A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner Read Free Book Online Page B

Andrew would bend down and hold the boy by the shoulders or look deep into the eyes of the beggar woman. “Where did she go?” “In the cab,” the person would say. “What do you mean, ‘in the cab’?” And the messenger would point to the busy street where the cab is no longer in sight. “She went in the cab.” Andrew would then dash back inside his brother’s flat. He would fumble with the luggage keys. He might suggest to his brother that they summon a policeman. He would kneel at Lily’s trunk and his fingers would tremble as he inserted the key into the lock. He wouldn’t know what he was looking for. How long would it take him to find the letter inside the book? Two minutes? Five? Longer? Eventually he would find it. And he would read it. And the many minutes would have tick-tocked the passing of time.
    And she’d be gone.
    I don’t know how long I sat imagining what would have happened had Lily not contracted the fever.
    At some point I realized I couldn’t continue to sit there. I had no business taking the book. Andrew hadn’t asked me for anything from Lily’s trunk. It was my own selfish desire to touch his grief that made me remove the book from Lily’s trunk to give to him. I’d even contemplated reading verses aloud to him, to prove what an amazing caregiver I was. My own hunger for meaning had led me to take the book, because I wanted to be the angel-nurse who helped Andrew find his way out of his in-between place.
    I ought never to have taken the book.
    I folded the letter and placed it back inside, along with the certificate of annulment. I had to put the book back where it belonged, where it would play the part destiny had already assigned it. I winced at the thought of Andrew reading the letter when he at last arrived at his brother’s. The cruelty of it was beyond belief, especially to a grieving man. But clearly it was not for me to decide the fate of this letter. It was already ordained that he should find it.
    I rose, knowing that if I stayed and pondered the matter longer I might rip the terrible letter to shreds.
It is not mine to do anything with
, I whispered aloud as I dropped the little book back into my apron pocket and felt for the luggage keys so that I could return it to its rightful place. Not mine.
    The dormitory hall was still quiet as I made my way back outside, into the corridor that led to the ferry house. The noon meal was concluding and the building was again starting to bustle with both new arrivals and those who’d passed their inspections and were waiting for ferries to take them to shore. I quickened my step and arrived breathless at the baggage building. It was as busy as it had been earlier, perhaps more so. I made my way to the front, and was disappointed to see that Lily’s trunk had apparently already been put away. Andrew’s still sat there. I looked for the boy who had helped me earlier. I found him stacking crates on a far wall. I called out to him. He made his way quickly to me, as if to quiet me.
    “You’re not supposed to be opening anyone’s luggage. We don’t open luggage here. We store it.”
    He’d asked for clarification while I was gone. And had gotten it.
    “After this I promise I won’t ask again. I doubly promise,” I said. “I just need to know where the little trunk went. Mr. Gwynn’s big trunk is right where I left it. But the little one is gone. I need to know where it is.”
    “They took it.”
    “Who took it?”
    “I don’t know. Inspectors. They had that one on a list.”
    “What do you mean? What list?” But even as I said this, a tremor of dread wriggled inside me. I knew even before he said it what kind of list Lily’s trunk had been on. In that instant I knew why inspectors had taken it.
    “There was a killing sickness on the ship that trunk was on. No one’s sure which passenger had it first. They took all the luggage of the people that had it.”
    The luggage of the people who had died of it.
    Lily’s trunk