Now, he had cleaned up his life. He was ready. It was about time he hooked up with a winner. Waddell looked like the right horse. He had that aura of success, a man in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment. Never mind his household troubles—he had lost two wives, and look who he’d ended up with. He always came out ahead.

Still, it felt wrong.

Gabrielle took too long preparing lunch. When she finally came into the dining room, her eyes were red. She wouldn’t look at Sam all during the meal. Waddell stuffed himself happily, talking nonstop—between mouthfuls of cold ham and pickles—about the Hibernian navigators, Columbus, and Manifest Destiny. To Sam, he seemed an old man to be entertaining such grand ambitions, but then he remembered Joshua Slocum, another old man, who had just sailed alone around the world on a salvaged oyster dredge and now dined with the Roosevelts. The world was changing. Anything was possible. The trick was to reach out and grab the main chance. Sam intended to grab as hard as he could.

As he and Colonel Waddell left by the front door to go back downtown, Bessie King was hurrying up the driveway on her way around back, carrying a parcel wrapped in white butcher’s paper.

“Hello, Aunt Bessie,” Waddell called.

Bessie stopped and glared at them both. She nodded slightly, then continued around back.

Colonel Waddell rapped the ground with his walking stick. “Damned insolent coloreds. Under my own roof! I simply will not have it!”

Sam expected the Colonel to turn around and go back inside to discipline Bessie, but instead he kept walking toward Market Street.

In the kitchen, Bessie unwrapped the porkchops for supper and commenced to butterfly and season them. That boy David was going to get himself into trouble, running with that preacher and those Manly boys. No good was going to come of it. And now that newspaperman was back, plotting with the Colonel.

She checked on the spider in the pantry and felt reassured that she was still upright in her web. Calm down, she told herself. Other folks crazy, no reason you got to be crazy, too.

Gabrielle came up beside her. “Bessie, why don’t you stay here with us for a few days?”

“Miz Gabby?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

“Saffron and David, too, if you want.”

“But the Colonel—”

“You leave him to me. This is your home, too. Use the sewing room—I’ll clear out my things.”

“I don’t know.”

She laid a hand on Bessie’s wrist. “I just feel safer with you in the house.”

“If you put it that way.”

“There’s one bed in there. And a couple of old army cots.”

“I know, I know. Down in the basement. My David can haul ’em up.”