Chapter 42

Accusations

I reckon any boy would make me uneasy after what Gerald did, but it’s a different kind of uneasy with Chance. He looks at me as though he knows things I haven’t said out loud. During supper I feel his eyes on me, but I look only at my knife and fork and Mrs. Grome’s pot roast.

When Grandpa doesn’t turn up at mealtime, I am distraught. I never thought he’d traipse off without me—and stay gone so long. He promised not to leave me alone. And I am not. But being with these folks is not like having Grandpa here. The empty chair reminds me that fear and worry are what sit close and lean heavy.

Chance’s family goes to the front porch after supper, but I ease out the kitchen’s screen door to the back yard, away from eyes that try to unearth secrets I want to keep buried.

If Mrs. Grome’s front yard calls to mind an old lady prettied up with flowers, her back yard resembles an old man in overalls and work-worn boots. Three peeling-paint steps lead to a sloping dirt yard with a vegetable patch, corn patch, and a handful of cherry trees. An old rail fence leans against something akin to an orphaned young’un, a shed without a stroke of paint and a door hanging by one hinge.

I won’t venture near that shed, likely dark and filled with spidery webs and crawly critters. I have a mind to sit between the rows in the corn patch and hide between the stalks.

I sense movement, and a shadow comes around the house. My breath catches in my throat at the sudden appearance, fearing my secrets have returned. I breathe again after I see it is not Gerald.

“Are you sneaking off to meet someone?” Chance’s words are light, but his tin-colored eyes are hard as steel. “Someone like Simms?” Chance utters the name like the swear word it is to me.

I choke out the horrible words, “Gerald Simms?”

“So you do know him.”

“We are acquaintanced.” I twine my fingers around one another. “And I…I’d brew tea for the angels to never see him again.” I find strength in Mama’s favorite expression.

Chance raises one eyebrow. “I heard you keep company with him.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mrs. Hoffman at the bakery. She knows most of what goes on in this town.”

Like Nellie Finch back home, I think to myself.

“You know Mrs. Grome’s friend Minerva?” Chance asks.

“I’ve heard the ladies speak of her.”

“Simms boarded with her for a few days. Sweet-talked his way into her good graces. Until other boarders complained of valuables disappearing. A lady’s silver brooch and a gentleman’s gold pocket watch.”

“She’s sure it was Gerald?” I ask, but I don’t need an answer. I recall the first time I met Gerald, leaning against his flivver looking at a gold pocket watch.

Chance nods. “Now the authorities are looking for him. But no one has seen him since Thursday.” He squints at me. “Unless you have.”

“I saw him yesterday morning, but…things did not end well between us.” I look away. Fireflies flicker above the cornstalks, and my plans to hide have come to naught. And hiding from my living, breathing haint is far from easy.

“Did you hear me?” Chance asks in a voice impossible not to hear. “The authorities are looking for your friend.”

“Gerald Simms is not my friend.” The words squeeze though my teeth. “I met him three days ago. He was friendly at first—and then he wasn’t.” Might be Gerald will be arrested, and I won’t have to fear what Grandpa would do to him.

“Minerva trusted him,” Chance says. “She lent him money.”

I remember what Gerald told us the first day we met him. “Did he say he was waiting for funds from his daddy in New York?”

Chance nods. “She believed him. Said he seemed like ‘a sweet boy’.”

“No,” I say. “Gerald doesn’t have one grain of sweetness. He’s all rind and no melon. Only one he cares about is himself.”

“Did Simms take money from you, too?”

“From me? I have no money.”

“Perhaps he finagled money from your grandfather.”

“Grandpa? Nobody finagles anything from Grandpa.”