Share? Kate wanted to kick Maud’s booted legs out from under her. Emmie was the most generous person Kate knew.
Which was, of course, just the problem.
Kate’s head ached with thinking about it. She’d pay it back, of course. She wasn’t sure how, but she would. But it ate at her all the same that all this time, from the very beginning, Emmie had been lying to her.
The engineers stayed. And stayed. When they finally took their leave, with promises of return engagements, there was Miss Lewes in their room, and Kate could have screamed in frustration.
“Emmie?” she tried whispering, once Miss Lewes had subsided into snoring slumber on the third cot, but Miss Lewes murmured and turned and Kate had to retreat beneath the pillow.
It wasn’t until after breakfast the next day that Kate finally caught Emmie at the chicken coop, draped over the chicken wire, looking mournfully at her poultry.
As impossible as it was, the mud seemed even thicker here. Kate sank to the tops of her boots with every step. “Emmie?”
Emmie looked up at her, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “My hens are roosters.”
“What?”
“My hens.” Emmie sniffed, scrubbing her nose with a large, monogrammed handkerchief. “Miss Lewes just told me. The reason none of my hens are laying is that they’re all roosters. I bought seventy-two roosters instead of seventy-two hens. What are we to do with seventy-two roosters?”
“Make stew?” It would be so easy just to let herself be drawn back into the day-to-day, to let it all go. But she couldn’t. And Kate minded terribly that Emmie was making her feel sorry for her just when she wanted to be angry at her.
“They didn’t have big combs, so I thought . . . But apparently, not all French roosters do.”
“Yes, things aren’t always what they appear, are they?”
Emmie bit her lip. “Kate—”
“You told me the Unit was paying for travel and living expenses.”
Emmie ducked her head, looking down at her chickens. “I told you that alumnae were donating money.”
“And you’re an alumna? That’s pure sophistry, Emmie, and you know it.” There was a world of difference between being bankrolled by an anonymous group of donors and having her expenses paid by someone she knew. “Why did you assume I couldn’t pay? I’m not a pauper, Emmie. My family aren’t paupers.”
“I know that,” said Emmie, a little too quickly.
“We’re not poor, Emmie,” Kate said fiercely. But of course they were to Emmie, with her Fifth Avenue mansion and her camp in the Adirondacks and her “cottage” in Newport that was bigger than most apartment buildings. It didn’t mean anything to Emmie that Kate’s stepfather, the police officer, could put meat on the table or lace curtains on the windows; those were inconsequentialities to Emmie, these things that to Kate and her mother had seemed so monumental and miraculous. “I have a job. I had a job.”
Emmie looked at Kate with wide, childlike blue eyes. “Yes, but why shouldn’t my mother pay our way? The cost wasn’t anything to her—she spends more than that each week on stamps!”
“No. It’s not anything to her.” The air stank of chicken excrement; Kate’s boots were sticky with mud and feathers.
Emmie mistook Kate’s words for agreement. “And you know she’s always liked you, Kate. She wanted you to be her secretary. . . .”
“And I said no.”
Emmie’s forehead wrinkled. “I never blamed you for that. I know my mother can be a bit . . .”
“It wasn’t because of your mother.” Kate rather liked Emmie’s mother; there was something about her drive that spoke to Kate. She would have loved to be Mrs. Van Alden’s secretary, to travel with her around the world, helping her to write strongly worded letters to the editors of all the major papers. “I said no because I didn’t want to be beholden. I was your friend, Emmie. Not your project.” There was a horrible moment where Emmie was silent, the only sounds the clucking of the chickens. “Wasn’t I?”
“Of course! You know I would never have got through Smith without you. That’s why I wanted you here so badly. I knew I couldn’t do this without you. And I knew that you—well, you might not have the money to spare, so I thought—I thought that if it were all paid already . . .”
“You shouldn’t have assumed—”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have, but when I started to tell you about the Unit, you looked so skeptical, and I knew you were going to say no. . . .”