Woman 99 by Greer Macallister

Author:Greer Macallister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2019-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Had I found Phoebe silent and unresponsive in the first week of Goldengrove, I might have been discouraged. I might have given up. I might have fled back to the safety of my parents’ home, even knowing the devil’s bargain of a marriage that awaited me there.

But now, there was no part of me left that would let that happen.

I had learned how whispers and bribes and arrangements could be currency, and I used exactly as many of them as I needed to. A promise of a future favor to Nora, a pinched lemon for Damaris, tidbits of gossip for Mouse. Whatever it took. By trading favors, I managed to accomplish two goals: convincing the forewoman in the soapmaking operation that I’d been reassigned to the kitchen crew for a week, while communicating to the kitchen manager that I would be coming to help with the jams and jellies only in the mornings. After the midday meal, I slipped away. Every day, I was free for three hours. And every day, I retraced my path up the stairs and into the closet to don the nurse’s uniform, then slipped down the hall to the superintendent’s office.

The first day, I found him seated behind the desk with the empty tumbler waiting on the flat leather in front of him, his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm. He wore the same brown tweed suit as the day before, looking just as rumpled but at least no worse, and I had an odd sense that I had stumbled into a stage play, with an actor rehearsing the same scene over and over, steady on his mark until another player stepped onstage to give his cue.

“Fair Nurse, welcome!” he cried, moving the glass aside as if he’d just noticed it. “I was hoping to see you again. I need to apologize for my behavior yesterday. It was unfair of me to take advantage of you.”

“You didn’t take advantage,” I said gratefully.

“Kind of you to say. Nevertheless, I’m sorry. I enjoyed the willing ear. You haven’t shared with anyone what I told you, have you? It would be. . .detrimental to my reputation.”

“Of course I haven’t. Anything you say is safe with me.”

His eyes brightened. “We all need someone we can tell the truth to. It’s like a valve in a boiler. If you don’t let some steam out, it’ll come bursting out on its own and not when you want it to.”

“You’re under a great deal of pressure, after all,” I said. If he wanted me to be a confidante, I would make it easy for him.

“I am! More so now than before. The money, you know.”

“Yes, I had a question about that. Why are the investors so focused on the money? Surely, if they’re anything like the Sidwells, they have enough.”

He tapped a ledger on his desk and said, “Excellent question. We get payments from the state for each indigent patient to pay for their care. The paid patients, of course, we get payments from their families.

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