The Giver of Stars(110)

She looked down at Virginia, checking that she had finished, then adjusted her dress and placed the baby against her shoulder for winding.

‘You know, I was thinking …’ Sven continued. ‘Maybe when you come home we could get another dog. There’s a farmer over at Shelbyville got a hunting bitch I’ve fancied for a long time that he wants to put to pup. She’s got a sweet nature. It’s good for a child to grow up around a dog. If we get a puppy, he and Virginia could grow up together. What do you say?’

‘Sven …’

‘I mean, we don’t have to get a dog. Could wait till she’s a little older. I just thought …’

‘You remember I once told you I would never tell you to leave me?’ Still she kept her eyes on the child.

‘I do indeed. Almost made you write it on a piece of paper for proof.’ He raised a wry smile.

‘Well … I made a mistake. I need you to go.’

He leaned forward, his head cocked. ‘I’m sorry – what?’

‘And I need you to take Virginia.’ When she finally looked up at him her eyes were wide and serious. ‘I was arrogant, Sven. I thought I could live as I wanted, long as I didn’t hurt nobody. But I’ve had time to think in here – and I worked it out. You don’t get to do that in Lee County, maybe not in the whole of Kentucky. Not if you’re a woman. You play by their rules or they … well, they squash you like a bug.’

Her voice was calm and even, as if she had rehearsed the words in her many silent hours. ‘I need you to take her far away, to New York state or Chicago, maybe even the west coast, if there’s work. Take her somewhere beautiful, somewhere she can have opportunities and a good education and not have to worry about whatever shitty scars her family left on her future before she was even born. Take her from people who will judge her for her name long before she can even spell it.’

He was nonplussed. ‘You’re talking crazy, Marge. I’m not leaving you.’

‘For twenty years? You know that’s what they’re going to give me even if I get manslaughter. And it’ll be worse if it’s murder.’

‘But you didn’t do nothing wrong!’

‘You think they care a whit about that? You know how this town works. You know they’re gunning for me.’

He looked at her as if she were mad. ‘I’m not going. So you can forget it.’

‘Well, I’m not going to see you any more. So, you don’t get a say.’

‘What? What are you talking about now?’

‘This is the last time I’m going to see you. It’s one of the few rights I get in here, the right not to see visitors. Sven, I know you’re a good man, and you’ll do anything to help me. And, by God, I love you for it. But this is about Virginia now. So I need you to promise me you’ll do as I ask, and never bring our daughter back to this place.’ She leaned back against the wall.

‘But … what about the trial?’

‘I don’t want you there.’

Sven stood up. ‘This is crazy talk. I’m not listening to this. I –’

Margery’s voice lifted. She lurched forward and gripped his hand, stopping him. ‘Sven, I have nothing left. I have no freedom, no dignity, no future. The only damn thing I have is hope that for this girl, my heart, the thing I love most in the whole world, it might work out different. So if you love me, like you say you do, give me what I’m asking. I don’t want my baby’s childhood marked out in visits to the jail. I will not have you both watch me waste away week by week, year by year in the state prison, with lice in my hair and the stink of the slop buckets, beat down by the bigots that run this town and going slowly stir crazy. I will not have her seeing it. You’ll make her happy, I know you can, and when you talk of me, you tell her not of this, but of me riding out on Charley, in the mountains, doing what I loved to do.’

His hand closed around hers. His voice broke, and he kept shaking his head, in a way that suggested he wasn’t even sure he was doing it. ‘I can’t leave you, Marge.’

She withdrew her hand. She took the sleeping baby and placed her gently in his arms. Then Margery leaned forward, and placed a kiss on the baby’s head. She kept her lips there for a moment, her eyes closed tight. She opened them, drinking her in as if she were imprinting some part of her deep within. ‘Bye-bye, sweetheart. Mama loves you very much.’

She touched the back of his knuckles lightly with her fingertips, an instruction. And then, as Sven sat in shock, Margery O’Hare stood upright, her hand braced on the table, and shouted for the jailer to walk her to her cell.

She didn’t look back.

True to her word, he was the last visitor she saw. Alice arrived that afternoon with a pound cake and Deputy Dulles said regretfully (for he did love Alice’s cakes) that he was real sorry but Miss O’Hare was adamant she didn’t want to see anyone that day.

‘Is there a problem with the baby?’

‘Baby ain’t there no more. She left with her daddy this morning.’

He was real sorry but rules was rules and he couldn’t force Miss O’Hare to see Alice. He did, however, agree to take the cake with the promise he’d carry it down to her later. When Kathleen Bligh went two days later she would receive the same response, and Sophia and Mrs Brady after her.