“Mrs. Walker—” Clementine raised her hand from the table and placed it back down. “I’m not working right now, and I have no incentive to comfort you. What I’m doing you is a favor. My time is valuable. The only thing I ask is that you respect me by taking me at my word.”
The roast was hissing, the room at a boil, and Clementine seemed awfully cooler than Isabelle in the moment.
“I apologize for my tone,” Isabelle said, taking a breath to calm herself.
“It’s understandable. But you must get to the point now.”
There was another pause. Then Isabelle’s voice came out low, empty, and quick.
“What does he ask of you?”
“Here we are,” Clementine said, as though she’d been waiting for those exact words. “George and I have never done anything untoward. Physical touch…it does not seem to interest him.”
Isabelle was able to look up then. She lingered on Clementine’s gaze, her careful charm, the quiet in her eyes, and finally saw behind her beauty the guarded reserve of magnetism that lay hidden within her. It was surely what made them come to her, and then, in the days afterward, come back again.
“George is more a friend than anything. He likes to sit bedside and talk. Of you and your son. Those two brothers he works with. His past. He’s very chatty if given an opening.”
“Now that does sound like George.”
“He can go on. Yet he always respects my time. Although he pays like the others, he’s always asking after Elsy, and requests I put it toward her upbringing. Which is where all my money goes anyway.”
The child was playing on the ground with a music box, a small ballerina twirling endlessly on a wooden platform. The box must’ve been broken, as no song accompanied the twirling, but she seemed unbothered by it.
Isabelle was encouraged by Clementine’s boldness, her utter transparency, for it represented a detachment that spoke not of love, but a simple fondness, a professional sort no less. Yet it did not dispel all of her concerns—did not explain the foremost question on her mind.
“I do wonder…” She glanced at Clementine uncertainly. Her voice trembled. She felt like a dog—asking a stranger of the intimacies of her husband, as though she knew him not at all. The embarrassment burned her insides, and she had a craving to get up and go. “Is George…unguarded with you? Is he open in that way?”
It was the first time Isabelle saw emotion in Clementine’s expression, and it gave her the answer she sought without a single word uttered. Clementine responded almost under her breath, her eyes sympathetic as they met Isabelle’s.
“It’s what he pays for. It has little to do with me.”
“What exactly does he do?” Isabelle asked. “Hug you? Does George want a hug?”
It sounded like a joke, but she could not have been more serious.
“Sometimes, maybe, yes.”
“Is it more than that? Does he cry for you?”
Clementine looked at the ground, her lips tight, eyes veiled.
“I see.” Isabelle stood up quickly, grabbing the basket of fruit as she readied to leave.
“It could be any girl,” Clementine said.
“But he’s chosen you.”
The room was suffocating in its heat and Isabelle felt desperate to breathe fresh air. She’d reached the door when she felt the hand clasp her wrist and she pulled away with all her might, turning to catch Clementine breathing heavily, with an intensity that rivaled Isabelle’s own state.
“He hasn’t chosen me,” Clementine said. “He’s chosen you.”
She spoke as a boss might to an underling, directives that stung Isabelle.
“He fears you. And he would have nothing if he was to lose your trust in him. So he can’t cry for you. Because he loves you. That’s how he operates—yes, it’s flawed, but it’s George. You can be angry at me if it helps you in some way, but if it’s because you think I’ve taken something from your marriage, you’d be mistaken. For George, at least, I’m helping keep it strong.”
Isabelle opened the door and stepped out. The heat from inside the home had been so staggering that the sunlight was like a cool breeze. She stood along the railing of the home, peering out toward the street, where a man led a meandering tow horse down the way. By the time they were beyond her, she had calmed, and when she wheeled around, Clementine was leaning against the doorjamb, her head cocked in concern.
“I have given up so much for that man,” Isabelle said. “Twenty-two years. And I hardly know him.”