“Too rough... with the cloth,” Mrs. Kingston said. “Bring Maid. Charles... is he gone? I didn’t want him... near the children. Can Maid... or you... stoke furnace? Children may get... cold.”
Ella straightened, dropping the damp rag into the basin. Beside it on the nightstand was a locket with the children’s picture in it. She couldn’t resist it, she slipped it around her neck. For a moment she was lost in memories. Teaching Muriel to ice-skate last year. Laughing at John’s mangling of jokes.
Mrs. Kingston said, “You’re not... not... ill now?” Her voice was barely audible.
“No. It was very cold out on the street. I suppose it broke my fever.” In the face of all the subsequent death — even a murder, it seemed — her knot of resentment had loosened a little. She stepped closer to the bed, close enough to see Mrs. Kingston’s feverish eyes glitter beneath her liverish blue lids. “Don’t worry,” she said to the dying woman. “Everything will be fine.”
Mrs. K. shook her head, gasping with the effort. “Children? Listened for them, but... Can’t hear them. Why haven’t they...? Tell them... stand... there by the door. Please. Not inside where I could... infect. But please... need to see them.” Her tears were pink like Muriel’s had been, tinged with blood.
“I’ll go do that,” Ella said.
“Locket,” Mrs. K. barked out. Struggling against a coughing fit, she freed her hand from beneath the blankets. It shook with the effort of reaching for the gold and enamel oval.
Ella opened it up. She removed the photograph on the right side, of Mr. Kingston perhaps ten years ago looking slimmer and more agreeable. She pushed Mrs. Kingston’s hand down onto the bed to steady it, and she pressed the photo into it. The picture on the left side showed John and Muriel holding baby Annie. It was the reason she’d taken the locket.
Mrs. Kingston’s face spasmed.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Ella said. “You can see I’m taking some of your things. I won’t deny it. It’s because what little I did have, you...” But a voice inside her screamed, No, don’t hector her — let the woman die in peace. “In exchange for this locket, I’ll cry—” She took a steadying breath. I’ll cry for your children long after you can’t.
She backed away. She needed to hurry, she needed to get out of here and into the air, into something that felt like freedom, like her own life gotten back.
Mrs. Kingston was gasping, her hand clenched into a fist around the tiny photo of her husband. She shook her head like a person possessed. Like a crazed animal in a net. “Take... take picture away. He brought it. The disease.”
Ella was shocked she’d managed to say so much. She didn’t look as if she had the strength. She barely looked human anymore, with her bloodstained face and sweat-matted nest of hair.
“No, you mustn’t think that about Mr. K.” she said. Ella hated the vile pompous man. But he might come back in time to say goodbye to his wife. She imagined their last moments. It wasn’t right for them to be spoiled by this suspicion. It wasn’t right because it wasn’t true. “Mr. K. didn’t bring in the flu.”
Mrs. K. was staring in horror at her own fist, still knotted around her husband’s picture. She glared as if it were a street rat coming to bite her.
“It wasn’t him, missus. There’s someone, a man... He’s been in Mexico all the time I’ve been here. I meant no harm but I had to find out if he was all right. You don’t know this, but once or twice a month on my half-day I... I go to Union Station, to the pay telephones. It takes all I earn but I have to... I talk to people who get news of him.”
Mrs. K. would never understand what it meant to Ella to hear herself called by her given name, to be asked how she felt and how she fared, so far from home. But the missus could sympathize with Ella’s anxiety for Nicky, surely? What Mrs. K. felt about the children, everyone felt about someone, didn’t they? Well, even if Mrs. K. didn’t care about that, fair was fair. Mr. K. might come back in time, and Ella couldn’t deprive Mrs. K. of whatever solace he could offer. “And so I went there—”
“Where are... children?”
“I went to Union Station. A few days ago. I sneaked out. Because I read that the flu had reached Mexico, and I was so afraid for him. My Nicky. You’d have fired me for using the telephone here, but I just had to know. I swear I never meant to...” I never meant to bring death home with me. I never meant to kill the children. Ella felt her spine curve with the weight of it. Her hand went to the locket on her chest and lifted it, as if it were the cause.
Mrs. K. said again, “Don’t hear... my children.” She didn’t seem to grasp what Ella was telling her. “Where are... the children?”
Ella looked down at the dying woman, her face smeared pink from bloody tears, her lips nearly black, her eyes sunken and glittering. It was no use. It did no good for Ella to try to unburden herself. She’d never shed this guilt. And Mrs. K. wasn’t well enough to understand.
All Ella could struggle to achieve, with self-forgiveness far out of reach, was a bit of kindness. Maybe she could lessen the pain of a dying mother.
“Mr. Kingston came and took them,” Ella said. It was the only lie she could think of that might ease Mrs. K.’s mind. “When you got sick, Mr. K. came home and took the children. Took them someplace nice. Safe. Mr. K. has them now, that’s why you don’t hear them. So don’t worry, they’re—”
Mrs. Kingston’s cry was piercing. Ella wouldn’t have believed the sick woman could manage such a wail, could force so much air from her dying lungs. The room vibrated with her horror and despair. It ratcheted till she was choking, till she sounded like a woman drowning. And she didn’t stop, she kept screeching in short bursts, gagging and coughing in between, always in a frenzy of shaking her head.
If Ella had believed in the devil, she’d have supposed he’d entered the missus’s body. She backed up and ran to the tallboy, grabbing a coat.
Mrs. Kingston was shrieking, “My children! My children!” in between gargles and wheezes.
Ella wanted to say something, to do something, to restore the woman’s peace as she died. To make her stop screaming.
She said again, “Don’t worry, don’t worry about the children.” Backing out of the room, “Mr. Kingston came and took them. You won’t infect—”
But as she reached the door, she understood. She’d have given anything not to.
She pitched herself into the hallway and ran, though she knew she didn’t need to hurry. She knew now that Mr. Kingston wasn’t coming back.