Free Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

And I keep hoping I’ll hear something about Bobby. When you walked in last week, I thought you might know of a similar situation. I thought we could help each other. I’ve been looking for you.”
    All at once it came to me that if this girl was in so much trouble with Henry Kaufman, Fleurette and I shouldn’t be seen on the streets with her. “I’m sorry, Miss Blake, but our situation is quite different. I hope you . . . I mean . . . just look after yourself.” I took Fleurette’s arm and turned to walk away.
    â€œWatch out for him,” she called after us. “He won’t stop. Once you cross him, he doesn’t forget.”
    Something about her story was bothering me. I halted in the middle of the sidewalk and turned around. She was standing all alone in front of the library, watching us go.
    â€œLucy, what about the people in New York who were keeping your baby? What do they say?”
    â€œThat’s just it,” Lucy said. “They’re gone, too.”

9
    FLEURETTE GOT TO DRIVE HOME . She nosed the runabout along Paterson’s crowded streets while I stared straight ahead, trying to shake off the peculiar feeling that had taken hold of me since we broke free of Lucy Blake.
    Something had shifted, in some subtle way I couldn’t put a name to. The everyday rush of shoppers and carriages and motor cars and shopkeepers and delivery boys, once so familiar to me, now seemed foreign and vaguely threatening. I watched three men push a wagon with an enormous wooden crate perched atop it. They had to hold it on all sides to keep it from crashing over as it rolled by. What it contained I couldn’t see, but all at once I was suspicious of it. What were they hiding: Ammunition? A bank vault? A missing person? Across the street, a woman walked out of her shop with a bucket that she discharged into the gutter. I shuddered and wondered what foul mess she was trying to scrub away. A girl about Fleurette’s age stepped in front of our horse with a baby-shaped bundle pressed against her chest, and all I could think was:
Whose child is that? Where are you taking it?
    Fleurette pushed Dolley onward, keeping quiet until we reached the edge of town. Then she said, “Did Mr. Kaufman really do all those things?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œDo you think she was lying?”
    â€œIt doesn’t seem that way.”
    â€œShouldn’t she go to the police?”
    â€œFleurette! Please.” I was exhausted and irritated. I wanted nothing more than to lie down in a cool dark room and close my eyes. Fleurette was holding Dolley back, making her plod along, dragging out our journey. A milk truck passed us, then a wagon overloaded with traveling trunks and furniture.
    â€œAre we ever going to get home?” I asked her.
    â€œNot until you tell me what this is all about.”
    â€œI don’t know anything more than you do.”
    â€œWhy would she take up with a man like that?”
    I sighed and shook my head. “All the usual reasons.”
    â€œBecause she was in love?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œAnd she thought he would marry her?”
    â€œQuite possibly.”
    â€œI don’t see how anyone could marry a man like that.”
    I thought about that for a minute. “Maybe he wasn’t always that bad. Maybe he used to be different.”
    â€œDid you used to be different?” Fleurette asked.
    I didn’t answer that.
    Â 
    WE RETURNED HOME to find Bessie in the sitting room with Norma. She had dropped by, she declared, to deliver a strawberry cake she’d won in an auction to benefit the library, but I suspected that Francis wanted a woman’s opinion on how we were managing. Norma appeared to have passed the inspection because Bessie was getting ready to leave when we arrived. She rose from her chair when she saw me and pulled me affectionately to her. She was a cheerful, plump woman with a