Notes: Written for the Ladies of Period Drama ficathon, to fill the prompt: Bomb Girls - Kate Andrews - "No weapons... no friends... no hope. Take all that away and what's left?" / "Me." Makes reference to several things that happened in my fic What Kate Does. Title is from I'll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday.
Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse and one instance of suicidal ideation.
Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media/Global TV.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. (John 4:7)
All her life, Kate has had the same dream. In the dream, she's very young, not much more than a toddler, and running down a crowded high street. She is out of breath, her throat is raw from panting, but she has to keep running. It's all she knows, in the dream: I can't stop, I've been so bad and if I stop, he'll get me.
Her father is following her. He is very angry, because Kate did something unbelievably bad and ran away when he tried to punish her. Kate evades him for much longer than any child could be expected to outrun an adult, only slowing when the stitch in her side becomes unbearable.
He always ends up catching hold of her. Even bending at the waist to stare furiously into her face, he seems ten feet tall. She shrinks from him, tries to pull away, to beg forgiveness, but there is no escape from him, from his judgement, from his punishment.
x x x
When Kate's mother dies, it feels like she doesn't have arms enough to hold her brothers as they cry. Though Mother was ill for years – half of Walter's life – it feels so sudden, when it finally happens.
"I'm going to take care of you both," Richard swears to Kate and Walter, after the funeral. "I promised Mother that I would, for as long as I live. You won't have to worry about anything, not while I'm around."
They're words, hisses a voice inside Kate, the part of her that never trusts in anybody or anything. Just empty words. He doesn't know how to take care of anything. All he knows how to do is punish you. It's dreadful of her to think such things when they need to stand strong as a family, when Richie is trying his best for them, but Kate can't let herself hope too much.
Perhaps something has changed, though. Father stays unnaturally quiet, barely speaking to any of his children until one evening, a little over a week after Mother's funeral. "Marion, I thought you would have had your fill of whoring, while you were in Toronto," he says, out of nowhere.
Kate flinches. Her dinner churns unpleasantly in her stomach. "Father?"
He produces a battered tube of lipstick from his trouser pocket, puts it onto the table with a bang. "I found this under one of the bunks today."
"It's not mine," says Kate, without thinking. She's never seen it before, she knows it must be Mother's lipstick, but it would not do to say this to Father. He would accuse her of tainting Mother's memory for her own selfish ends.
"Then whose is it?"
"I don't know." The afternoon before Kate ran away the last time, Mother took out a secret bag of forbidden tubes and powders, and taught Kate to make herself up. She remembers Mother's face in the mirror beside her own, remembers her voice ("There, now, you're done. Do you see? You're such a beautiful girl...") and finds tears springing to her eyes. Too late, she realises how guilty she must look, to Father.
"Tell the truth, it's all I ask of you. Who are you painting yourself for?" Father asks. "Are you planning to slip out and meet someone? Some man, some soldier?" He doesn't say it, not yet, but Kate knows he's gearing up to ask, "Some woman, some deviant?"
Then, something unbelievable happens. Richard rises to his feet. "We'll throw it out," he declares. "We'll throw it out, and pray for Marion to be forgiven. Maybe we can even burn it. I know it was bad of her, but none of us have been in our right minds, since Mother..."
Kate, Walt and Father all stare at Richard in utter confusion. Kate can't even feel touched, she just feels bewildered. This is not how their family works.
Richard stands behind Kate's chair, where Father usually situates himself to begin shouting at her. "Get on your knees and pray, Marion." His voice is rough, but his hand on her shoulder is bracing. "You know you've done wrong."
Kate prays, loudly, fervently, for God's mercy, not stopping even when Father makes a disgusted noise and leaves the trailer, slamming the door.
After a long time, she opens her eyes. "Richie, I..."
"It was stupid of you to hide it," he says mulishly. "Walt, take it out and just – just get rid of it." He shoves the dented tube of lipstick into Walt's waiting hand. Walter dashes outside, leaving his older siblings together.
"I didn't hide it," Kate says. "It's not mine, Richie."
Richard snorts. "And it's stupid of you to lie, even after you've been caught. Can't you see it only makes the punishment worse?"
There have been plenty of times when Kate was so wracked with guilt for some sin or another that she went straight to her father and confessed. She can't say any of those beatings were noticeably gentler.
"I don't understand why you always have to –" Richard runs his hands through his hair. "I can't do that for you every time. You're going to have to be much better, Marion."
She hasn't got much choice but to say, "I will, Richard."
Since Richard was a boy, it has been decided that he will follow in Father's footsteps and become a pastor. There's never been any question of him doing anything else, not even when the war started and all the young men began joining up. It still comes as a shock to everyone when, barely two weeks after Mother's funeral, Father announces that the time has come for Richard to go off to seminary, to start his training.
Kate knows she must try and speak to Richard before he leaves, but Father keeps orchestrating things so that Kate is by herself, or all three children are under his supervision. He keeps taking Richard and Walter for private talks. They never discuss what's been said, once they're back with Kate.
She doesn't get to be alone with Richard until the very last day. Father tells Kate and Walt to put on their coats and come out with him while Richard packs his suitcase.
"I'll stay and help Richard," she says. "He'll need things ironed, and he can't do it himself." Maybe it's just that it's the very last night – maybe even Father gets careless, sometimes, like other people – but he does allow her to stay.
They don't exactly make the most of this rare opportunity. When they're alone together, Richard is the same way he's been since Father's announcement, answering Kate's hesitant questions with grunts or one-word answers. Eventually, Kate stops talking, just gets on with ironing Richard's clothes. The hour trails by, every tick of the clock marking another second that Kate won't have to talk with her brother in private. She keeps thinking that she sees Mother out of the corner of her eye, lying on one of the lower bunks.
"I can't believe you're really going," she says finally, handing him the last of his shirts. "I still think of you as my baby brother, do you know that?" She tries to sound teasing, tries to sound fond – she feels fond of him, in spite of everything that's happened – but her voice won't do what she wants it to.
Richard shrugs. "We've all got our obligations, Marion. This is what's needed of me, now that I'm grown."
A grown man. She supposes he is. The only other grown man in her life, now …
She bites her lip. "Richie, don't you see? Father's sending you away so there'll be no-one to stop him from..."
"From what?"
Kate looks at him and finds she can't explain. It doesn't make any sense. Why should Father expect Richard to intervene if Father tries to hurt her? Why should Kate? True, he stopped one fight from escalating, with the compelling excuse that Kate must have been mad from grief or just plain stupid, to do a wicked thing like hoarding lipstick. The fact is, Richard's held her down dozens of times while Father gave her the belt. One does not erase the other. That one instance of him defending her makes him more unpredictable, if anything.
But he's never hit Kate of his own accord. Kate clings to that simple truth, that sliver of hope. He's never raised a hand to her without Father telling him to.
"If I vex him, he'll kill me, Richard." She can't put it any more simply than that.
Richard shakes his head. "He wouldn't ever do that."
Her desperation makes her say something neither of them has admitted to each other before. "He tried to kill me before. In the bathtub, a year ago."
Richard stops abruptly. For a moment, Kate can't decide whether he's gearing up to hug her, or to knock her to the ground. In the end, he does neither. He just mutters, "You'd better not vex him, then."
Early the next morning, the Rowleys see Richard to the bus station, a good and godly family with a gaping, whistling hole where Mother used to be. Try as she might, Kate can't curse him, not even in her head. She mutely hands him the sandwiches she made him for the trip, and stands with her head bowed as they pray for his safe arrival at the seminary.
Richard shakes hands with Walt and Father. When he comes to Kate, he goes to shake her hand too before throwing caution to the winds and brushing a dry kiss against her cheek. "I'm glad you came back to us, and that you were able to see Mother before..." He clears his throat. "It's what she wanted most in the world."
"It's what I wanted, too," says Kate, not meeting his gaze.
"I'll come and visit in June," he says. "You just have to wait until then, all right?" He hesitates before embracing her. For a brief second, Kate doesn't smell aftershave, but the clean, cosy powder scent Richard used to have when she held him in her arms as a baby. "Just be good," Richard says into her ear. "Don't give him a reason. Be good."
x x x
Late one afternoon, Kate stands in the gravel outside her family's trailer, bent double over the big washtub that used to double as a baby bath when Richie and Walt were little. It's not the best day to do laundry – grey clouds are hanging low in the sky and a chilly breeze is blowing – but it was starting to become imperative. Mother would never have left the laundry this long. Kate's been doing at least half the housework since she was a girl, but now that she is the only woman in the family, she struggles to remember what Mother taught her about how to run a household.
Dimly, she can hear someone calling, "Kate!" She tries her best to ignore it. She knows that the entire point of people using pseudonyms like "Kate Andrews" is so they will blend in completely, but she can't help resenting having learnt to answer to such a very common name. People are always shouting the name "Kate" in the street, making her jump.
The voice is coming nearer. Kate keeps her head down doggedly, determined not to rise to the bait and respond to that name. She'll just feel stupid and weak if she does. The other week, she just about had a heart attack when someone wouldn't stop calling her name, but it turned out to be a young mother, trying to cajole her children's kitten down from a tree. When Kate listened properly, she realised the mother wasn't even saying, "Kate," she was swapping between "Katy" and "Kitty." Kate felt like an idiot, knowing how badly she must have wanted someone (someone, anyone from Toronto) to be calling for her. Well, no more. She's not falling for that again.
(Strange, that five months ago, she used to feel the same way about accidentally answering to "Marion.")
The voice falls silent. As soon as Kate allows herself to relax, it starts up again. "Kate. Kate." Then, "Kate Andrews!"
She looks up and she sees – no, Kate has got to be imagining things. For weeks after she returned to her family, every woman who walked toward Kate on the street used to look like Betty or Gladys, until the very last second, when their features would rearrange into those of a stranger.
As the two women standing on the other side of the street draw nearer, they only look more and more like Kate's friends. They don't look the way Kate remembers them, though. For one thing, they're dressed so strangely. Gladys is wearing a shabby black coat unlike anything Kate saw her wear in Toronto. Betty's hair is curled differently, her nails are painted red, and her dress and cardigan look like Gladys' cast-offs.
They reach her. They must think she doesn't recognise them, doesn't want to recognise them, because Gladys feels the need to say, "Kate, it's us."
The sound of Kate's own name shocks her. Nobody has called Kate by her name in months. She was beginning to think that no-one ever had, that Kate Andrews was a story she told herself, a story she made herself stop because it was revealing too much of what she wants, deep down.
After a brief hesitation, Gladys moves forward and hugs her. Kate's arms hang limply at her sides before she manages to pat Gladys gingerly on the back. Once upon a time, she could embrace people so easily, but she's refrained from touching other people since Mother died. She made so many crazy promises and bargains, during Mother's last days. She promised God she'd never touch anyone again, if only He would let Mother live.
Gladys draws back and looks from Kate to Betty as though she expects them to hug too. They just stare at each other like they're trying not to stare. Betty's face is a mask of effort – trying with all her might not to burst into tears or kiss Kate or do anything that might frighten Kate away.
"Why are you here?" Kate hears her own voice asking.
"For you," Betty says. "We came for you."
They're the words Kate has longed for someone to say to her. Even as she speaks, her mouth stays as dry as sandpaper. "It's been … so long."
"Well, we're here now," Gladys says decisively, her eyes searching Kate's face. "It took a bit of detective work, believe me."
To Kate, standing outside her family's trailer with her forearms covered in suds while Gladys Witham talks about detective work feels like two planets colliding with each other. She has a sudden vision of Gladys waggling a bottle of silver nitrate at her in the change room at Vic Mu, playing at being Nora Charles.
"My car's parked two blocks away," Gladys is saying. "Pack a bag and we can be gone in ten minutes."
"There's my brothers," Kate says, and then, "My little brother. He's only thirteen. I can't leave him."
"Then he can come too," says Gladys, without missing a beat. "I'll load this entire neighbourhood into my car and take them away, if you'll just come with us."
Kate has wanted this for longer than she cares to admit, but it still feels like it's happening too fast. Well, that could be because Kate hasn't been eating or sleeping much since Mother passed on. Kate struggles to understand, to find words that will make Betty and Gladys understand too.
"My mother's dead," Kate blurts out. "I waited too long to come back. I didn't – I should have –"
"Kate, you couldn't stop your mom from dying," says Betty. Kate longs to take comfort from those words, but all she can feel is anger. Don't tell me what I couldn't do, don't make me feel so useless, she wants to yell. You just want me to stop feeling bad about it, so I'll do what you want. Everybody keeps telling me what I ought to want, what I can and can't do, and I'm so tired of it.
It doesn't make any sense, her being so angry. She's missed Betty so badly. Kate's gone over every joke and smile they shared, every brush of hands, every lingering glance, every hug, and their one and only kiss a thousand times in her head. Kate has long since stopped pretending that she was only mulling it over in order to puzzle out how Betty could ever think Kate wanted to – to –
"No. No, you don't – I need to be here. I strayed from the path, and I'm paying the price," says Kate. "God took my mother because of everything I did in the city. He has a plan for me. I can't keep going against what's right."
"I think God would have much more of an issue with your father beating you," Gladys retorts.
Betty gives Gladys as exasperated a glance as anyone can. It always used to irritate Betty so much, Gladys' determination to have the last word. Betty turns to Kate and pleads, "Forget it. It doesn't matter. Look, I'm sorry about what happened. I don't want that any more. I don't want anything from you. Just let us take you someplace safe, please."
Father has always said that people outside their family would show Kate kindness until she gave in and let them use her. After that, they wouldn't care if she lived or died. "It's the way of the world," Father's spent Kate's life saying. "They're damned already. You must always be strong, and resist them."
Kate has tried to resist. Kate has reprimanded herself so many times for having fantasies about Betty coming to take her away. Even if Betty loves Kate (even if Kate loves her in return), Betty is a deviant. They don't love like normal people. She can only ever be after one thing.
Except that she's not. She doesn't want Kate, she just wants Kate to be safe.
Gladys is the same. Kate doesn't have anything that Gladys wants, and yet Gladys drove all the way here to rescue her. They're the best friends Kate has ever had, the best people she's ever known, and she can't go with them because it's wrong, it's wicked … because she doesn't deserve them. She doesn't deserve anything. If she were a good person, her life wouldn't have gone so wrong, and she wouldn't feel so awful all the time. Everything that's happened to her is what she deserves. Why can't they understand that?
As Kate tries to find the words that will explain this thing that has been hanging over her all her life, the trailer door opens behind her.
"Marion?" Father looks from Kate, to Gladys, to Betty. His eyes widen as he recognises Betty. "What are these –"
She cuts across him. "They came to see me. They thought – but it doesn't matter. It's all right, I let them know. You don't have to..."
"Get inside," he snarls, seizing her by the arm and trying to force her up the trailer steps. "I'll deal with you later."
Betty lurches to life. "Don't you touch her." She's shaking with anger. "Don't you lay a hand on her-!"
"Kate, please," Gladys says, reaching out her hand. "You know you don't belong here. Come with us."
Kate feels everything going dark, the universe narrowing to a tiny pinprick of light. A person – a woman – only gets so many choices in their life, and this is The Choice, the one that will determine everything.
"I'll tell them, Father. It's all right," Kate says, pulling away and moving toward her friends. They look hopeful, for a moment. It makes everything so much worse.
"You need to go now. I know you came a long way, but I wasn't worth your trouble." Betty and Gladys stare at her. Kate can feel Father staring too. Kate's cheeks blaze, ridiculously, at her slip of the tongue. "It wasn't worth your trouble," she corrects herself. "You need to go."
Even after Father pushes Kate inside the trailer, the ordeal is not over. She can hear shouting outside, arguing, someone calling her name. A cry of pain – it sounds like Gladys. It seems to go on forever. Kate keeps wanting to rush outside, go to her friends, and … what? Kate doesn't know. It's the not knowing that terrifies her. It's the not knowing that will be the ruin of her, and everyone she cares for. It's best for everyone if Kate's friends leave, and realise she's not worth saving. They can go on, and have happy lives, and Kate will spend the rest of her life trying to quell this thing inside her that keeps hurting people she loves.
What you want doesn't matter, she tells herself. Why can't you just stop wanting things? Why can't you just be good?
"They've gone," Father says, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.
"Yes." As soon as the word leaves her mouth, Kate isn't sure whether she said it, or just thought it to herself. She's so numb. She wants to fall asleep for a hundred years, and forget she was ever alive. It hurts so much, being alive, like having your body torn in two, your soul blown into fragments.
She prayed for someone to rescue her. Betty and Gladys came, and she sent them away. This is her life now. At least Father will know that I've chosen to be good, instead of happy, she thinks dully.
"Marion, look at me."
Slowly, she looks up. Being here with her father feels like a dream, like an awful dream. Kate thinks, I want to wake up, because it's less blasphemous than thinking, I want to die.
"I don't know what to say," Father says. "I thought you wanted to live a godly life. I thought you wanted to be part of this Rowley family. Your mother hasn't even been gone a month..."
"I do want those things," Kate says shakily. "More than anything, Father."
He ignores her. "I am a righteous man, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to lead this family to salvation. I have been strict with you, certainly, but everything I have ever done has been for your own good. Still, no matter what I do, I cannot excise this evil inside you. Tell me, then, what am I to do with you?
"I watched you so carefully. I didn't let you out until I could be sure, and now this?" She gazes at him in confusion, which only seems to confirm his thoughts. "How did you tell them where you were?"
"I don't know how they found me," Kate insists, her shoulders hunching automatically as he comes to stand by her chair.
His voice is soft and menacing as he stands behind Kate. "Your mother was dying, your brothers were grieving, my heart was breaking … and all the while, you were planning to run back to the city, to throw yourself into that deviant's arms, into her bed! You harlot!" he shouts, right in Kate's ear, making her jolt at the sudden noise. "You lying little whore! You told them to come and get you!"
He hurts her hurts her hurts her. When he's done beating her, Father storms out of the trailer and leaves her, lying alone on the floor.
She doesn't cry until she starts trying to clean herself up, and it becomes apparent that she has several wounds that she can't quite reach. Kate can't treat her wounds properly alone, and she is more alone now than she's ever been in her life. She yearns for Betty and Gladys to knock at the door, peer through the window, come in and help her, but she sent them both away and they must despise her now. She sent away two of the only people who could ever care for someone as awful as she is. She sent away Betty, who doesn't want anything from her, but came to rescue her anyway.
She doesn't even know what she's being punished for, any more. Nothing makes any sense. Has she betrayed her family, or her friends? It must be both. It couldn't feel like this, if it were just one or the other.
I could never be a good enough daughter for him, she thinks. It's far from the first time she's thought it. She's spent her life feeling so wretched, knowing she could never be good enough.
She has done everything, given up everything for Father, and it's not enough. It never will be. It used to seem noble; the prospect of giving up her whole life to try and be good for her father, but it doesn't any more. There is nothing noble in Kate now, if she can't be good. Though her skin is thick with scars and bruises that go right into her bones, Kate feels like she's been hollowed out, to make room for a vast, expanding emptiness.
And yet, in that black, echoing space under her ribs, a fire has been lit.
x x x
Father finds everything out, one way or the other. Kate tells herself that, over and over, so she won't act too suspiciously. It feels like he'll be able to see, if she lets herself hope too much – but even so, Kate starts to make secret, impossible plans. At first, she only lets herself think about escape in the tiniest moments, the pauses between words. She works up to the minutes when she lets herself sit and rest between chores. Finally, a solid week and a half after that awful afternoon with Father and Gladys and Betty, Kate allows herself a whole hour, the darkest hour of the night, to lie on her cot and scheme.
She has to get away. She can't be a good person, can't do right by God, if she stays with her father. She does exactly as he bids her, and he still hurts her. She tells him the truth, and he assumes that she's lying. Kate isn't a person to him, she is a thing, a bad thing that needs to be kept down, contained, and controlled. Kate doesn't want to be a woman – she tried that, and it went disastrously wrong – but she does want to be a good person.
How do you expect someone to grow into a good person if they do exactly as you ask, and you punish them anyway? You're making me do this. You're driving me away. She thinks it indignantly. It's the closest she can possibly get to anger, with her father.
She will need money. When she escaped the first time, Mother skimmed a tiny amount off of what Father gave her for housekeeping, over the course of several months, until there was enough for Kate to survive on until her first pay check. Kate doesn't have months this time. There's nothing for it, she'll have to steal the money. Perhaps she'll post the money to Richard once he's forgiven her, when she is an old woman and his beard is grey.
It's even harder to contemplate where she will actually go. Her father will expect her to go running back to Toronto. It would be more sensible to go somewhere she's never been, start over with a different name ... meet a man, and be normal. That last thought should feel like salvation, not like sinking into the earth.
x x x
Some days Kate gets so desolate, missing her mother, remembering the anguish on Betty's face when Kate denied her a second time, it's all she can do to get out of bed. She gets so angry with herself for even thinking of trying to leave again. Who is she, to try and do this? She's not brave, and she's certainly not strong. More than that, it is disgusting for her to even conceive this in terms of bravery and strength. There's nothing brave about walking out on your family. The mere fact that Kate is considering this – much less actively planning it – proves that her father has always been right about her.
It's the same way she felt last spring, after her father tried to drown her in the bathroom of a boarding house in Spruce Grove. For months, she felt like she was wandering through a black cloud, knowing that in the eyes of God and her father, she was lost forever. Often, during those terrible black-cloud months, Kate would linger at the intersection of a busy street, picture herself walking out into traffic and being hit by a car. If she was already going to Hell for being a disgusting harlot, then what was the point in waiting? Eternity would be just as long, whether she died at twenty-three or ninety-three.
Nobody would have to know, is what she used to think, over and over. Nobody but me and God.
Kate is so glad she didn't ever do it. Quite apart from it being a mortal sin, she would have died without ever having those four wonderful months in Toronto. She wouldn't have ever met Betty, or Gladys, or Leon, and she wouldn't have gotten to be with Mother in her last days. Still, she can recognise the way she feels, and it scares her. Kate holds Walt's arm tightly every time they walk along a busy street, even as he reddens and tries to pull away, because she knows she would never drag him out there with her.
What is she to do with Walter? She can't leave him with Father, but she can hardly bring him up in some seedy flophouse for working women. Whenever she's left alone with a newspaper, Kate hurriedly skims down lists of rooms to let, but she knows it's useless. The rooming house back in Toronto did not allow children. Most rooming houses simply don't. She imagines herself trying to convince some stone-faced landlady of how quiet her little brother is, how well-behaved, how considerate, but it's only a mad fantasy. Kate knows that they would not make an exception for Walt.
Father has taken to locking her inside the trailer again. Kate spends long stretches of each day utterly alone, without so much as a radio for company. It's like being in a prison cell – only prison cells usually aren't filled with memories. Sometimes, Kate can feel her lips moving, and she knows she's on the verge of talking to herself again. Kate used to talk to herself when she was little, after her parents took her out of school and began educating her at home. She grew out of it by the time she reached double digits, which was fortunate, because it vexed her father and worried her mother.
She remembers sitting at their folding table long ago, her head bent over the pages of a book, whispering to the people in the illustrations. She had a lot of imaginary friends back then: some older sisters, a twin, a guardian angel and various Biblical heroines. The year that she was ten, Miriam from the story of Exodus was Kate's best friend. Not grown up Miriam, shaking her tambourine and singing to the Lord, but young Miriam, helping to hide baby Moses in the reeds. There weren't very many young girls in Kate's childhood book of Bible stories, and she used to feel like she and Miriam would get along well. They both had little brothers, they both liked to sing, and "Miriam" sounded a lot like "Marion."
Kate knows she shouldn't dwell on the past – she should be looking forward, trying to come up with a solution to her problem – but she ends up taking out Bible Stories for Girls. She hasn't opened it since the day she hid Betty's hairpin inside its pages. She secreted the hairpin on the same page as an illustration of Esther. That particular illustration is the spitting image of Gladys as she might have been in ancient times; tall and slender and lovely, clad in rich silks, with jewels adorning her dark curls. When Kate opens that page, it's like both her best friends are there, waiting for her. This is the closest she'll ever get, now.
(She can't find anyone in the book who reminds her of Betty. A thousand years might pass without Betty's face ever repeating itself again. There's no-one in the world quite like Betty. Not for Kate, anyway.)
Yet when Kate opens to that page, she finds someone else waiting for her, too. There's a piece of paper, there, folded up small. Before she's completely unfolded it, she can see the paper bears Mother's handwriting. Thinking it might be a few final words of comfort, Kate's fingers fumble to open it out. She reads what's written, and for a moment she can't think what it means, or why it's been left for her. Then, with a sudden, frightening clarity, she realises – she knows – that Mother was hoping for this all along.
x x x
Kate stands at the sink, washing dishes, while Walt sits at the folding table, studying the family Bible. The trailer is quiet, with Father gone for the evening. The dishes seem to take such a long time, with no-one to help, no-one to talk to. She shouldn't have left them this late.
She finds herself wishing, wishing that Mother would appear at her side, and shoo her away from the sink. "I'll do the rest, Marion," she would say. "You'll tire yourself out." Kate would protest, and Mother would pretend to compromise by giving her some tiny task to do, like drying only enough bowls for breakfast in the morning, or making tea.
It's such a silly thing, wanting to be rescued from washing up, but Kate can't stop herself imagining. Gladys wouldn't offer to do the dishes (Kate doesn't think Gladys has ever washed a dish in her life), but she would pull Kate away from the sink and propose they do something fun instead, like reading movie magazines or dancing to a Glenn Miller record. "They'll still be there tomorrow. Life's too short to worry about silly things like that," she would say, because people can think that when they're rich.
Leon wouldn't do the dishes either – men just don't – but he would talk with her the whole time, about work, and music. Maybe even about deeper things than that, the way they managed to a few times, when Kate was feeling exceptionally bold. Kate never met a man who would just talk with her, before Leon. They always wanted her to listen. Until a few months ago, Kate thought listening was all she was good for.
Kate is so exhausted, so worried, so worn out with grieving and regret, that she doesn't try to stop herself from imagining someone's hand on her shoulder, their arms wrapping around her waist from behind, holding her close. "C'mon, you've done enough," Betty would say. "Let's take you to bed." Kate would change into her nightdress, knowing that Betty wasn't recoiling at her scars. After a moment – at a look from Kate – Betty would undress too. She wouldn't remove her clothes in the swaggering, don't-give-a-damn fashion that she had perfected in the change room at Vic Mu, but quietly, honestly. She would slide under the covers with Kate. Maybe they would kiss, maybe they would talk, maybe they wouldn't do either one. They would just be together, and it would be all right. Betty would hold her and keep her safe until she thought Kate was asleep. (Kate wouldn't be, really, she always takes much longer to fall asleep than Betty.) Betty would slip out of bed and quietly finish washing the dishes. When she re-joined Kate in bed, Kate would be so filled with love that it would seem foolish, really, not to let herself do whatever her heart wanted.
It isn't even about the dishes, really. Kate just wants to be rescued. She knows what she's got to do, but she's scared to death of what it'll mean.
"Are you crying?" Walter asks, looking up from his study.
She is. Tears are sliding down her face, and Kate finds herself absently tasting their salt on her lips like a little girl. "I'm fine, Walter. I shouldn't try and do housework in such dim light." It is a rather pathetic excuse. Nobody ever strained their eyes doing the dishes. Why, after all this time, is Kate such an appalling liar?
Walt has appeared at Kate's elbow. He stares at her, perturbed at the sight of an adult in tears. After a moment, he seizes a dishcloth and wipes off one of the clean plates. Walter wheels about on the spot, his gaze travelling between the shelf and the small cupboard where the family's crockery is stored.
"That goes in the cupboard-" Kate says thickly, mopping at her face with a hankie.
"I know," he says, kneeling to slot the dish into its proper place. "I helped Mother with the dishes every night, while you were away. And I did them by myself, when she couldn't any more."
Kate can't imagine that Father was impressed, or even particularly grateful. "That was very good of you."
"Well, I had to," says Walt, with a manly shrug of his thin shoulders.
Kate resumes doing the dishes, breathing in and out slowly, to try and calm down. She is conscious of Walt waiting for her to hand him more clean dishes. "Want to sing something?" she asks. It's a mark of how long she was away, how much things have changed. In the past, one of them would just start singing, and the other – others, because Richie was always there, too – would join in unasked.
"Sure." It's funny how formal that can sound, when the invitation always used to be unspoken. "You pick the song," he says, generously and somewhat awkwardly.
With a backward glance at the trailer door (Father has a knack for walking in whenever Kate is singing something forbidden), Kate screws up her courage. She's never sung Billie Holiday in front of her little brother before. She's not sure Walter would even know who she is. Well, Kate didn't either, not so long ago. She remembers the way Betty laughed, not unkindly, when Kate listened to her first Billie record and blurted in surprise, "Billie is a girl's name too?!"
(It almost hurts, how good it feels, to remember Betty and want to laugh instead of cry. Kate was so afraid that she would never feel anything good, ever again.)
Kate doesn't choose a song of heartbreak or regret, but she won't let herself pick a love song either. It would be inappropriate, to sing about romantic love in front of a child. In their family, people don't so much as hold hands before they're married. Falling in love is simply out of the question.
"Every time it rains, it rains pennies from Heaven," Kate sings. "Don't you know each cloud contains pennies from Heaven? You'll find your fortune falling, all over town. Be sure that your umbrella is upside down..."
Walt is looking at her. "Your singing's gotten better."
"Thanks. I took lessons..." She trails off.
"While you were away?" he asks hesitantly.
Kate nods. They regard each other for a moment, both a little surprised at the thought that Kate didn't spend every waking moment of her time in Toronto determinedly sinning. Sometimes she did perfectly ordinary, respectable things, like cooking or sewing or yes, even taking singing lessons.
"Teach me that song," Walt says.
So she sings it again, slowly, from the beginning. By the third time she begins the song, Walter is singing along. He's always been quick at picking up a tune, even quicker than her.
"Save them for a package of sunshine and flowers. If you want the things you love, you must have showers," they sing together. "So when you hear it thunder, don't run under a tree. There'll be pennies from Heaven, for you and me."
Walt really ought to learn an instrument, Kate muses. It's the calmest thought she's had in quite some time, so she embroiders upon it. Richie can play the guitar, but there never seemed to be time to teach Walt. Kate has a sudden mental image of Walter sitting at the piano with Leon, and Leon showing him how to play a C scale. Though she knows it can't happen, it helps Kate voice the thing she's been trying so hard to say. "Walt, we've got to get out of here."
"Leave Father?"
Kate nods.
"Where would we go?" Walter asks heavily. It breaks Kate's heart, how self-consciously old he sounds. He's trying so hard to sound mature and pragmatic about it.
Kate winces. She really would have preferred not to lead with this aspect of the plan. "You wouldn't live with me. I don't have enough money to support two people. You'll live with Mother's relatives."
"But Mother didn't have any family."
"She did have a family, Walt. It's just that you've never met them."
"Have you?"
"Yes, I have." Kate leaves out the part about it being so long ago that she doesn't remember their faces. She has a hazy recollection of being very small indeed, and weaving her way through a room of unfamiliar adults, to where her mother was sitting in a corner chair. She doesn't remember feeling particularly happy there, but perhaps she was just picking up on the tension rolling off Mother in waves. She has a feeling it was safe, though. No shouting, no hitting. They have waited all their lives for a family without shouting or hitting. "She left me their address. I've written to them and asked them to take you."
"Did they say yes?"
"I don't know. They can't write me back, obviously, but we just –"
"Mother left them." He eyes her. "Like you left us."
"Yes, she did, but I don't think it was because ..." She trails off. "I think she regretted leaving them, in the end. She wouldn't have left the address for me, if she didn't think they'd take care of us."
Walter scowls at the floor. "But I don't know them."
"It's our only chance to get out safely," she says. "If we stay with him, he'll hurt us."
"Not me," Walter says. "He won't beat me, not like he does you."
He sounds so cavalier about the prospect of Kate being beaten. To him, it is just a thing that happens, part of the fabric of everyday life. Just the way the world works. He has grown like Richard.
Or perhaps, he hasn't. Walter sits down at the folding table. He turns from her, not in disgust, but to hide his face. There will be a time when they will be apart again, and he's pushing her away, to make it less painful. He expected her to walk out of his life without so much as a goodbye, leave him with Father, like she did last time. Perhaps he almost wishes she would. It would make things so much simpler.
Kate sits down beside him. "Walt, I love you as much as Mother ever did. And now, I have to do for you what she did for me." She puts her hand on his arm. "I want you to grow up to be a good man, who would never hit a woman or a child."
When he turns back to her, Walt's expression is decidedly doubtful. She knows what he's thinking: If you loved me so much, you wouldn't have left in the first place.
"I'm never leaving you again," she says. It ought to feel like a contradiction, after she's just said they'll be living apart, her in the city, him with relatives he's never met. But he nods, and though they say no more about it that evening, Kate knows that Walter understands.
x x x
When Kate ran away in September, she left Bible Stories for Girls behind, so that her family might look at it and remember her as a good little girl, not the degenerate she grew up to be. Well, that's what she told herself, anyway. She's since admitted to herself that she left it because she didn't want to lose it, out in the big world. She wanted to leave it at home, where it would be safe … where it would be waiting for her.
She's not leaving anything of her own behind this time. Yet she doesn't want to take a thing – not a single thing – that's not hers. Kate has packed that old children's book, and the locket Mother gave her for her twenty-first birthday, but she's left the photo that she and Richard got taken against a backdrop of a paper moon, many years ago. She leaves it even though it's her favourite, and she doesn't have many other pictures of herself as a girl. She's already taking the money Father keeps under his mattress, and that's quite enough.
It's not just a matter of pride or honour, though. Kate packed for herself and Walt yesterday, but she had quite a job packing everything they'll need without making the trailer look different. Father expects it to be scrupulously neat and clean, yet Kate can't help but feel that the empty spaces left by their belongings are awfully conspicuous. Surely Father will notice that Walt's schoolbooks aren't where they usually are, that the china cat Kate has loved since she was three is missing from the shelf?
She keeps worrying that she's thinking of the wrong things, that one tiny detail will end up giving the game away. She is still Kate Andrews, then, despite her months living Marion Rowley's life. This is how Kate used to feel, all the time, back in Toronto.
"I'll return this evening, at six o'clock," Father is saying. "Supper will need to be on the table by then."
"Yes, Father," Kate mumbles, trying to keep her face absolutely impassive.
Father gestures to the family Bible. "Walter, you will have the next few verses memorised, ready for when we go out preaching tonight."
Walt nods mutely. "Yes," he says faintly. "Yes, sir."
This would be comical if it were a joke or a scene in a film. Most fathers would pick up on the tension, figure out something was wrong by how quiet and scared their children seemed. For Kate's father, this is a desirable state of affairs. He probably wishes we would act like this more often, Kate thinks resentfully.
Kate flinches at her own disrespectful thoughts. For Heaven's sakes, this is the last time they'll ever be in the same room. Shouldn't she feel different?
She wonders if she should say something, tell him he's a good father, tell him she loves him. She's never going to see him again, after all. She did feel love for him once – not respect, not reverence, not fear, but actual love, like she felt for Mother. She won't let herself feel anything, now.
"Be sure to take your umbrella, Father," she says finally. "It might rain."
She is rather stunned at herself. If someone had asked Kate, every day for the past twenty years, what she thought her last words to her father might be, it certainly wouldn't have been … that.
Father takes Kate's suggestion, picking up the battered black umbrella and holding it in the crook of his arm. He nods at them both. She hears his key in the lock, his footsteps fading away, and … and that's the end of it. He has walked out of Kate's life. Forever.
Kate jumps into action. It helps to imagine she's on the floor at Vic Mu, where time was always of the essence. "We've gotta get going," she says, hauling her suitcase out from underneath Walt's bunk.
"He took the key, didn't he?" Walt asks, hanging back and biting his nails.
"Yes, he did. Get your satchel," says Kate, dumping her bag and their two suitcases by the door.
"But he's locked us in." Walt sinks into a chair. When Kate shows no reaction, he repeats, "The door is locked. We're stuck in here, Marion."
Walter used to have his own key, up until a few weeks ago, when Father declared it was unsafe to have spare keys drifting around. Walt is not used to being locked indoors, but Kate is. She's thought about this lots of times, even if she didn't ever have the nerve to do it.
Kate crosses to the ironing board and picks up the cold iron. She wraps her forearm in one of Mother's blue dishcloths. Kate peers through the largest window in the trailer. She can't see anyone standing in the immediate vicinity of the trailer, but of course, the frosted glass doesn't afford much visibility. Well, it can't be helped now.
"Stand back," she says to Walter, and taps the iron against the glass. She does it too softly the first few times. Somehow, ridiculously, she doesn't want to draw attention to herself.
Well, why shouldn't you? says an obstinate voice inside her. Father hasn't a clue that you're leaving. You've got to get out, as quick as you can. There's no point in being quiet about it. Smash the glass. Smash it!
Before Kate's quite realised what she's doing, she's shoved the iron right through the window. She and Walt both jump as it shatters.
"Gosh," blurts Walter, sounding like he can't decide whether he's impressed or taken aback.
She pokes away the remaining shards of glass, hears them drop onto the trailer steps. Once she's gotten it mostly clear, she directs Walt, "Pull up a chair. You're going to climb through first. I'll pass you the bags and things, and then I'll follow."
Walt climbs up on the chair. He goes to swing his right leg out first, before hesitating and switching to the left one. Finally, he bites the bullet and scrambles through the gap. There is a thump and a crunch as Walter lands among the glass shards.
Kate calls, "Are you all right? You haven't cut yourself?"
"I'm fine," he says. "But some guys on the corner are looking at us."
Kate shakes her head. "Never mind them. Here comes the first suitcase, okay? Be ready." She heaves the suitcase through the broken window, into Walt's waiting hands.
"Got it!"
"Now here's yours." She hands him another suitcase. "Here's your satchel, and my bag. Got 'em?"
"Yep."
"All right, I'm coming now. Stand clear." Kate looks even sillier than Walter, climbing out the window. Walt isn't really allowed to skylark and play, but he's got slightly more experience with this sort of thing than Kate, whose childhood did not feature any kind of tomboy foolishness. Frightened of falling in the broken glass, she ends up landing oddly, jarring her knee somewhat – but she's out, and so is Walter, and so is their luggage.
Walter has his satchel on his back and his suitcase in his hand. Even so, he asks, "We're really going?"
Kate spies some older men, standing outside the corner store, staring at the spectacle of a young woman and a thirteen-year-old boy breaking out of a parked trailer. She tries to exude an air of supreme unconcern, as though this is just a silly mishap, a misplaced key, a jammed door, not a jailbreak. She hasn't done it in ages, but as she slings her bag over her shoulder, she pretends with all her might that she's Gladys.
"We really are," she says, willing herself to believe that she is confident and capable, that something isn't going to go horribly wrong.
x x x
Kate clutches the tickets, checking them over and over to make sure they're on the correct platform. She has travelled so many thousands of miles in her life. She ought to be used to it by now. Still, this is only the second time she's ever run away. It's not really the kind of thing a person ever gets used to.
She hopes this will be the last time.
"Stick close by me," Kate instructs Walt, more for something to say than anything else.
"I'm not going anywhere," Walt mutters, staring at his shoes. He hasn't combed his hair, and it sticks up in all directions. It reminds Kate of the way he looked as a very small boy, two or three years old.
Walter used to be such a handful at train stations, always running off, always having to be chased. Perhaps it's a family trait, running away. Kate has a sudden memory of herself at fourteen or so, on a station platform like this, scooping her runaway little brother up and scolding him fondly, exaggeratedly, for the benefit of a pretty blonde woman watching them over the top of her book. Hitching little Walt up on her hip, Kate – Marion, back then – covered his head with kisses before throwing the woman a glowing smile.
(Kate supposes, now, that she was showing off for the woman, even trying to flirt in a childish way. How strange, to think that she had this thing inside her, even back when she was Marion.)
"The train will be here soon," she says, looking at the station clock. "Come on, we should go and wait nearer to the edge of the platform, so we can-"
"Walter! Marion!" calls someone. "Where are you?"
Kate knows that voice. She has nightmares about it. No, no, no, it can't be, not when she was so careful, not when she tried so hard to get them away...
But it is. There he is, dignified in his dark coat and hat, looking around frantically for them. Kate feels like the world has lurched sideways, like a car skidding on a frosty road. She wants to dash into the women's toilets, dart into the station café, run away, run, but she can't leave her brother.
Father's gaze lands unmistakably where Kate and Walt are standing, rooted to the spot, identical expressions of dread on their faces. For a moment, Vernon Rowley and his children just stare at each other. For a moment, Father looks … surprised.
Father rarely runs, even when he's chasing his children, but he runs now. "Marion!" Father shouts, hurtling along the platform toward them. "Walter!"
Kate can't move. She's a failure. All her weeks of planning, and she couldn't even get them to the train station without Father finding out. I can't do this alone, she wants to sob. I can't. I need Mother, I need Betty. I'm not strong enough.
"How did he find us?" she croaks out.
"I didn't know," Walter stammers, paling. "I didn't – he said he wouldn't be back 'til six –" At a look from Kate, he blurts, "I left him a letter, to tell him goodbye."
Of course, thinks Kate. Of course he did. It's exactly what she would have done, at Walt's age. Kate hasn't eaten or drunk anything but cups of tea for the past day, but right now, as Father gets closer and closer, she feels like she's going to be horribly sick. Please, God, I can't fight him again, she begs silently. Kate is so tired of fighting. She's so tired of being knocked down, so tired of always losing.
"Thank Heaven I caught you in time," Father says as he reaches them. "Before you made a terrible mistake." He doesn't embrace them, like a father who's almost lost two children ought to do. Instead, he makes a grab for Kate's suitcase.
She doesn't let it go. "You shouldn't have come," Kate says.
Father smiles a beatific smile. It doesn't reach his eyes. "I will always come for you, Marion. I will always find you, no matter where you go." He sounds every bit the kindly, benevolent pastor, but there's something about the tone of his voice that makes Kate realise the dream she's always had, about running away from him, is not a dream at all, but a memory. That must have been the moment when she realised that he was not like other fathers.
"Father, I don't know what Walt said in that letter, but we're not going back with you." Father shows no reaction to her words. It's always made Kate feel so small, when he acts like she hasn't spoken, like she hasn't said anything he ought to concern himself with. She forces herself to go on. "You don't need to worry about us any more. I'm going to look after Walt from now on."
"Don't be foolish. What do you plan to do, prostitute yourself?" She winces, and Father pounces on that moment of hesitation. "Well, how else could you possibly provide for the both of you?"
"I'm leaving Walt with some good people," Kate says. "So I can work, and send whatever money I can spare for his upkeep. I'll write him as often as I can, and visit him, to make sure he's being well cared for. We won't be living under the same roof, but he won't be without me. I wouldn't ever abandon him."
He sneers as if her plan, the best she can possibly do, is the most preposterous thing he's ever heard. "And what will you be doing, while Walter is with these good people?" He regards her. "You're running back to her." It is not a question. "To your whore."
"Don't call her that," Kate whispers. She burns at the very notion of voicing the way she feels about Betty in front of her father, let alone her little brother. It's too raw, too private. She doesn't even know how to feel about it herself, yet. However, the shame she should be feeling doesn't stop Kate from saying, "I love her."
Father looks sickened. "I never thought you would go to such lengths to slake your unnatural lusts. I suppose she'll be playing the man's role, when she takes you?"
In her head, Kate protests feebly that loving Betty doesn't mean she has to do anything, doesn't mean she's going to sin. Betty said she didn't want anything from her. She just wanted Kate to be safe, and that's all Kate is doing.
What comes out of her mouth is quite different. "She doesn't love me any more." You put paid to that, she thinks bitterly, and she doesn't know whether she means Father, or herself.
Father shakes his head pityingly. "She never did, Marion. Do you honestly think someone like that could ever truly care for you? She pretended to, and you were stupid enough to believe her. It was all so she could lead you to sin. Don't you remember how she forced you to take those photos?"
Kate cringes, remembering how ashamed she felt, under the hot lights in Chet's studio. Shame wasn't all she felt, though. Maybe it's wicked, but she can't deny that it felt nice, having Betty look at her like she was impressed at Kate's daring … like she thought Kate looked good. Standing in that red swimsuit and meeting Betty's eyes, Kate knew what it was to be a woman, and it didn't feel frightening at all.
Still, she never would have done it, if not for her father. She knows she would have found a different way to feel like a woman, if she'd had any choice in the matter. Kate feels like she might burst into flames, with the sheer unfairness of it. She's not remotely comfortable with her body. She's been kissed precisely once in her life. Does Father really think she would have posed for pornographic photos if she'd had any other option?
"It was only so I wouldn't have to come back to you," Kate murmurs. She looks up at him. "I would have done anything, not to come back to you!"
The train has pulled into the station. In the shrilling of whistles and the surge of people hurrying forward to board, Kate wonders whether her words were lost in the hubbub. (The Marion part of her almost hopes they were.)
Father stares at her a little too long, though, and Kate knows he's trying to process her words, not work out what they were. For the first time in minutes, Father looks to Walt. "Walter, come along," Father says, indicating the space beside him. "That deviant has bewitched her. She's chosen to throw her life away. There's nothing we can do for her, any more."
"He's not going with you," Kate says, situating herself so that Walter can hide behind her. "I'm not having him grow up like you."
Father steps forward and takes Kate's hand, the way any father bidding his children goodbye on a station platform might do. Kate gasps as he squeezes her wrist, twists it, threatening to snap it. "And I suppose you'd prefer he turned out like you?" he snarls into her ear. "Selfish, disgusting, perverted? Is that what you want for him?"
"Don't hurt Marion," begs Walt. "Please don't hurt her!" It comes out as a terrified whisper. Even now, he's so ashamed. Kate is too. Normal families aren't like this. There must be something so bad inside them, that their own father has to do this to them...
She wrenches away from Father's grasp. "Father, if you try to make him leave with you, I'll -" She has to take a breath. "I'll show everybody my scars. No-one will let you take him, once they've seen."
"You would show the world the marks of your sins, just to get your own way? You would show all these people how unnatural you are?"
"If it's for him, I will," Kate says, taking a step back. Eyes trained on her father's, she actually undoes two of the buttons on her dress. From the expression on Father's face, anyone would think she had stripped naked. "Everyone'll know about you, if I do."
His face twists with rage and contempt – and something else. Is it fear? Is he actually frightened of what Kate might do? "That you would choose to betray your family and give in to your depravity is bad enough, but that you would drag a child down that path with you is unconscionable. You are going to burn in Hell." Father looks beyond her, to Walt, and adds, "And so will Walter, if he leaves with you."
If Kate were Betty or Gladys, she would shoot back, "Good, as long as you're not there!" But Kate can only be herself, so she says softly, "I don't think so." It's not a flippant reply, by any means. She can't ever be truly sure that this is right.
"Marion, this doesn't have to be who you are. You sent her away. That proves that there is still some good in you."
Father has never been one for telling his children that he loves them. He tells them that they're good instead. He's said it to Kate less and less as she's gotten older, since she started looking at men and women, and thinking about being kissed, and wanting to sing her own songs. The possibility that she could still be good – that if she defies him now, and leaves, she might never be good again – hurts so badly that Kate can barely keep standing.
He can see her weakening. "I'll give you one more chance," he says. "One last chance at forgiveness. I'm all you've got in the world, Marion."
But he's not, he's not, Kate says in her own head, with the bewilderment of a child, the certainty of a grown woman. Kate has God. She has her little brother to think of. She has music. And even if Mother is gone, and Betty never speaks to her again, Kate still loves them with everything she has. I can't be as bad as you say, if I love somebody, thinks Kate. It says so in the Bible. It is the first time she's ever let herself think that her father was wrong about anything. With that thought, Kate's world changes as starkly as day into night.
It is not an unwelcome change.
Kate looks into her father's eyes, the exact same colour as her own. "I've always thought I'd never be good enough for you, Father … but now I know I don't want to be."
Kate has gotten used to thinking of herself as many people. Marion Rowley, the eternal little girl. Marion the pathetic, the abused, the bad. Kate Andrews, the woman, the worker, the singer. Kate the pervert. Kate who loves Betty. For the first time in her life, it feels like all these different versions of Kate are standing shoulder to shoulder with her.
"I don't want to be," she says again, and turns to Walt. For once, her little brother doesn't protest when she takes his arm. "Don't look back at him. Don't look back," she says in Walt's ear. Walt is not looking back, he's surging forward, worried that the train will leave without them. Kate knows she's saying it to herself.
Somehow, Kate manages to board the train. As it begins to move, Kate and Walt don't look out the window. They don't look at each other, either. They take seats in an empty compartment. Kate is brought out of herself when she realises that Walter is crying.
"You don't have to be brave any more," Kate murmurs, putting her arm around him.
They're words she always wanted someone to say to her, when she was Walt's age, but he flinches. They are the wrong words for him. "I should've protected you," Walt mumbles, embarrassed by his tears. "All I did was stand there."
"You did plenty," she assures him. "You stuck by me. I'll never forget it."
Why isn't Kate crying? She has made her choice, and now her family has dwindled down to two. If ever there was a time to cry, it is now. Betty and Gladys would say Father wasn't worth it. But perhaps it isn't about being worthy. Perhaps it's just that she's cried enough, for now.
"What about Richard?" asks Walt.
"Richard's safe at seminary." Kate knows that it's not Richard's safety that Walter is asking about. She knows that once Richard hears what they've done – what she's done – he'll want nothing more to do with them. There's not much she can say, apart from, "We'll see him again, someday."
Hours later, Kate Andrews and her brother Walter Rowley stand on a far-flung station platform. Their journey isn't over, they still have miles to go, but Kate insists on sitting down on a bench for a minute, to gather themselves. Once the train has rounded the corner, and the little station is quiet, she can hear birds singing. From where she's sitting, Kate can just see a green field with a horse peering over the fence.
"Marion?"
"Mmm?"
"Are you going to go to that woman?" Walter asks.
Kate says, much too brightly, "I've gotta be with you first, make sure Mother's family can take care of you right."
Walt is not fooled by her attempt to dodge the question. "But will you go to her after?"
"Walter, you heard what I said. She doesn't … want me around, any more."
"But what if she did? Would you go?"
Kare knows she ought to say no. She can tell Walt wants her to say no. She tries not to feel too stung about it. He's only young; he has no idea what it is to be in love.
In the end, she just says, "I really don't know, Walt. There's a lot I have to think about." She turns to him. "I'll teach you more songs before I go away to work. And when I come back for visits. Hopefully, they'll have a Victrola, so we can play records. Did you ever hear Ella Fitzgerald?"
Walter shakes his head.
"How about Louis Armstrong?"
"Nope."
"You've got to! When Ella and Louis sing together, it's magic..."
Kate gets to her feet, shoulders her bag, picks up her suitcase and beckons her younger brother, to tell him all about Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald as they make their way out of the station. Head held high, Kate Andrews is one woman, many women – on her way to being a good person – as she walks into the next chapter of her life.