The Girls at the Kingfisher Club A Novel by Genevieve Valentine

Author:Genevieve Valentine
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

seventeen

Some Sunny Day

Lou was almost done packing by the time Jo came back to the room. The bronze dress Lou wore out dancing was draped over her bedspread, the only thing of Lou’s left.

“I want to go out,” said Lou.

Jo felt too empty to argue anything except, “It’s dangerous.”

“I know. But the girls have been trapped like mice up here for two days, and this is the last time we’ll all be together for God knows how long. I want to leave off like we started—dancing.”

The difference between now and when they had started was that they were no longer invisible. Their father’s suspicious eye was on them now, and he was determined to keep them unsullied goods in a busy market.

But Jo was too tired to be frightened, just now, and Lou was right. Who knew when any of them might ever see her again?

No. That didn’t bear thinking about.

And under all that was something deeper and meaner and true; Jo wanted to see him, just once, before he was someone else’s husband, and gone for good.

“Call them in,” Jo said.

Jo had washed her face with cold water on her way back from the library—she had been flushed—and when she was alone she rested her fingertips on her temples for a moment, just to bring a little feeling back.

The room filled with them, primly, as if they’d been prepared for a scolding.

“All in, General,” said Doris, closing the door. She moved behind the younger girls, rested one hand on Sophie’s shoulder and the other on Violet’s.

Then eleven pairs of eyes were fixed on Jo, and for the space of a breath she felt the impossible weight of protecting any of them, let alone all of them, and hated their mother for dying.

“This is how things stand,” she said when she trusted her voice. “Lou is leaving us. She leaves tomorrow for Chicago, with a man named Tom Marlowe. You might remember him from the Marquee—he was the host there.”

The silence was absolute. Jo could hear pigeons walking on the ledge, it was so quiet.

At last, Ella ventured, a hint of poison in the tone, “Tom from last night?”

“Yes,” said Jo, and pressed on quickly, “he was very taken with Lou at the Marquee, and didn’t like the look of the gentleman she was with last night, and so everything is already settled with Father.”

A moment too late to be casual, Doris whistled and said, “Lord, you dodged a bullet, Lou. That other one’s a mummy.”

“But you—but Father called us down in front of him,” Violet said, her voice shaking. Fear or anger, it was hard to say. “It was so awful.”

You. Jo’s throat went dry.

“He suspects us, from the papers,” Lou said. “Tom put him off the trail.”

“Then he has a terrible way of going about it,” said Rebecca.

Hattie and Mattie exchanged unconvinced looks.

Sophie whispered, “Tomorrow? She’s going tomorrow?”

Jo ignored it. Sophie wasn’t deaf; if she didn’t like it, that wasn’t Jo’s problem.

“Doris will be seeing Sam Lewisohn again, since she was so keen on him the first time.

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