Gales of laughter tinkled up the stairs from below. The party was in fine swing. Champagne and Claret flowing. The tables were laden with oysters, roasted nuts, stuffed mushrooms, antipasto, caprese salads, cold fried chicken and lemon cakes. Voices lifting and falling in time to the old gramophone.

Upstairs, away from the guests, away from Bobby and Lizzie, away from Joe, Lucy walked slowly down the hall to the dimly lit door on the right. Inside, tucked into her little cherry wood day bed little Anne Finnegan’s rosebud lips puckered in a grimace, her eyes dancing behind their lids, far away from this room and lost in the unknown dream of a 3 year-old.  Lucy bent to stroke her cheek, soft as a flower petal.

Something was lost in Lucy’s mind. Absorbed and clouded. A restlessness without rest. Her days were numbered. She knew. The sins of her past were even now nipping at her heels. A shadowy room. Hot wax burning her arm. The stench of the recently dead. The terrors afterward. The despair. How much time did she have? Her mind wrenches her back to the present. To Anne. And Joe. What peril was she placing them in? The longer she remained the more likely she would be marked. Perhaps she had already.

Two days ago she had seen old Mrs. McGillicutty through the window. Her patched shawl thin and greasy. She was talking to a man, bald and wearing a sharp black suit jacket and trousers. Her arms gesticulating wildly the flesh jiggling in an unseemly way.

Lucy does not know what made her stop on the sidewalk then. She had a small brown bag in her arms full of ingredients for a fine dinner she planned for Joe and Anne. Steaming chicken Kotletki. She’d found the recipe in a copy of Cooking, Food, and Wine. She was feeling light and cheery and suddenly longing for a taste of her home.

But then she’d seen Mrs. McGillicutty and her guest and the bag grew heavy in her arms as she stood frozen on the sidewalk. The window that hung a little way over the narrow stair leading to the basement of the building was open. There was something ominous about the way the man stared down at the old woman. His face slack and gray like something dead. He spoke not a word. He did not have to. It was the old woman she heard. And her tongue was sharp and her words cut into Lucy leaving her trembling.

The old woman was speaking words from the old country. The sound drifted in and out as spittle dripped from dry lips. “Izmennik” (traitor) “blyad” (bitch) “Porka” (hiding) “Instruktsii” (instructions) “Nadzor” (watching).

At long last she could move. And move she did. Hurrying past the window on silent feet and pushing into the front door of her home next door. She shut the door and sunk down on her knees the paper bag falling limp. An onion and a small container of sour cream plunked out and rolled to the stop by the small wooden table under the beautiful wooden hanging. “Our Lady of the Unburnt Bush” watches her with sorrowful eyes.

Lucy’s eyes fill with tears, stinging and hot. It was a long time before she was able to stand and go into the kitchen with her bag.

Two days later she and Joe throw a small dinner party. Thankfully Mrs. McGillicutty bowed out feigning tiredness. Forcefully pushing the questions from her mind her fingers caressed Anne’s little forehead. Then she silently moved away. She met Joe at the top of the stairs his eyes worried.

“There you are love. Everyone is asking for you.”

Lucy smiled sweetly and took Joe’s arm, “Yes of course, let’s rejoin them. 

Next Chapter: Lyllian, December, Somewhere