have not.” The cover was a rich brown leather. A quality book, an expensive book. “I never went to school, Mr. Carmichael. I taught myself to read when I was twelve.”
“It’s a good story,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Lots of secrets and revenge.”
My coquette returned. “Do you think I am a woman of secrets?”
“I do.”
“And revenge?”
“I hope not.”
Bert came to collect our dishes and the dollar Carmichael tucked under them.
“I kissed him once,” I said as he walked away. “The first night Sallie came to me, and I was so frightened. He kissed me.” I touched my lips. “Does that bother you?”
“No.”
It was such a swift and solid answer that I believed him completely.
Days later, Carmichael kissed me. It was a moonless night after a long walk during which we talked about Billy the Kid (his boyhood hero) and whether justice is ever truly served without an arrest and a trial and a jury before an execution.
“Sallie White’s murder saw no justice at all,” I said. “She died right here, you know. Rather, she was killed here. It took days for her to die.”
He took off his gloves, put them in his pocket, and laid his warm palms against my cold cheeks, his thumbs pressed against my temples.
“If I could work one bit of magic, my sweet Hedda, it would be to take the thoughts and the stories of that woman out of your mind. She was a poor soul who died a wretched death. But here you are, with warm blood running through you and a full life stretched ahead.”
His face was so close to mine and the light so dim that the freckles merged. I could smell his last cigarette on his breath, and then I was tasting it as his mouth found mine.
Make no mistake, I had kissed many men in my life, most of them little more than vile intrusions. Carmichael’s kiss scattered them all and left me feeling much like a girl experiencing her first. I did not respond immediately, only allowed his lips to make the slightest movement against mine. His hold was tenuous, his hands little more than poised along my face. My own hung limp and heavy at my side. I don’t believe I fully felt his touch, his kiss, until the moment came when he meant to take it away. His lips once more motionless against mine, the cold air on my skin where his strong, warm palm had been. And so I gripped his elbow, holding his arm in place, and went to my toes, chasing up his kiss, and in that tiniest of moments, everything broke between us. He caught me around my waist. I wrapped my arms around his neck. (Later he would laugh about the similarity of circumference in the two.) He lifted me off my feet and spun until I felt the Menger’s wall at my back and the wall of himself crushed against me. For a morbid second I thought of Henry Wheeler and Sallie White. How he had held her in almost this same place. But where Henry held Sallie’s throat, Carmichael held my heart. We breathed life into each other.
We were inseparable from that point, as inseparable as our situation would allow. Sometimes he squired me around the city, taking me into this restaurant or that, where we would be given a jovial greeting in lieu of a check. My favorite times were when we visited a humble home of one of the many people he had helped over time and were fed a meal straight from the stove: mashed beans wrapped in soft tortillas, or stews infused with magical spices. Here, to my surprise, this freckle-faced Scot would rattle off entire conversations in Spanish, reassuring me that most of it was a commentary on my beauty and style.
One day he rented an automobile, and we drove out east of the city. It was a sharp, cold day, far too cold for a drive, but we marshaled on, turning onto a property once Carmichael sighted a dilapidated barn not far off.
He brought the car to a stop in the untended field, and chilly as the day was, I got out of the automobile, if only for a chance to clear my head and stretch my legs, not wanting him to know about the fear that unnerved me despite his calm, capable hands. Once outside, he produced from his satchel one of those small Brownie box cameras and suggested we commemorate