Between Earth and Sky(6)

Ignoring the niggling voice inside her head, Alma’s feet found the floor and propelled her toward the blackboard.

“You look like an Alice to me,” Alma said, pointing to the second name on the board and nodding.

After a moment, the girl raised her hand and gestured to the same name. “Awlis.”

Alma smiled. “Al—”

Miss Wells’s ruler smacked against the blackboard.

Alma jumped. Alice cringed.

“Return to your seat, Miss Alma.”

“I only wanted to—”

“You’re not to rise again until the lunch bell, and you shan’t be joining the others at recess.”

Her shoulders fell. What a nasty old ninny Miss Wells was for punishing her so when all she’d done was help. She trudged to her desk at the back of the room. Several sets of deep brown eyes followed her—curious, but otherwise cold. She picked up the heavy chalk to continue her lines, but could not pry her attention from the blackboard.

After her demonstration, the girls seemed to catch on. One after another, they shuffled up to the front of the room and, without pause, pointed to the name below the one previously selected. The girl Alma remembered from yesterday, the one with the doll, chose the name Margaret. Another girl, whom Alma guessed to be her age as well, selected Rose.

When all sixteen girls had picked new names, Miss Wells turned to the boys. Despite his shorn hair and new military-style suit, Alma recognized the first boy to rise by his bright, foxlike eyes. He crossed to the blackboard with the same pluck he’d shown climbing from the wagon. Mimicking the girl who had gone before him, his outstretched finger moved toward the next name on the list, Ruth.

Alma winced and waited for Miss Wells’s ruler to rise. But the boy’s hand stopped short. He dropped his arm and cocked his head.

The grandfather clock sounded in the foyer, each clang echoing through the silence.

Alma teetered on the edge of her seat but dared move no farther.

Miss Wells turned the ruler over in her hand, its sharp edge scratching against her dry palm. Otherwise, she didn’t move—not a blink, not a breath. Even her placid expression seemed chiseled in stone.

The boy’s gaze cut sideways, eyeing the wooden stick, then back to the board. He swung his hand to the list of boys’ names and pointed at the top one.

“Harry.” Miss Wells laid aside her ruler and inked the name into her ledger.





CHAPTER 4


Philadelphia, 1906



“You know this man? This Harry Muskrat?”

“Yes.” Alma handed her husband another square of folded newsprint. The ink was smeared where she’d worried it in her hands on the walk over to his office. “This article mentions his time at Stover. That’s how I know he’s the same man of my acquaintance.”

She sat perfectly still as he scanned the article, forced her breath to come in even draws, forced her feet not to tap, her hands not to stir, forced her face to mimic his impassive expression. A faint, musty smell hit her nose—that of the towering bookshelves lining the room. Most days she hardly noticed. Today it dredged up unwelcome memories of Stover and her father’s study. She sought distraction in the spicy scent of her husband’s Bay Rum aftershave, in the whir of motorcars and clink of carriages on the street below, but to little avail.

“Indicted for murder.” Stewart shook his head and slid the newspapers across his desk. “Dreadful, darling. You must be—”

“Harry would never do something like this.”

He leaned back in his leather-upholstered armchair and worked a hand across his chin. “I didn’t know you kept in contact with any of your former . . . er . . . classmates.”

Alma swallowed and looked down. The tea stain upon her dress had set a faint sepia color, like an aged photograph. She hid it beneath her folded hands. “I don’t.” It had been easier that way, after what happened. “We, that is, Harry and I, lost touch when I returned to Philadelphia.”

“That was what, fifteen years ago? How can you be certain the intervening years have not entirely changed this man?”

“Changed him how? Into a murderer? That’s preposterous.” She stopped and tried to swallow the rising hysteria in her voice. Her husband’s face maintained its reserve, but his hands—fingers locked and knuckles tensed—hinted at apprehension.

She inhaled deeply and continued with more calm. “Harry was gentle, ruled by reason. He was smart, sophisticated . . .”

“Civilized?”

Alma cringed at the word. “Would you ask that of a white man?”

“I would ask that of anyone accused of murder—white, red, yellow, or black.”

Silence crept between them. Stewart straightened the papers on his desk, aligning each corner with careful precision. He repositioned his pen squarely upon its tray. “Darling, life can change a man.”

“But murder?” Frustration drove her from her seat to the window. She could feel tears mounting with each blink. As before, Harry’s face surfaced in her mind. Innocent. He was the only one among them who’d always been innocent.

Outside, the street-side oaks trembled with a breeze. The morning’s golden rays morphed and scattered through the leaves. Fall was coming. She’d felt its cool breath on the back of her neck as she hurried to Stewart’s office. She saw its hand in the pallor of the leaves. “I cannot let him hang.”