Chapter 36

"We're goin' to try somethin' new." Davey announces, his mind already on the next topic as he slides the filled-out mortgage forms back across the kitchen table to Jack.

"Thanks." Jack slips them neatly back into their folder.

The man at the bank had said it would take a week to get them approved. In a week, he might be buying a house. That's one thing he'd never expected from his life. That said, he'd never expected to be working in an office or living in his own apartment or getting paid to draw or be getting married to the most perfect woman on the surface of the planet, so Jack is just going to take the good stuff while it keeps coming and try not to overthink it. His rather pleasant thought spiral, however, is somewhat dimmed when Davey produces, from his satchel, what can only be described as a brown sausage with fingernail marks in it.

"The hell is that?" Jack asks, leaning back in his chair in a vain attempt to put as much distance between himself and whatever that thing is as possible.

"This is going to help you learn your numbers." Davey grins, holding it aloft as if it's sceptre, not something that Jack would personally describe as some sort of terribly deformed stick. "I've been reading this report by a man called Pringle Morgan who has been studying people who struggle with letters and numbers like you do. Other people have responded to his report and said that making the symbols tactile can help you to learn them."

Tactile? And who the hell calls their kid Pringle? That's just cruel. Jack arches one eyebrow, remaining thoroughly unimpressed. "And that makes that…"

Davey frowns at him, as if the answer should be obvious, as if with his little speech he imagined that Jack must have received some sort of divine revelation as to the identity and purpose of the object. "This is a number one. Well, it's a number one snake. Apparently by associating the symbols with animals, it can help you to grasp them."

"That's s'posed to be a snake?" Jack squints, leaning forward to examine it.

Getting closer to it, it looks vaguely as though there's something at the upper end that might be a forked tongue, but the link is tenuous at best. When he looks up in disbelief at Davey, the other boy looks highly offended.

"Of course it's supposed to be a snake, what else would it be?"

"Honestly, Dave," Jack sits back in his seat, folding his arms, "I ain't got a clue, but that looks about as much like a snake as I do."

"Well," Davey puffs out a breath of air, the longer hairs that have drifted over his forehead defying gravity for a few seconds, "it was only for a demonstration. I brought clay so that we can make them together."

Jack doesn't look excited by the prospect of clay; he's spent too long building up his front of bravado to have it undone by something as unimportant as excitement. Still, Davey sees a slight shift in his friend's posture, slightly less tension in the muscles, a quirked eyebrow, a glint to his eyes and his smile that wasn't quite so bright before.

"Clay, huh?"

Clay, it turns out, comes under the remit of Jack's artistic talents. That's made excruciatingly obvious from the second he gets his hands on it, shaping it with clever fingers. Still, his talent for it comes as a surprise to nobody more than Jack himself.

He's never had proper clay before, clay like this that is bought from craft stores and air dries on the windowsill. In the Refuge, though, Snyder sealed up all the windows to stop them prying them open and slipping out. He even did it above the third floor, after little Adam got so desperate he decided that it was better to throw himself out of a fifth storey window than face another day behind it. Jack misses Adam sometimes, with his gap-toothed smile and his freckles. His death was what prompted the sealant. The problem was that the sealant was the cheap stuff and it took a couple of days to dry. A couple of days was all Jack had needed. It was gummy and thick, the brown sealant, the viscous kind that gets stuck under your fingernails. Jack's fingernails were always coated with it because each night he'd slide out of bed and scrape away any fresh sealant that he could find, adding it to the ball he secreted under a loose floorboard so that he could take it out and form it and reform it. It had stunk to high heaven, that stuff, acrid and leathery, but little Jack hadn't minded. It had been nice to have something that was just his. He'd never had a toy that he didn't have to share, before, so it felt important. And this clay is even better, because it doesn't smell, and he can clean it out from under his fingernails as easy as anything.

"How are you so good at this?" Davey huffs, gaping as Jack adds feather detailing to the body of his clay swan, the tail end of the number two, with a single, dirt-encrusted fingernail.

"I ain't." Jack shrugs, not looking up, wholly engrossed in his task. "'S jus' a swan, Dave."

"Jack," David rolls his eyes, "look at mine."

Finally, Jack looks up. He frowns, cocks his head to one side. "What's that s'posed to be?"

"A ferret. A number three ferret."

"You's got the choice of all the animals in the world an' you go wi' a ferret?"

"It seemed right." Davey says, looking back down at his creation and suddenly feeling very much like Dr. Frankenstein. "It clearly wasn't." Jack gives him a pitying look.

"Nah, you jus' needs to…" he waves a hand vaguely, "…shape the snout a little more."

When Crutchie walks in, he's confused about all the laughing that's coming from the kitchen.

Later, when Davey's left and Jack is drying the dinner plates, he casts a glance over his shoulder to where Crutchie is sat at the table. Normally, the kid is full of stories about work from the second he gets home until the second he goes to bed, but no such luck tonight. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Crutchie nods. Then, quieter. "Do y'think they's goin' to let me live at the lodgehouse again? Now that I's got a proper job?"

Jack almost drops the plate he's holding. "What are you on about? Crutchie, we's jus' gon' get you another person to take my room. You ain't movin'."

When Crutchie looks up, blinking because he's not going to cry, damnit, there are tears in his eyes. "My wage can't cover the rent-"

"You's family." Jack says, his heart damn near breaking in two that Crutchie thinks he's a bad enough brother to leave him to fend for himself. "You think I's jus' goin' to leave you in the lurch? I'll keep payin' your rent 'til you's gettin' more than a 'pprentice wage."

"Oh." Crutchie is at a bit of a loss. "Kath-"

"Already knows, an' she okayed it. Why'd you think Dave an' I are takin' so long over the books? We's workin' out where the finances are goin' to go once we's married." Jack rolls his eyes and turns back to the plates, trying not to let the hurt show on his face. "For someone so smart, you's real dumb."

Crutchie doesn't fire back with something snippy, but instead: "Dave's real good, ain't he?"

Jack nods. Davey, clueless as he sometimes is, is probably one of the best friends he's ever had. Seriously, who tries to teach their illiterate friend his numbers, then, after being yelled at by said illiterate friend, goes off and reads obscure medical reports to try and figure out a solution? No sort of friend that Jack's ever heard of, outside of David Jacobs.

"Yeah, he is."

A pause. "I's glad you chose him for your best man. He's been over the moon 'bout it, y'know."

"Hey, y'know it ain't 'cos I didn't want you, right?" Jack asks, setting the plate and tea towel down on the side and wandering over to lean against the table, propping himself up on his elbows and looking Crutchie straight in the eye.

Crutchie is reminded of the first time Jack got back from the Refuge, the only time they let him out rather than him escaping. Crutchie had been eight and clung to Jack the second he got back, whining about how he'd rather have been in the Refuge with him. Jack's face had hardened at that, and he'd sat Crutchie down and told him just how glad he ought to be that he hadn't been in the Refuge. Jack's tone isn't as harsh this time, but there's something of that eleven-year-old boy still about him, hiding in the hollows of his cheeks, less pronounced, these days, but there nonetheless. Want, Crutchie realises, never really leaves you. It becomes a part of you, settles in your bones and grows with you, twisting itself into the marrow like the ivy that strangles tree trunks.

"'S jus', I didn' want Race gettin' jealous." Jack shrugs, then shoots Crutchie a grin. "'Sides, I needs somebody in the pews to wrangle the boys an' make sure they ain't stealing the hymn books or shit like that. Somehow, I feel like Davey ain't gonna be the best at that. You, though? You can just soak 'em wi' your crutch if it gets too rowdy."

Crutchie doesn't know what it is about Jack, how he always seems to know exactly what charming thing to say, but it works. He sighs in mock exasperation. "I's pretty sure it's a sin to soak somebody in a church."

Jack grins, reaching across the table to clap the other boy on the shoulder. "Well, 's jus' a sacrifice you's gonna hafta make, ain't it?"

Bringing Daisy along dress shopping was, it turns out, an absolute stroke of genius on Medda's part. She is so incredibly blunt about everything that the salesgirl – a mousy thing with a snub nose who looks at them as if they've trailed dog dirt into her store on their shoes – picks out that Katherine is pretty sure that she might be able to put this dressmaker's out of business if she tried hard enough.

"Nah," Daisy says wrinkling her nose as Katherine emerges from behind the elaborately embroidered screen in a high-necked, ruffle-covered gown, "you looks like you's been in some terrible taffeta factory explosion."

"You're right." Katherine snorts. "Jack will hate this." She admits, looking to Medda, who only nods in agreement.

"We have some more vintage styles, if you'd prefer?" The salesgirl asks, looking as if she'd quite like to spring across the room and strangle Daisy with the veil that she's currently holding.

"Sure." Katherine nods. "Sure, let's try it."

"I presume you'll want a statement dress? Keep the attention on the gown, you know?" The girl asks, her gaze flicking to Katherine's cheek.

"Why would she want to do that?" Medda snaps at the same time as Daisy says:

"You kiddin'? We wants all the attention on that pretty face."

The salesgirl nods, looking like she doesn't believe a word of it, and Katherine feels vaguely like she wants to cry. She tries to focus on the showroom, trying to imagine how she'd describe it if it was a scene in one of her stories. The chaise longue that Medda and Daisy are perched on is overstuffed to the point of discomfort, as if one wrong move would split the seams. Honestly, Katherine kind of knows how it feels, trapped in this monstrosity of puffy sleeves.

Daisy hops up, declaring that Katherine mustn't spend another moment in that dress, and shoos her behind the dressing screen to begin unbuttoning the back.

"You ain't got a photo o' Jack, have you, buttercup?" She asks, undoing the buttons with the kind of precision that comes from years of quick changes in the theatre's wings.

Katherine tilts her head to the side, partly to allow Daisy better access to the buttons, partly to consider. She hasn't ever seen a photo of Jack. It's never really been a problem, she supposes, as Jack doesn't exactly have the type of face you forget in a hurry; if she had his talent with a pencil, she could draw every laughter line, every scar, every pore out right here and now. So, no, she doesn't have a photo of Jack, because she's never really felt as if she's needed one. Would Jack even have ever had his photograph taken? Surely he must have done – yes, when he got sentenced in the Refuge they must have taken a mug shot then. The fact that the only extant photo of Jack is probably of a bruised ten-year-old holding up a sheet with his name and inmate number on it makes her heart ache for him.

A little different from how you were raised? He's never been more spot on than that. Her own portrait was taken when she was fifteen, a few months before Lucy died, the two of them together. That photograph is gone now, floating through the atmosphere in white flakes of ash. Katherine realises with a start that she doesn't remember Lucy's face. It's there, sort of, floating just out of reach, but every time she reaches out to grasp it, it disintegrates, splitting into little flakes of white. There's a vague sort of outline, high cheekbones, soft ringlets, but other than that… Katherine feels tears start to well in her eyes that have nothing to do with the salesgirl's jibes and has to blink them away fiercely.

"No." She manages to keep her voice level. "Why?"

"'S a shame. I wanted to show that bitch the kinda guy you can get when you's beautiful and nice."

And somehow, that's just enough of a boost for Katherine to be able to look the salesgirl in the eye when she returns with an armful of dresses. Because hell, Jack is a catch. Handsomest guy in New York City, in her opinion (not that she'd ever tell him – he still needs to be able to fit that big head of his through the door). The first dress that the salesgirl puts her in from this new range, Katherine half falls in love with it before it's even been buttoned up at the back.

The dress is of a rather 1850s style and therefore completely and utterly flouts all social convention. The salesgirl looks frankly disturbed by it, which somehow makes Katherine like it all the more. Yes, she thinks, looking at it in the mirror, her parents would hate it. There's less of the fullness in the skirt, a more modern cut, but the neckline is that of a mid-century evening gown, and therefore just on the chaster side of scandalous. Jack will love it, she knows instantly and without any semblance of doubt.

Medda nods approvingly when she emerges from behind the screen. Daisy, as always, is a little less tactful, and adds, admiringly: "Your tits look great."

Katherine is shocked, she has to admit, by the cool crassness of it. But the look on the salesgirl's face, clearly completely lost with this kind of clientele, is enough to make her burst out laughing. Daisy is so much more fun than any of her high society friends.

"They do, rather, don't they?" She laughs, just to watch as the salesgirl's eyes bug out a little further from her skull. Having had her fun, Katherine turns in the mirror, examining it. "It's a lot like my mother's."

It has less ruffles, sure, but it's close. Her mother, Katherine knows, would have insisted on altering her own wedding dress to make the neckline more appropriate to the current fashions, if Katherine had asked to wear it. This way, she gets to wear something like what she and Lucy saw that day in front of the mirror all those years ago. Lucy would love it. Jack will love it. And really, who else is she trying to impress?

"I'll take this one." She nods, decisive. Medda's smile is proud and almost wide enough to crack her face in two.

When they get back to the boarding house, Daisy invades Katherine's room on the pretext of helping her to carry all of the clothing up the stairs. Katherine has never seen anybody dominate Miss Morton before, insisting that Katherine needs assistance and that nobody else will do, but it's something she wouldn't mind seeing again.

"Jack is goin' to die when he sees this." Daisy says, sliding a clothes hanger delicately into the sleeves of the chemise that she and Medda had bullied Katherine into buying, despite her rather vehement protests that she has chemises already that would do just fine.

"I might die of embarrassment." Katherine mutters, buttoning the dress into its cover ready to take it to be altered to fit her.

Daisy snorts, then, seeing Katherine's confusion, speaks. "Sorry, love, I jus'… the way he talks about you? You ain't got nothin' to worry about."

Katherine blinks. No, she supposes she doesn't have anything to worry about. Jack's the last person she needs to worry about straying – if he was in this for money or sex then he'd have been long gone by now. No, Jack's in it for the long haul. And so is she.

"Hey, Daisy?" She asks, looking up.

"Mm-hm?"

"Would you like to be my bridesmaid?"

Daisy whips around, looking as if Katherine's just hit her over the head with a mallet. "Seriously?"

"Yes." Katherine shrugs. "You've been a better friend to me today than the girls I've known since school."

"It'd be an honour."

And so, really the only thing that's left to do is to get the dress altered. However, as Katherine climbs the stairs to the Jacobs' apartment, dress cover slung over one arm, she starts to wonder about her motivations behind all of this.

Because, yes, she does need her wedding dress altered to fit her. And, yes, she wants to give her custom (and, subsequently, money) to someone who deserves it. And, yes, Sarah is the obvious choice. But. This could be an olive branch, an offer of friendship to an intelligent girl who will be inextricably entwined in her life very soon, through Jack and David. Daisy has more than proved that, contrary to Katherine's former position on the matter, girls can indeed make good friends. And Sarah is nice. But. (And there it is again, that pesky but.) She's not quite sure that's why she's doing this. Katherine has a lingering, sinking feeling that she might be doing this to stake her claim over Jack, in some sort of messed up way.

Esther gives Katherine her usual warm welcome when she turns up on their doorstep, though she seems surprised when Katherine asks to speak to Sarah, something unreadable flitting across her features, something a little bit like guilt or nervousness. Still, Esther directs her to the end of the hall.

Steeling herself, Katherine knocks on the door. A few seconds later, it swings open, revealing a decidedly rumpled Sarah, her hair messy and circles like bruises under her eyes. "Miss Pulitzer?" She blinks.

"Sarah, hey." Katherine forces a smile onto her face. Even like this, Sarah is prettier than her. She's starting to understand what drove Dorian Gray quite so mad. "I need to ask a favour."

Sarah frowns, but opens the door a little wider. It's as close to a welcome as Katherine's going to get, so she takes it, stepping inside and holding up the dress, strangely nervous.

"I've bought a wedding dress, but it needs taking in. I am useless with a needle, so I was hoping –"

"That I'd alter it for you?"

"Yes." Katherine nods, slightly more enthusiastic than she probably should be. "Yes, please. I'll pay you, of course, I don't mind about that, I just-"

"Sure." Sarah nods toward the dress cover. "That it?"

"Yes." Katherine holds it out.

Sarah unbuttons the cloth cover. Her movements are practiced, but mechanical somehow, like some puppeteer is pulling strings to make her fingers move. She nods, a jerky motion. "It's pretty." She glances over at Katherine. "Thought you'd go for somethin' more high fashion though."

Katherine smiles, attempting brightness. "I thought Jack would like this better."

"Stick it on and I'll pin it."

It's odd, somehow, undressing in somewhere so wholly not home. It reminds Katherine unpleasantly of those first few days in the Hotel Netherland, where everything felt vaguely off-kilter. It's not that she's unused to dressing in front of someone, a maid was a permanent fixture in her morning and evening routines for much of her life, but this is different somehow. There's a vulnerability to it, stripping down in Sarah's room, shedding the layers that keep her safe, exposing skin not nearly so pretty as she imagines Sarah's to be. It's a relief when Sarah fixes the final few buttons and she is covered again.

A relief, until Sarah stabs her with a pin.

"Ah!"

"Sorry." Sarah says, speaking around the multitude of other pins that she's holding between her teeth. She doesn't even look up. "You need to hold still though." I wasn't even moving.

Once all the pins are in, Sarah stands back to admire her handiwork. "You found a house yet?" She asks.

"Jack put an offer in on one last week that got accepted." Katherine replies, stepping out of the dress very carefully so as not to be turned further into a pincushion. "He's waiting to hear back about the sale going through, but we're hopeful."

"It nice?"

"It needs a lot of work, but it could be."

"Well," Sarah laughs quietly, "it's hardly going to be like you're used to."

"I know." Katherine laughs too, fastening her skirt at her waist. "Such a relief!"

"You think you're goin' to be happy there?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I know you like Jack, but… leavin' behind all that luxury? Can't be easy."

Katherine smarts at word like. She tries her best to grit her teeth and give Sarah the benefit of the doubt, but like? It sounds so flippant. As if Jack's just some new toy she's picked up and will throw away as soon as she gets bored.

"It's not." Katherine confirms, then, never more sure of anything in her entire life: "It's worth it though."

...

Sleep has always been something that came easily to Sarah. Long hours split between the factory and needlework tend to do that to you. But tonight, she can't sleep. Even in the darkness, the white dress is visible, glowing slightly in the tiniest bit of light that filters through the thin curtains. Hung on her wardrobe, as it is, it floats just above the floor, ghostly or angelic by turns, depending on where she looks at it from.

If she was another woman, in another life, she would indulge herself and tear it down from its hanger only to hack at it with scissors. But she can't do that. She doesn't have the money or the strength to do something so impetuous. Still, she rises, takes it down from the hanger, examines it, running the soft material through work-hardened fingers. Strips off her nightgown, pulls it on. It doesn't fit her properly even with the way she's taken it in. Katherine has more flesh on her body, curves in places that Sarah doesn't, the benefit of a childhood where food was plentiful. She wonders whether that's something that Jack likes about his wife-to-be, the roundness of her breasts, the flare of her hips, or whether he just overlooks it. Whether he prefers something a little more streamlined, more straightforward.

Either way, Katherine will look like the princess she was brought up to be. And Sarah? Well, if she even gets invited to the wedding, she will stand there in the same dress she's worn to synagogue for the past four years, keeping her coat on to cover how short the sleeves have become, and she will watch. Quiet, how she's always supposed to be.