The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

Author:Laura Moriarty
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Biographical, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101585658
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2012-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

When the German saw her, he stood, and met her at the low curve of the stairs.

“You found what you needed?” he asked quietly, leaning down. He smelled like salted peanuts.

“Yes!” she whispered. She had the crazed urge to embrace him, to risk getting oil on the front of her dress. She was that ecstatic. She put her gloved hand to her throat. “I have an address! An actual name and address! Thank you so very much!”

He frowned and looked at his watch. “We will go outside,” he said.

She understood he was ushering her off the property, getting her out the door as quickly as possible. That was fine with her. Outside, she nearly ran down the steps, her feet as light and nimble as a girl’s. She almost knocked into a passing stout woman who wore no hat. Even after Cora apologized, the woman gave her a warning look.

“You are all right?” The German was still coming down the steps, putting on his cap.

“Yes!” She breathed in the cookie-sweet air and smiled. “But thank you! Thank you so much!”

“You seem very…” He frowned again and flapped his hands. “Excited. Maybe you should sit?”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. A truck sputtered by, and she raised her voice. “I’m delighted, actually! I can’t tell you.” She couldn’t. She couldn’t explain to him what this meant to her, what he had made possible. She’d get a letter in the post by tomorrow. It would likely reach Haverhill, Massachusetts, in just a few days. The German seemed happy for her, his eyes bright behind his spectacles.

“You’ve been so kind, and you don’t even know me. I wish I could thank you somehow.”

“I could use a cold drink,” he said.

Her smile was still. Was he joking? She didn’t understand. Was he taunting her about her foolishness the previous week? But he looked serious. And he was waiting.

“Right now?” she asked. It would have to be now. She certainly wasn’t going to arrange an appointment, or some kind of date, for later. She wasn’t coming back here again. “Aren’t you working?”

“I am always working. I live on-site, upstairs there.” He pointed through the gate to the second floor of the outbuilding across the lot. Metal stairs led to a door. “I can leave as soon as Mass gets out. As long as everything is running, I take breaks as I like.”

“Oh,” she said. She glanced about her, at the people walking past them on the sidewalk, the cars going by on the street. She was being asked to get a drink with a foreign handyman, and she wasn’t wearing her ring. But if anyone around her cared, they didn’t let on at all.

“There’s a drugstore around the corner,” he said.

She nodded, not meaning that she’d agreed to the plan, only that she had heard him. She wasn’t sure what to do. In truth, she did feel like celebrating, and he was the only person she could celebrate with, and certainly, he deserved a thank you. In any case, he didn’t have designs on her—he’d made that clear the other week.

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