Charlotte had pulled a wan smile, wishing Sue didn’t have to make a joke out of everything. Sue had no idea how terrifying it had been, and it would be a while before Charlotte could see the humor in the Eddie Fisher rumors. Barb was more sympathetic.

“You must have been so scared!”

Charlotte had been so scared, and the fear had usurped the rest of the weekend. The fear kept her from going to the Valentine’s Day dance, and Charlotte also blamed the fear for sending Max Zimmerman right into the arms of Peggy Cline, who hadn’t experienced any kind of fear that night. Max couldn’t meet Charlotte’s eye at school, and Sue’s solution was, “He can take a handful of drop-dead pills, that’s what I say,” which sounded just fine to Charlotte.

After she read the details of the police report, Charlotte had broken the Eddie Fisher 45 over her knee, as well as her other Eddie Fisher records, and tossed them all in the wastebasket under the desk in her room.

Louis Jordan’s “Saturday Night Fish Fry” had filled the silence in her bedroom instead. Upbeat and peppy, it was exactly that kind of shocking “Negro music” Mrs. Barnes had been complaining about when her son Raymond brought that fast New York City girl home to meet her. Charlotte knew her mother held those same narrow-minded thoughts, and was probably cursing at the ceiling as the music blared above her in the kitchen.

Charlotte would have been surprised to see her mother pick up the record and read the title with a little wistfulness, when she went into Charlotte’s room to pick up stray items of clothing for that week’s wash. The Fish Fry. The good old McGinty Fish Fry. What she wouldn’t give to go back to those days, when her life in Wooster had been so much simpler.

Life in Wooster had become complicated for all the Daltons, and Charlotte couldn’t wait for the day she’d finally get to leave. When she made the cheerleading squad at Wooster High School that spring, wearing the brand-new saddle shoes her dad had bought her, she felt like she could probably wait it out a little longer. She would add cheerleading to her growing list of accomplishments (she was a joiner, all right) and ignore anyone who told her it wasn’t important. Max Zimmerman’s new girlfriend Peggy Cline had tried out as well. She hadn’t made it.

One more thing that made Charlotte feel a little better about Wooster was the exposé about Mayor Reed. She had read it until her eyeballs just about burst from their sockets, and she had finished the story with her mouth hanging wide open. She was willing to bet Mayor Reed’s granddaughter Margie Miller was probably shitting a brick right about then.

Chapter 45

Vivian didn’t know who had sent the photostat of Gilbert and Flora’s birth certificates to The Daily Record. Her copy was still tucked safely away in the bottom of the hatbox. She’d just about fainted when she saw the front page of the paper that day. She’d hustled upstairs to the bedroom closet and thrown off the lid of the hatbox. But there it was. Still sitting next to the cigarettes, which she still needed every once in a while, and never you mind.