Is she suing for custody, then?” Nate asked. He stood, holding the plate.
“A lady came around and talked to us. And then a letter came in the mail.”
“And your father opposes it?”
“Of course!” Jamie cried. “He told her to go away and never come back. She’s already moved out!”
Muddie swallowed rapidly, her eyes on the plate. “So Kit thought maybe you would know what to do.”
“Seeing that you knew our dad back when you were pals,” Jamie added.