Chapter 7: The Captain's Suite

I laid Poppy down on the flour sacks in the corner and took the letter out of Hattie's hands.

It was two pages long.

Most of it was lawyer.

The last line wasn't.

Payment in full of $186,400 is due no later than August 31.

"I don't have a hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars," Hattie said. "I don't have eighteen."

"I know."

"I've never missed a payment. Not one. Not the winter the ovens died. Not the year your uncle was sick."

"I know, Hattie."

"Then why now?"

She looked at me over her reading glasses.

She knew why.

She'd always known everything.

"Because she saw Poppy," I said.

Hattie took her glasses off and set them on the letter very carefully.

"Then I'm going up there," she said. "In my nightgown, if I have to."

"I'll tell that woman what I think of her in front of every guest in that lobby."

"No."

"Mara."

"You can't. If you tell her what you think, you'll tell her everything, and then Lawrence knows."

"Maybe he should."

"She'll take Poppy."

"She can't just take a child."

"She told me she could. She told me she had the judges."

"That was six years ago."

"She told me again on Monday."

Hattie stared at me.

Then she put both her floury hands over her face and sat for a long time.

At seven the next morning I climbed the back stairs of the Harborlight to the third floor.

The Captain's Suite had the round window over the harbor and the brass bed and the only bathtub in the building with feet.

I'd made up that bed myself a hundred times, the winters we were short of housekeepers.

I knocked.

"Come in, Miss Ellison."

She'd known it would be me.

Eleanor sat by the round window in a silk robe with a breakfast tray across her knees.

Coffee in the good china. Half a grapefruit. One of my scones, untouched.