Earlier that night…
"Mary, you can come in the bathroom with me," Isobel said, and the door shut. Edith and Sybil looked at each other nervously, and Matthew entered the family room from the hallway. They were sitting on the blue velvet couch, both staring at the hall leading to the bathroom.
"I swear, if she is, I'm going to…" he trailed off.
"Kill someone?" Sybil finished.
"The asshole, yes,"
"I'll be right there next to you," Edith said. The other two nodded and he sat down on the chair closest to the fireplace.
"It's imperative that nobody else finds out," Sybil said, staring at the flames.
"I wouldn't dream of telling anybody," Matthew ran a hand through his slicked-back hair and sighed. "There's some food in the kitchen, it's kind of a hodgepodge dinner. Serve yourself sort of thing."
"Well, I'm starving." Sybil stood up and made her way into the kitchen, Edith following not long after.
"Matthew, aren't you going to get something?" Edith asked as she returned to the family room. Sybil sat back down next to her, taking a bite of her cold-cut sandwich.
"I'm not hungry. Do take more if you still are, though,"
"Isobel really did make a lot of food. She didn't need to make that much,"
"We don't normally have anyone over for dinner. It makes Mother happy to do things for other people. Gives her a sort of purpose,"
"I'd love to have that," Sybil said.
"What? Purpose?"
She nodded. "I never feel like I'm doing anything of… substance. There's really no reason for me to get a job, yet it seems like something that would be worthwhile. And there's a purpose to having a job. There's no purpose to what I do."
"Which is?"
"I usually sit around all day and read. If Tom has to do something I'll accompany him, sometimes we'll go out to eat or see a film or something like that. But that's it."
"Why not volunteer? Mother has lots of girls who do that at the hospital. It'll be filled with purpose- you'd be helping people."
Sybil grinned, wondering why she hadn't thought of that before. "Brilliant. I might have to jump on that offer,"
"Good Lord, Matthew, you've given her an idea. Now we'll never hear the end of it," Edith groaned.
Arriving home to the apartment, Tom saw that Thomas was the only person sitting at their usually occupied kitchen table. He was puffing away with one of his cigarettes, like always, and reading a newspaper. Seeing an opportunity to seize, Tom sat down at the table and sighed, leaning back against the uncomfortable slats of the chair.
"So… care to explain?"
"Explain what?" Thomas asked, balancing his cigarette between his teeth. He didn't bother to glance up, just turned the page of the newspaper and read whatever article was at the top.
"The accent, the Great War uniform that looks awfully similar to the British army's uniform, occasional Brit words."
"I haven't the foggiest of what you're talking about."
"Look, Thomas. I just want answers. It's not like I'm going to announce everything to the world."
"For all I know, you might!"
"So you are hiding something."
"Never said that. If you'll excuse me, I have business to conduct," Thomas stood up, but Tom was blocking the door in seconds. The two men stared at each other for a moment before Thomas narrowed his eyes. "I see how it's going to be."
"Answers. That's it, I swear."
"And how do I know you'll hold that up?"
"You'd have to trust me and hope that one day I can keep my trap shut."
Thomas raised his eyebrows and rocked back and forth on his heels.
"You have to do a favor for me, then. I have a hostage to take- and have some fun with- this Saturday. If you come along and help me with it, because they aren't easy to do alone, I'll tell you. But I get all the money. You won't be paid at all."
"Deal."
"And if I ask you for a favor in the future, you'd better say alright."
"Deal." The two men stuck out their hands and hesitantly shook, not breaking eye contact. They were watching each other like cowboys waiting for a draw.
"Why don't I make some tea?" Thomas asked, strolling over to the kitchen and taking out Tom's kettle, filling it with water and setting it on the stove, turning the heat on.
"I'd guess you're the culprit behind my depleted supply," Tom said, sitting back down and casually flipping through the newspaper. One of Richard Carlisle's, he would bet.
"You guessed correctly." Leaving the kettle on the stove, Thomas sat down in his chair across from Tom and stared at the younger man.
"My friend Sarah O'Brien sent money for me to come to the States back in nineteen sixteen. I had been saving up money from my job as a hall boy at a nice house and as an army medic, but it had been spent on getting myself out of jail."
"Hall boy? You were only a hall boy?" Tom couldn't believe what he was hearing. How was this man a hall boy before the war, yet an army doctor in the war?
"At a good house, I'll have you know. Very grand, had a huge staff. That was before the war. As soon as the war started I joined the army as a medic, and I eventually got up to the rank of Corporal. But then... there was this officer, and I became, well, fond of him." Thomas paused, glancing at his watch, then at the kettle.
"We were arrested on charges of buggery. Demoted, sent back to England. Tried in court, sentenced. He was a Duke, so he got out of the sentence and went back to the front. I was not so lucky. I received six years in prison, and I managed to escape with help, but most of my money to immigrate to the States was lost in the process. I couldn't go back to being a hall boy because I was supposed to be in prison and was too old at that point, so I dabbled in the black market. Then, at the end of sixteen, the package came from O'Brien. A ticket and money to cover my traveling expenses."
"Just like that? With no explanation?" the kettle whistled and Thomas stood up quickly, taking it off the stove and preparing their tea, bringing it over to the table. He added a little sugar in his, while Tom absentmindedly stirred his spoon around the cup, not adding anything.
"Oh, there was a letter. She needed someone to do what she couldn't do herself. Her nephew, Alfred, was too innocent at the time. Still a little kid, actually. He's around Edith's age. So O'Brien sent the money and a month later, in seventeen, I was in New York after being deemed safe to immigrate. Took the citizenship test a while later though." Tom remembered the citizenship test, and how he had passed it with ease. He wasn't all brawn; in fact, Tom had been a skinny little lad who excelled in academics before becoming a teenager.
"Then when I got here Robert pounced on me. He had no idea of my relation to O'Brien, who is Cora's lady's maid, if you didn't know. One night he found me on a street corner dealing some things I had smuggled from across the pond. The next night I'm going through initiation, and a month later I was part of the mob. Except since the Double I Struggle was going on, they made me babysit the kids, because I was only nineteen. That was ten years ago."
"So why bother hiding the accent and not telling anyone?"
"I'm getting there, you impatient tosser. I'm doing it so that I can't be associated with Thomas Barrow from Manchester, in case they ever get a whiff of my trail here. I'm still a wanted man. I escaped my prison sentence seven months in, barely got out of the country. Someone recognized me. Not good."
"That's really it, then."
"Yes."
"I won't tell anyone. Not even a halfway decent story." Thomas almost laughed at this, and looked out the window at the incoming rain clouds. He looked back at the door, then Tom, then his cup of tea.
"Imagine if Jimmy walked in right now. He'd call us old men and force us to go do shots at a speakeasy."
"He's eighteen. To him we practically are old men. Well, at least you are." The two laughed at this, closer than they had been before Thomas's confession.
"Has Mary still been in there since I've left?" Matthew asked, walking back inside. He had left an hour earlier to go make a deal, leaving the two girls to listen to a radio drama that was far from being dramatic.
"Oh, they went upstairs just a little after you left. Mary didn't say anything, but Isobel told us there was some cake in the refrigerator," Sybil said.
"Did you save some for me?"
"I wasn't hungry, but Sybil ate some. What kind was it?" Edith asked.
"Just vanilla cake with some vanilla frosting and strawberries. Very tasty. You should go have a piece, Matthew," Sybil said, turning the dial on the radio down.
Matthew left the room and came back with his cake as there was a clap of thunder outside. Edith sighed, fiddling with her hands, as Sybil turned around to look out the window.
"Ominous," she continued.
"Ominous indeed," Mary said. All three turned, surprised, and stared at her face, which was dark. Stepping forward and sitting down on the chair next to Matthew's, Mary sighed. Isobel joined them seconds later, sitting on the couch with the girls.
"Please tell me 'ominous indeed' doesn't mean you're pregnant." Edith said.
"Unfortunately it… it does. I'm ruined, completely ruined! Now you're living the perfect life with your fiancé, and your wedding, and your untarnished reputation! I'll tell you this, Edith. Never in my life have I envied you. But right now? Right now I would give anything to be you."
"Are you going to have the baby? Or try for an abortion?" Sybil asked.
"An abortion?" the little color that had been in Mary's cheeks disappeared. "That's illegal, Sybil! Besides, I couldn't kill someone… even if it's spawned from someone I hate." Matthew glared at the fire, and Isobel knew what he was thinking about.
"It may be illegal, but nobody would have to know. And we have connections. You could-"
"No. Sybil, I'm not," Mary said in a tone that was very final. Defeated, Sybil pouted, slouched down, and crossed her arms in a very unladylike manner.
The sisters left a half hour later, once the storm had cleared, and Sybil stopped to talk to Matthew.
"I felt helpless as she said it. And… and I don't like feeling that way. I'm going to do something. Make a way for myself."
"Sybil, I will support you in any way I can." He smiled and pulled his young cousin in for a hug, letting her rush out to the automobile to get home.
"It has to stop."
"Yes, Gino, we know. But we have no evidence against the Crawleo mob. How do we even know it's them? Someone we made a bad deal with may have a vendetta they want to carry out," Renzo said. Gino snarled, turning back to the window, where he was staring out at the storm.
"Tell me, Renzo. How many bad deals have we made since I became boss?"
"Two."
"Did we settle them?"
"Yes."
"Exactly. Here's how I want you to help. You've been hanging around the Irish gangs lately. See what they have to say, get some information from them."
"What makes you think they're going to know?"
"Maybe there's going to be a second Double I Struggle. We don't know. But making the Irish our allies could prove to be useful. For all we know, it could help us bring the Crawleos to their knees so we can take what is ours."
"They were in the city first, though, weren't they?"
"In this century, yes. But the Maroni mob had control back in the nineteenth century, and we're going to take that control back."
The door opened and a young boy who looked strikingly similar to Gino walked in.
"Papa? Antonio Tomi was found dead ten minutes ago. They arrested someone, but we don't know who yet."
"Thank you, Nino. You may go now." the boy nodded and closed the door behind himself. Gino glanced over at Renzo, smirking slightly.
"Let's hope it's a Crawleo bastard, so we can exact our vengeance."
A/N: is it sad that I had to google how to use a kettle to make sure I got it right? Hehehe… Also, I got my braces off! Finally! Woo! Hopefully you liked this chapter, despite parts of it being kind of filler-y.