“Truth? Yeah. I drive her to and from church. I bring her breakfast. I wax the car. I shine the captain’s and Mr. Connor’s shoes and brush their suits. Sometimes I polish the captain’s medals for dress occasions. Sundays, I serve the captain and his friends drinks in the study. Rest of the time, I dust what don’t need to be dusted, tidy what’s already tidy, and sweep a bunch of clean floors. Cut some wood, shovel some coal, stoke a small furnace. I mean, what’s that all take? Two hours? Rest of the day I spend trying to look busy till either you or Mr. Joe get home. I don’t even know why they hired me.”

She put a hand lightly on his arm. “All the best families have one.”

“A colored?”

Nora nodded, her eyes bright. “In this part of the neighborhood. If the Coughlins didn’t hire you, they’d have to explain why.”

“Why what? Why they haven’t updated to electric?”

“Why they can’t keep up appearances.” They climbed East Broadway toward City Point. “The Irish up here remind me of the English back home, they do. Lace curtains on the windows and trousers tucked into their boots, sure, as if they know from work.”

“Up here maybe,” Luther said. “Rest of this neighborhood…”

“What?”

He shrugged.

“No, what?” She tugged his arm.

He looked down at her hand. “That thing you doing now? You don’t ever do that in the rest of this neighborhood. Please.”

“Ah.”

“Like to get us both killed. Ain’t any lace curtains part of that, I’ll tell you what.”

Every night he wrote to Lila, and every few days the letters came back unopened.

It was near to breaking him—her silence, being in a strange city, his self as unsettled and nameless as it had ever been—when Yvette brought the mail to the table one morning and placed two more returned letters softly by his elbow.

“Your wife?” She took a seat.

Luther nodded.

“You must have done something fierce to her.”

He said, “I did, ma’am. I did.”

“Wasn’t another woman, was it?”

“No.”

“Then I forgive you.” She patted his hand, and Luther felt the warmth of it find his blood.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t worry. She still cares for you.”

He shook his head, the loss of her draining him to his root. “She doesn’t, ma’am.”

Yvette shook her head slowly at him, a smile spread thin across her lips. “Men are fine for many things, Luther, but none of you know the first thing about a woman’s heart.”

“That’s just it,” Luther said, “she don’t want me to know her heart anymore.”

“Doesn’t.”

“Huh?”

“She doesn’t want you to know her heart.”

“Right.” Luther wanted a cloak to hide in, duck in. Cover me, cover me.

“I beg to differ with you, son.” Mrs. Giddreaux held up one of his letters so he could see the back of the envelope. “What’s that along the sides of the flap?”