.
them with one finger.
A part of him didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to think his brother would have left a woman destitute, but it certainly appeared that way. “What was she doing in the alley?”
“Looking for food.” She looked him straight in the eye, was utterly serious. “She was penniless. Had been kicked out of the place she’d been staying. She was so ill. Coughing.” She shook her head but didn’t attempt to hide the tears forming again. “I took her to my apartment. She was so weak she could barely walk up the steps. She got better. A little, in the weeks that followed, but then...”
Compassion filled him and he reached over, took ahold of her hand and squeezed it gently. “You did what you could.” He looked at the baby. Grace. His niece. “Most likely saved Grace’s life.”
She nodded and then removed her hand from beneath his and started filling the bag with the letters not from Vera. “Grace is a good baby. Has been from the moment she was born.”
Heaviness filled his lungs, his heart, at the idea of a woman searching for food.
If anyone knew what it was like to do that, search for food, to be hungry, it was them. Him and Joe. Nothing during the past ten years had chased away the feelings he’d known as a child. Of being hungry. So hungry the pain had been strong enough to make him cry. As he got older, those same pains made him angry. So angry he swore he’d never become an actor. Never traverse the countryside in a dilapidated wagon singing and doing comedy acts for pennies that never totaled enough to feed them for more than a week at best.
Yet, here he was. In the same business he’d always been in. Times had changed though. And he wasn’t acting. Never would act again. Joe had been the actor and had loved it. He’d found work as soon as they’d arrived in Los Angeles.
“Can you contact your brother. Tell him Grace is here?”
Jack didn’t look her way. Couldn’t right now. She wouldn’t like his answer. He didn’t like it, either.
He let out the air that had grown stagnant inside his lungs. “You’ve taken care of Grace since she was born?” He already knew the answer, but was trying to figure out his next steps. Steps that were completely foreign to him.
“Yes.”
“And paid to bring her here?”
“Yes.”
“What did your family think of that?” Another thought formed. “Or Vera’s family?”
There was that flash in her eyes again. A mixture of sadness and fear. “Neither of us have any family. Vera had worked for the circus. That’s how she got to Chicago. And she didn’t have any family to return to.”
Jack wanted to know about her. Helen. But a gut sense said she wouldn’t answer any questions about herself. He stood up and picked up the bag once again full of mail. “Is the circus how she met Joe?”
“Yes. He was a magician.”
Jack had already known that as well. Joe had perfected several magic tricks over the years, and had used them to land more than one job. After opening the closet, he set the bag inside. “Had he continued on with the circus? Left when it moved on?”
“No. Vera said they both stayed in Chicago. That Jack had gotten a job at one of the playhouses for a short time, but then had to return here and said he would send for her. That’s when he gave her this address and said she was to contact him here if she needed anything.”
Of course Joe did. That’s what he’d always done. Passed the buck.
Jack closed the door and stood there for a moment. The baby had started to fuss and Helen was scooping her off the couch. That baby was his niece. Joe’s baby, and as inadvertent as that may be, Grace was now his responsibility.
The mess with the Broadbents was nothing compared to this. What the hell was he going to do?
“I’ll pay you,” he said as the thought formed.
“Excuse me?”
It might not be the ultimate answer, but it would do for now. “I’ll pay you to continue to take care of Grace.”
She glanced at the baby, and then up at him. Sorrow filled her eyes as she sadly shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why? You have been since she was born.”
“Because I promised Vera I’d bring her here. And I have.”
She had all right, and that could open a can of worms that could take him down. It would be all the Wagner brothers needed to convince the owners of the new theater to break his contract and go with them.
Right now, it was just the two of them, Julia and Miss Hobbs who knew about Grace. He had to keep it that way.
“Just until I find Joe.” Then he could send them to Florida, or to wherever Joe was. Let his brother take responsibility for his own actions this time.
She glanced down and the smile she provided the baby might very well be the most precious and beautiful smile he’d seen to date. But then, she closed her eyes and bit her lips together. When she lifted her lids, looked at him, tears had welled in her eyes again. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”
Money. It had to be the money. Traveling here had probably taken all she’d had. He didn’t have much to spare himself, but he did have a bank account that he’d been depositing any royalties owed to Joe from past projects, knowing Joe would return some day and want it. Expect it.
He hadn’t used that money to pay the Broadbents because Joe had sold them shares in future projects, not past, but he would use Joe’s money for this, his daughter. And not feel guilty about it.
He had no idea what it cost to take care of a baby, so merely said, “Whatever it costs, I’ll pay you.”
She kissed the baby on the head. He let out a sigh of relief and pulled his billfold out of his pocket. To his shame, he had only a few dollars on him. Pulling them out, he said, “I’ll go to the bank and get more tomorrow.”
She laid the baby back down on the couch and picked up her purse. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. For Grace’s sake, I can’t.” Turning about, she started for the door.
“Wait! You can’t leave!” He started after her, but a crunch beneath his foot made him pause. Her glasses. He’d broken them. She was already out the door. “Wait!”
* * *
Tears once again blurred Helen’s vision. This time it wasn’t just heartache, there was anger inside her, too. Anger that her life would never be her own. No matter where she went. She couldn’t continue to put Grace in danger. That’s all there was to it.
A baby’s cry—Grace’s—made her feet stumble, but she forced herself to keep moving forward. Down the hall. In Chicago, after leaving her cousin’s house, she’d gone to the edge of the city, where she thought the lack of large businesses would make the mob not as prevalent. That hadn’t been true. The neighbor of Amery’s grocery store hadn’t been run by the Outfit. It had been a smaller mob, one that oversaw little more than the bootlegging of whiskey to the area speakeasies. But nonetheless, they’d been there. Mobsters in big fancy cars, their mugs on street corners.
It was there, late at night, looking out the windows of the grocery store that she’d concluded that there was no getting out. Not for her. Any one of those thugs could have been a stool pigeon for her uncle.
Grace was still crying, and Helen balled her hands into fists as she neared the door of the studio.
She’d created many disguises for herself over the past two years, everything from a young boy to an old woman, but hadn’t been able to carry much besides Grace all the way to the railroad station. Therefore, she’d left most everything behind. Other than the drab dresses, head scarves and her glasses.
Her glasses. She’d