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Sofia Morelli, or as she’d been called lately, ‘That Little Italian Girl’. Perhaps Katya didn’t mean it with the capitals at the beginning of each word, but she certainly said it that way.
Among many of the large, well-dressed men who seemed to frequent her home and the nearby coffee shops, that name was said often of her. They said it with laughter, with scorn, with irritation. She would watch them place their hands meaningfully over the space just below their breast pockets on poorly-tailored jackets, telling her brother in a cold voice to be careful, that if he was frank with them this way, perhaps they might unfortunately scare the little Italian girl.
Joseph’s jaw would go tight, when they did. He would say in that soft voice he only used around her, “Sofia, perhaps you should go clean up.”
She would stand gently, hands clasped before her, and politely take her leave, the way she had been taught was proper.
Katya was often not very proper. When she smoked, she would often simply let the vapors escape freely from her lips, practically into the mouth of whatever man she was speaking to. Signor Goncharov, chiefly, and she would watch the twitch of his mustache and try not to laugh. Katya wouldn’t watch like that, no, she sometimes stared right through this man, who introduced her as his wife, and who Katya merely called Goncharov at best, but primarily, just ‘him’.
Joseph, the first few times Goncharov was in their house over the years, had seemed cheerful around the man, hosting him for drinks, allowing him to sit for dinner discussing “tax matters”, where Sofia was always simply told, well, this was some boys’ talk, she would do well to take her plate away with her, yes?
And as was proper, she would nod, take her fork and spoon and napkin and the spare salt shaker, and gently tell Signor Goncharov that he could help himself, and take some of the dinner away with him, if he so wished.
One day, when Signor Goncharov was taking off his hat in her entryway, there was a woman with him. And suddenly, Joseph was not so cheerful, not so warm, a furrow appearing in his brow. Suddenly, Joseph did not tell her that it was simple boys’ talk, instead asking her in a quiet voice to go into the other room.
And this woman’s eyes were on her, then, sharp despite how disinterested her expression otherwise made her seem, her hair a brilliant blonde, so much shinier and more beautiful than her dull brunette. And she found herself truly listening to the voices downstairs, not for their information, but to try to hear their farewells.
“Thank you, Sofia,” Signor Goncharov would say, coat on and hat in his hand. “The food was lovely. Wasn’t it, Katya, my treasure?”
Katya was still looking at her with those sharp eyes, hung low as though she was nearly asleep, but clearly completely awake from how immediately Sofia could notice her smile twitch into place, lips tight over her teeth. “Sofia?” she would repeat, then. “What a strange name for an Italian girl. More common in Russia.”
Most people didn’t notice. Even then, Joseph didn’t notice, still talking to Signor Goncharov, still saying their goodbyes, shaking hands. “Greek,” Sofia said simply, then rushed to correct herself. “Please, do take some of dinner with you.”
“Impossible,” Katya said, and Sofia hid her flinch at the hardness of the consonants, Katya’s accent hardly noticeable but her speaking mannerisms still so very blunt. Katya looked over her with those sharp, quiet eyes again. “Goncharov already ate the last of it. I’m sorry.”
Sofia softened. “Oh. Well, in that case, perhaps I should give you the recipe, if he enjoyed it so much,” she said, eyes darting to the ring she wore over white gloves.
“No thank you,” Katya said, and looked at Goncharov. “Sharing recipes. Also a strange thing to do, for an Italian girl.”
“I suppose so, if it was a family recipe,” Sofia laughed, a little sheepish. “But it’s mine, so it’s mine to share, isn’t it?”
“And you would share it with me?” Katya asked, looking at her again.
“Well, who else?”
Goncharov began to step through the door, then, and Katya was pulled down with him.
Joseph would be nervous again, not long later, asking gently if she was looking for work. Sofia told him, then, that she would, perhaps. She had been hoping for real work, besides housekeeping after their family, besides cooking for people, besides making their clothes, or odd jobs for money. He asked her, still nervously, if there was any point in hoping she would find a good husband soon.
She’d said then, well, she wouldn’t be a Zitella until she was thirty. But she hadn’t exactly been waiting around for it to happen.
She’d been under the impression that Signor Goncharov was… similarly not wealthy. But the house that he and Katya kept was nice, if filled with all sorts of foreign furniture. The crosses were unfamiliar, as were the patterns of the couch.
“That clock,” she said to Signor Goncharov, pointing gently when he didn’t understand. “It’s beautiful!”
“Oh, right,” he said, stepping over and rubbing his thumb over the etching, and she noticed a dent that didn’t seem to belong, hardly as deep as the veins of the wood. “It’s very old, and from the homeland. I still haven’t had someone in to do any repairs since we last moved - I think a spring is out of place. No matter how much I tinker with it, this clock always runs too fast.”
“I have family, who don’t live in the city, and one of them is married to a German,” Sofia said. “A mechanic. Perhaps next time I write to them, I can ask for his advice - maybe he can come to visit, or help fix it for you. It would be a treat, I’m sure, getting to nurse something so beautiful.”
“Ah,” Signor Goncharov said, smiling widely. “Who has the time?”
He would explain her duties, then. He and his wife were busy, busy people, often traveling, often doing things during the day. They merely needed an extra pair of hands, to keep up with the housework, to water their little herb garden, to help to tailor some of Katya’s dresses, or his suits, and to cook sometimes when they had many people over. She would come to understand these chores differently, over the years.
She was to be quiet. She was to make it seem as though Katya had done what was needed of her, and then to do more for herself. She was to be present in the house if they weren’t there, to make their house seem full of life.
She would come to understand it as Katya’s house, Goncharov simply there.
On the first night that she was present, pouring drinks and bringing plates away from a poker game between many ill-suited men - each having, possibly, asked of their Sofias to keep them loose, always in certain places near the waist - she took the time to draw the line of a seam against her stockings, hoping to appear even a millimeter more graceful, hoping with all her time here that she could potentially mimic the beauty of Katya.
Katya, as it turned out, would play the poker too, smoking, eyes seeming heavy, but when a man named Mario cleared his throat over a hand she’d come to understand was quite bad, she was the only one who seemed to catch it, holding his nose to the fire as he tried to bluff himself a good hand.
“I suppose I win, then?” Katya said of that round once the cards were shown, as though she didn’t know, and Goncharov clapped her around the shoulders fondly, shaking his head on her behalf.
Sofia noticed her glove wrinkling with how hard she clenched her fist beneath the table, and made a mental note to replace them.
“It’s going well for you?” Sofia would ask, under her breath, gesturing at the pile of chips.
“Yes,” Katya said, and she huffed a laugh alongside it, and it made Sofia smile. “Someone remind me to teach that little Italian girl how to play cards.”
This brought a laugh up around the table, and it made Sofia blush. Katya seemed to catch this, and although her smile didn’t falter, her glove clenched again.
“In fact,” she said, standing up, “I think I’ll get another chair. She can learn right now.”
“B-but—“ Sofia started, unsure of how to explain that she couldn’t just so casually throw money across the table on guesswork, but the chair was already picked up and taken over, Katya making it seem as though it was heavy for her but able still to lift it and set it down without making any noise.
“She can share mine,” Katya declared, slicing the pile of chips in half and sliding some in front of the chair she’d sat down. “Deal her in.”
“Katya,” Goncharov started to say, looking nervous, but Katya’s hand, soft with the glove but firm on her bicep, pulled her into the chair before he could say anything more.
On the first go-around, she watched Katya politely put singular chips down on the table, and Goncharov mirror her with a sigh, and the others follow, hardly paying attention now. Katya explained softly what it was to fold, to raise. That you wanted the high, matching cards. It was not too difficult to understand, but she showed her hand to Katya for the first few matches, always folding when she saw Katya’s eyes get the slightest bit sharper.
“Bluffing is just lying,” Katya explained at some point, gently under her breath. “That you’ve got a good hand when you don’t, or a bad hand when you don’t.”
Sofia noticed the sharpness of her eyes, and the fact that even if the men were looking at Katya, on occasion, not to her hand of cards, held near her collarbone, but to a space below it, they still didn’t entirely look at Sofia.
“What if I’m not very good at lying?” Sofia asked, quietly.
“Well, then I suppose you’ll lose,” Katya said easily. “Look at Mario. He’s good at lying, when it comes to card games. Not much else. And he has most of our chips. When we don’t know what he has, what are the rest of us meant to do?”
Sofia looked at him. Mario hadn’t looked at her since before she’d sat down, when she poured him a drink. “Oh.”
Sofia looked at her new hand. Eight of clubs, six of diamonds, four of spades, five of hearts, two of spades. Or, as Katya had explained it as, Rubbish.
She put on a proper, polite voice. “Oh,” she said, as if surprised, as if hearing that someone she only somewhat knew but had no particularly good feelings about had announced their first pregnancy. It made Katya look up. “Katya, what do you have?”
Katya humored her, and she caught the looseness of her other hand as it rose to shield the cards from the others’ view.
Eight, nine, ten, jack, and queen, all hearts. A flush, and a high one. One of the best hands in the game.
Sofia smiled, and in a proper, polite voice, like she would use for a pouting child, said, “Oh, that’s too bad, Katya.”
Mario glanced up at that tone, and took note of the interaction, then glanced around and noticed that nobody else did. Only Goncharov, and only vaguely, for a moment. Katya’s eyes were sharp, and she seemed somewhat frozen.
“And you?” Katya asked, not looking up at the rest of them. For a moment, Katya only looked at her.
She smiled, as if, for the first time in her life, she was feeling mischievous. “I don’t think I’ll tell you!” she declared, and that got the attention of the others, drawing a laugh from them. Katya laughed too, a false one she’d been using for the mens’ jokes all night, but like everything about her, the men didn’t seem to notice it was strange.
“Well, then, That Little Italian Girl would finally like to try bluffing!” she declared, and it made Sofia giggle, face flushing, because that meant that she’d noticed the tilt of her hand, cards flattened enough to not make it obvious that she’d tilted them well enough to show Katya, and moreover, Katya rested a hand gently on her leg, reassuring, letting her know that she knew, and moreover, she was in.
Goncharov raised, and then some, the massive-seeming pile of chips landing in the center of the table dropping a pit into her stomach. The other men did as well, and when it got to Mario, he raised more than the rest.
“Raise,” Katya said, before Sofia could make her choice, and Goncharov didn’t waste a second to tell her that she was going out of turn. “Oh, please. Even if she’s really got a good hand, I think I have her beat - and if I don’t, I’ll win it back from her later.”
Mario noticed this, and saw the tilt of Sofia’s head, the hesitance in her hand very real as she also went to raise - shoving the better part of her pile into the center of the table only to match, only more to demonstrate that confidence.
On the next go-around, the men got scared, seeming to note the pot in the middle and the lack of chips near their elbows. Mario, however, took his golden pile, fingers pressed to the tabletop behind his towers, pushing the entire thing in.
Admittedly, by that point, it didn’t matter much what Sofia did. She knew how the turns worked, knew nobody could take back their bet. But still, on her turn, she looked at Katya, saw her barely hiding her mirth behind fluttering eyelashes. And still, she shoved forward her entire stack, to the chuckles of the rest.
“Little Italian Girl,” Katya said fondly, and it made Sofia’s heart soar, the pit in her stomach replaced by butterflies.
Mario seemed smug, as he declared that it was time to show their hands. His own hand was good - five through eight of spades, and one three of hearts. When it landed on the table, it erupted in an “ooh”.
When Sofia placed her hand down, expression proud, a louder noise followed, then laughter. Her face fell carefully, as one would do when asking about a parent then learning they were recently deceased.
“I have one of every color, isn’t that good?” she asked Katya in a stage whisper, who stopped laughing as she placed her own hand down and the table erupted into pandemonium, especially from Mario, whose veneer of casual disinterest shattered into disbelief.
“Little Italian Girl, I could kiss you!” Katya declared, seizing her by the shoulders and kissing her on either cheek, making her face burst into flame, and Sofia embarrassedly took her leave to begin washing up the dishes.
Later that night, Katya cornered her against the sink, smiling a real, triumphant smile, her eyes open widely enough that she looked nearly manic. “Well done, Sofia,” she declared.
“Ah, thank you, Katya,” she squeaked.
“You know, if you would like,” she said, and Sofia suddenly smelled the wine on her breath, and something made more sense, “next time, you could borrow my pantyhose. Yours has a tear in it, I noticed. I believe you should be able to fit into my clothes.”
“Oh, thank you, Katya,” she squeaked, face redder with every moment, feeling like it had to be redder than her own pink lipstick, closer every moment to Katya’s, in color and distance.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I didn’t manage to hold onto the whole pot. If I tried to, they would have killed me, but I lost more than I expected. You made me overconfident. Still, I owe you my share - after all, you won it for me.”
Katya handed her a bag, and she didn’t count it until she got home. When she got home and counted it, the first thing she did was wake up Joseph. In turn, Joseph went so bug-eyed he didn’t know what to say.
When he did speak, he said “No more gambling. Too many risks.”
As if he was one to talk.
She didn’t know what to do with her new money. She hid it away, in that same bag that Katya gave her.
That was where it was hidden as she watched Katya seem to fall. The poker game would be a faint memory of a time Katya was very happy. The best she could do was little jokes to lighten her heart in the between-times.
“You have red gloves,” she remarked one day, a wardrobe pulled free of contents to dust the inside, small bits of dust and leaves still inside from whenever it was that her and Goncharov had moved.
“Red on my gloves?” Katya asked, voice taut.
“No, red gloves, with fur on the inside,” Sofia said, holding them up to demonstrate. “You always wear white.”
“Ah.” She heard Katya lay back down again. “What excuse would I have to wear red?”
“I think it would be a very pretty color on you,” Sofia said softly.
Katya scoffed, and fell silent.
“Katya,” she insisted then, “really. You always wear white. Have you ever wondered if… if you would like wearing something else? Just of a different color?”
“I look beautiful in white,” Katya said.
“What if you look beautiful in red, as well?”
“As if you’re one to talk,” Katya said, and Sofia adored her for it, for her sudden honesty, for the sharpness she worked so hard to hide beneath this veneer of disinterest, of passiveness. “You always wear pink, and beige, and… ah, what is the word? Violet, but pale?”
“Lavender,” she said softly. “Yes. You don’t change your own clothes so much.” Katya shifted, somewhere behind her. “Perhaps if you tried… green.”
“Green?” Sofia laughed.
“Yes. Green. I would offer you a dress of mine, but I don’t have any in green, or red, either. You can wear green, and if you do, then I can wear red.”
For the first time, she spent her new money frivolously, buying a beautiful green satin, and making with it a dress from a photograph that Katya seemed to adore. She wore it as she attended to another poker night, dodging, as she was becoming accustomed to, the jeers about her coming to join them to lose some money.
Goncharov, gesturing too widely, splashed her with his wine. Katya scoffed it it, pulling free of her gloves, and Sofia marveled at her soft hands, perfectly trimmed fingernails.
“Sofia,” she called, tone neutral and indifferent, “can you bring my gloves to me? And my cloak, with the silver brooch?”
She knew what cloak she meant, and moreover, what gloves she meant. She brought the correct cloak without a single thought, knowing it would easily hide the strange stain across her waist. But the gloves gave her pause.
When Katya saw the scarlet gloves, it made her laugh, nearly showing her hand on accident. “I suppose a deal is a deal,” she admitted, eyes darting over the soft pasture green of her dress, giving her the appearance of someone closer to pretty than attractive, to endearing than graceful.
Nobody noticed her gloves, it seemed, except Goncharov, who seemed confused. But in the silver cloak and scarlet gloves, Katya did indeed look stunning, the very picture of a sophisticated, adept woman.
A woman she saw so briefly, for a while. Who was patient as she informed Sofia that they needed to clean to prepare for a dinner party, who was calm as she said Sofia wouldn’t be attending, and that Katya would be taking her role that night.
“The boys will be getting themselves into trouble, maybe, and I don’t want you to be there for it,” Katya said, and her tone was in that familiar and distant disinterest she so often feigned. Behind closed doors with her, it confused Sofia until she realized that this foggy distance, this strange detachment, was real. She looked over Katya’s face, and for the first time, noticed that she’d never seen Katya with her hair worn this way before, on an odd side, left rather than the right that she always favored. Leaning and peering, she saw the black of a bruise beneath platinum hair.
“Katya,” she said softly, reaching out tenderly. “Will you let me fix your hair before you go?”
Katya’s eyes were sharp, suddenly, if off-kilter, the way she’d been as Sofia peered at a winning hand and tutted, clouded now with suspicion.
“It looks a bit messy,” Sofia said gently. “I think I can help make it look a bit more clean, if that’s what you really want.”
Katya nodded, and only relaxed when Sofia’s fingers reached her scalp, gently brushing her hair into a new position.
The bruise looked bad, the skin red at points where it seemed there had been some bleeding. She brushed gently there, nonetheless, attempting to fall into their usual routine, her fixing Katya’s hair with delicacy and care before quickly doing her own in some more practical way.
“I know a way to make the bruising look less severe,” she couldn’t help but say, her tone gentle. Katya’s head turned, and only slightly. “I needed to often, when we lived with our mother and father. It is one reason we moved to Naples.”
Katya relaxed. “I would appreciate that very much,” she said.
“And,” she said faintly, voice falling quieter with every moment that she strayed further from what was proper, and what was polite. “We do have other family, far from Naples. Some as far as Britain, where I’m sure you’re more used to the climate. It’s colder, there. You would finally get to wear your coats.”
Katya sounded confused. “What? What are you talking about, Little Italian Girl?”
“If you ever wanted to leave,” she whispered.
A beat of pause.
“I would go with you, you know. Wherever you wanted.” A pause as she swallowed. “I don’t know what I would tell my brother, but, I would tell him something. He might not even mind. He and I both know, and both don’t intend to…”
A pause. “Peshnya Dlya l'da, you mean?”
She’d heard the phrase before, about Joseph. She didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t phase her. “I love my brother, and he loves me. He wouldn’t say anything, if you…”
“Oh. Oh, Sofia, you…”
Katya fell quiet then, and the air was tense with something she didn’t say. “Please. Think about it,” she whispered.
“I… cannot promise you this.” Katya took her hand, and she didn’t have her gloves on. Sofia nearly jumped at the sight of what could only be blood beneath her shaft-trimmed nails. “And I cannot promise you anything a year from now, or tomorrow, or even later tonight. But I promise you, Little Italian Girl. I will think about it.”
“Thank you, Katya,” she nearly cried.
Joseph was pronounced dead on a Sunday. The man who delivered her the news wore a suit that fit him well, and it startled her nearly as much as the hat in his hand, in such an odd-seeming shape compared to the one most of the men wore. The man told her, there on the steps of her home, that he was found inside the cathedral, just beside the fountain of holy water, an ice pick buried in his chest. An unfortunate victim of the latest bout of murders linked to the Ice Pick Killer. He was so helpful as to tell her that this was the first time the killer had ever left the weapon behind, meaning they may be able to track the man down.
She was so helpful to her brother as to say nothing as she recognized the pick in his chest as the one belonging in their tool shed.
Goncharov was not seen near or in her house, then. Hardly even his own, nor Katya. She borrowed a dress from her wardrobe, in black and red, for the ceremony, but surprisingly few people attended considering the number of suited men who generally seemed to speak with him.
But Mario was there, and his face was broken so firmly she could hardly believe he was such a winner in poker.
“I didn’t know you knew him so well,” Sofia said, and meant, ‘Please, tell me that it was quick’.
“I may not have known him for very long” Mario said, “but he was of great consequence to me, and I will never forget him, for the rest of my life,” and meant, ‘I promise, Sofia, I promise, and I will never be sorry enough, to either of you. I loved him too.’
“You know, he was never a very religious man,” Sofia said softly, looking over the various nuns present. “I wonder why he was in a church,” and meant, ‘Did you really love him? To hand him to the people who hate both of you so?’
Mario took her hands in his own, and his gloves were white. “Sofia,” he whispered, looking at her with the face of a man who was not entirely convinced he was worthy to see the next sunrise. “I could not save him. Nothing I did could save him, for all our bravery, for all his strength. And if I couldn’t save him, no man on earth could, and Sofia,” he choked, tears beginning to glide down his cheeks as softly as cards to the table, “if I couldn’t bring him salvation, then I do not care if I am damned as well, perhaps God can do what I cannot.”
That was the first time she cried since she heard the news.
“Sofia,” Katya would say next time she saw her, and with how strange and cold she’d been, Sofia almost expected to be reprimanded for still having not returned the dress. Instead, her voice was soft, and her eyes were clear but soft. “Your brother. I’m so sorry.”
Sofia, in that moment, looking at Katya in her white gloves, her sad smile, felt something soft in her break. In a moment, she’d reached into the bag at Katya’s hip and drawn her gun.
“Sofia?” Katya asked, eyes wide now.
“They will kill you, Katya,” Sofia declared, voice trembling. “They will kill you, or break you, and they will not bother to fix you, because they will never notice that something is wrong. Please, Katya. I am begging you. Please, stop this. Run. Before I lose you too.”
Katya’s hands were out, open from her sides, now. Her eyes were sharp. “Sofia. You may have been able to fool everyone else, but you can’t fool me. I know when you’re bluffing,” she said, voice firm now.
“And I you,” Sofia gritted out, and something in her expression must have scared Katya. Her hands were clenched into fists.
“All this time, and you’ll kill me now? Just like this?” she demanded.
“Katya, you don’t get it,” Sofia insisted, gesticulating with the gun now, which only make Katya more nervous. “You are everything to me! You’re exactly the person I’ve always wanted to be, but you pretend that you’re not! Every day, you wake up and pretend none of this matters to you, but that can’t be true! I know it does! Katya, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted!”
Silence for a moment, and the fear on Katya’s face no longer had anything to do with the gun. Sofia knew she was crying now, but she no longer cared about being proper.
“Sofia, all this time, you’ve made it so difficult to choose to live my life the way it’s meant to be lived,” Katya said, voice trembling. “So difficult to choose Goncharov. Now, you insist on making it impossible?”
“Do you even love him?!” Sofia demanded, and shook the gun for emphasis, and yelped in an entirely undignified way as it discharged suddenly, the bullet shattering the face of the grandfather clock she’d so adored.
Silence fell, and she realized, something in her suddenly very sad, that the ticking had stopped.
“No,” Katya said, as if finally realizing it herself. “No, I don’t. Maybe I did, once, but… not anymore.”
Sofia felt her eyes brimming with tears again. She threw the gun to the floor with a clatter, hands trembling as she felt the power held in it and knew that no matter what she did, she would never be strong enough to wield it, and moreover, that she didn’t want to.
“I’m leaving Naples,” she declared. “My brother is dead. He left me a small fortune. I will not spend the rest of my life hoping I’m strong enough to survive alone. I intend to find someone who’s willing to be strong alongside me, and when I find them, I’m never going to feel afraid again.”
She turned on her heel and left.
Less than ten hours later well into the night, a man arrived on her doorstep in an ill-fitting suit. His face looked broken. He introduced himself as an associate to a man named Andrey. It was a name she’d hardly ever heard before, only mentioned spitefully by Goncharov at his drunkest.
“I don’t care what you intend to pay me,” Sofia spat, venomous, and the man stumbled back several steps as she hefted one of Joseph’s boots from beside the door. “I am not looking to work for one of you maniacs ever again.”
“You misunderstand, Signorina!” the man scrambled to say, holding his hat like a shield. “I am not here to offer work, I am here to offer… er, the opposite. Your employer, Goncharov. He is dead.”
“Jobs come and go,” she scoffed, wishing that she at least could feel sorrowful, or some sort of spiteful cheer. She couldn’t. “What of it?”
“And his wife, she wanted to leave you something, she said,” the man continued, reaching into his jacket and pulling forth a small box.
Her heart sank into her shoes. “Katya? Is she alright?” she demanded, as though she had any tears left to cry, mouth dry.
“She… she’s dead,” the man said gently, handing the parcel to her. “Shot at, and fell over the cliffs into the water. I am very sorry.”
She couldn’t believe it, as she took the parcel. She could hardly believe it, as she numbly pulled the twine to open it, pulling the lid free of the box.
She didn’t believe it, as she saw what was inside.
She choked out a sob, waving off the man as he drew a handkerchief, dropping the boot to one side and covering her face. “Katya, no!” she cried, exactly as one would expect a woman to do in her situation, and slammed the door shut, frantically searching the inside of the box.
On the label inside the gloves, it read their very particular care instructions, except now, in the stitch of someone who never cared to learn how to sew and wouldn’t start now, it read, “Bring my gloves to me.”
She wore her black and red dress, in case someone needed to catch her in mourning, out of her mind, women being the way that they are when they get hysterical, only in her right mind enough to grab a singular handbag. Somewhere in the house, clocks broken, bullets riddling the worst of it, suddenly so visibly a shell, she found a woman wearing green and white.
She’d never been to the boathouse - had been warned away from it. But she learned how to get there that night, and the wheel of the boat, she knew, would be steered by scarlet gloves.
Perhaps they would steer her wrong. All she knew is that wherever they would lead her, perhaps they could both finally be happy.