Westside Saints by W.M. Akers

Author:W.M. Akers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

Night had solidified by the time we got back to the sidewalk. The snow had stopped. Eastsiders muscled their way along Broadway with their collars up and heads down. No one seemed to care that in a few hours, a miracle was to occur on the Flat. I didn’t care myself.

Back on the Westside, the mood was different. There were fewer people, as always, but everyone we saw was walking south and west, for Bully Byrd, for relief from death. For the first time since summer, I saw people walk my streets with smiles.

When we reached Washington Square, Mary kept on toward Sixth Avenue, but I turned for home.

“I thought the Flat was that way,” she said, “past the Thicket?”

“There’s nothing there we need to see.”

“And what are you going to do while the people of the Westside gather to witness the miracle of the age?”

“I’m going to go inside, light a fire, and get warm.”

“Won’t be easy—you’ve no front window.”

“That’s right. Damn it. Then I’m going to go inside, light a fire, and shiver. I’m going to get a little drunk and sleep for a year, and when I wake up, I’m going to meet with Ida Greene and form a plan to annihilate the Roebling Company, Westside and East.”

I grabbed her wrist and dragged her down the overgrown lip of the park. Even through the anger and the cold, I felt ridiculous, but that didn’t mean I stopped.

We were halfway to my door when she succeeded in wrestling away from my hand. She sneered, showing not just an absence of love but a wealth of contempt. For the first time, I didn’t want to throw myself into her arms. I just wanted to bring her to heel.

“Roebling has nothing to do with this,” she said. “It’s the Byrds, and it always has been. Don’t you want to see what they’ve got planned?”

“I’m too tired and too hungover to waste my evening admiring their theatrical fraud.”

“So they’re fraudsters again now? I thought you had come around to the idea of Bully Byrd’s resurrection.”

“I still think he may have come back from death. Anything is possible. Tonight, I just don’t care.”

“He tried to kill me. That doesn’t matter to you?”

“Storrs Roebling tried to kill me twice.”

“He said otherwise.”

“And the fact that you believe him shows just how daft you are.”

I regretted it as soon as I said it, but I didn’t take it back. The effort of holding back with this woman, of guarding her feelings and guarding her life, had rubbed me raw. I was no closer to telling her I was her daughter—not because I didn’t want her to know, but because in that moment, I didn’t think she deserved me.

“I’m glad you finally admit it,” she said. “You think I’m stupid. Since I hired you—”

“Hired me! You haven’t paid me a cent!”

“And I’m getting what I paid for. Since I engaged your services, you’ve done nothing but lie, scold, and treat me like a spoiled, useless twit.”

“If you act like a moron, people will treat you like one.

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