The Space Between Suns

In the end, they had arrested my father on a technicality. It didn’t matter that everybody knew what he had really done. They’d never catch him for those things. There wasn’t enough evidence. There wasn’t any evidence. So, I watched headlines swim before my eyes as the days wore on.

It wasn’t common for me to see my father often. When I visited home at all. I had my own flat in the city, just above the line where the lights were the brightest. It was full of art my mother considered vulgar and fabric I was shaping into gowns, trousers, hats, shoes. Anything that could take me from the mess of the ink that ran through the air outside. I had one maid who kept things tidier than I ever would have and cooked a meal for me whenever I was home. All of it a gift from my doting father, of course, as part of my monthly stipend designed to allow me the freedom to keep my questions to myself.

Particularly as the day of the trial drew nearer, I wanted to be with Chas as much as I could. But even a bootlegger has calls on his time. Though sitting in the parlor with my mother one afternoon for tea was not the pastime I had ever wanted, it was where I ended up some days later.

“Lovely gown, my dear,” she commented, gesturing towards the gray silk, “where did you get it?”

“I made it, Mother.” She looked at it a bit differently after that. No matter how pretty she thought it was. I decided her that it was one of the designs I was sending to Paris soon. Chas was the only one who knew I’d finally made a contact there who was interested in seeing some of my pieces. For a brief moment, I’d thought about telling her, thought that perhaps she might be happy for me. But the look on her face stopped any such thoughts.

I tried to ignore the fact that she looked more transparent than normal. This was the only word that could have ever been used to describe my mother. Transparent. Like a flower that bloomed beautifully, but only through a window covered in rain. Perhaps there had once been life there. But years of hiding behind glass had trapped her inside. I doubted she would ever break free. The trouble with trapped flowers is that they don’t realize they are behind the glass because they are finally safe from the wind and rain. Therefore, they have no reason to want to break free.

“Have you heard from Father?” It perhaps wasn’t the right question to ask, but I wasn’t surprised at her response.

“It’s a formality, Amelia Grace. You already know this. He’ll be free by next week. We have nothing to worry about. They can’t prove any of these horrid things they’ve accused him of.”

I knew then that I was looking at her with an expression that let everything leak through the cracks. And she should’ve seen it. Just as she should’ve seen a great many things that something inside of her refused to see.

~~

In the end, I went to the trial. Chas told me that I wasn’t obligated to. He perhaps would have preferred it if I hadn’t. He was like that. He liked to protect me from the world, and I liked him to most of the time. If we hadn’t gone, we might have stayed in and listened to the radio. He would have held me against his chest until the beat of his heart created safety around us so true that we would’ve never had to leave it.

But we didn’t stay in. When I woke up that morning he was already up. I was staying with him more and more often in those days, or he with me. He took one look into my eyes and went to put on his best suit.

We approached the courthouse in one of Chas’s sleek black cars. Large cameras flashed everywhere, and I met the gazes of reporters who knew everything I knew and asked me questions I didn’t answer. My father had trained me, long ago, how to talk to people. Without even realizing it I had been groomed to deal with people in such a way that they didn’t understand they hadn’t actually been told anything they could use.

Not a hair on my head was out of place as Chas helped me out of the car, his black suit somehow bright in the gray sun. I adjusted my gloves only briefly, tucking my bag under my arm as he led me through the pressing crowd and into the building. We arrived only moments before my father, and our entrance didn’t mean a thing then. It seemed as if the crowd doubled and the reporters became crazed as he was escorted into the building.

I sat with my back very straight on the bench, the brown wood of the courtroom contrasting against the black and white of my person in a way that was strange but not off-putting. My mother wasn’t there. And that didn’t surprise me. She didn’t see the need to face it all the way that I did. Because she didn’t see anything. When they brought my father into the courtroom an imperceptible hiss began rising from the corners.

I thought, for just a moment, that it was strange that there should be so much rancor against my father when we all knew how many people benefitted from him being willing to break the law and not get caught. I tried to ignore the fact that Chas’s profession was similar in many ways. I knew it wasn’t really the same. My father had many more, and much blacker, deeds to his name than Chas ever would. But it did irk me for just a moment. Chas squeezed my hand for just a moment because he knew.

My father caught my eye before taking his seat, and he didn’t seem surprised to see me there. A strange and uncommon air spread between us for just a moment. It meant he felt a measure of respect for my being there. But it didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t there for that. In truth, I wasn’t there for him at all.

George Wheatley was a phenomenal lawyer. One of the best in the city, in fact. I knew it, and so did every other person in that courtroom. It didn’t matter that a layer of disgust existed in the top of my chest whenever I thought of him, or that it began bubbling when he entered the room with my father. The fact of the matter was that he was good at his job, and everybody knew it. It was how he’d convinced sweet Sally to marry him. It was how he became who he became. It was why my father chose him for his defense.

And it was a brilliant defense. Absolutely flawless, in fact. And when it was all over, I was more convinced than ever that my father was guilty of nearly every crime that a person could commit. I’ll never know how George did that. He built a case of defense for my father that was so strong as to be impenetrable, and all along sewed subtle seeds inside of it. By the end, he proved him completely innocent and fully guilty. He was throwing the case, and he glowed with it. He wanted my father behind bars for as long as it could be managed. And truthfully, I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I was almost impressed with the entire performance.

The jury was not gone long. They filed back into their seats like bricks creating a wall. The judge looked forward as if he had known all along.

“Not guilty.”

The words echoed in the courtroom, filling all of those spaces where the hisses had come from. And strangely enough, there were cheers and clapping. Applause. George whirled around to face the courtroom, and our eyes met. I’d never seen such fire in the eyes of another human being. And for a moment I let myself feel sorry for him.

He had actually believed in the legitimacy of the system after all, then. He had thought he would build the right case and lose on purpose, and away my father would go. A criminal who deserved what he got. And instead, he was going free, and George would make a fortune on it. But that hadn’t been the plan. And he should’ve known that. He should’ve known all along that corruption was a disease that couldn’t be purged by getting rid of one person. He should’ve known any words he said were nothing but a formality. My father’s freedom had always been a guarantee. We had this conversation, George and I, in that fraction of a second when our eyes met.

“I’m sorry, George.” I may as well have said it out loud, right next to him. I knew he heard the words even if I didn’t actually speak them. Chas knew, and after all three of us heard me think those words he helped me through the crowds and flashing cameras back to the car. We spent the rest of the day inside. He listened to the radio and I listened to his heartbeat.

~~

The worst thing about it was the resilient reporters who found me on the streets after that. It didn’t happen often, but one or two of them found me coming out of a coffee shop or taking fabric home to work into new creations. I couldn’t be with Chas all the time, as much as I wanted to be, and they seemed to know when I would be alone.

“Off to your luxury apartment, Miss Stanton?” One man spat out one day, a little bit of his spittle actually landing on my skin over the fabric I carried in my arms. “Don’t you have people to carry this for you? Don’t you feel sick buying it with your blood money? Do you know where it came from, Miss Stanton? Do you know? Have you spoken to your father about how he bought his freedom?”

I managed to make it to the car and my driver very patiently took my packages for me and put them inside as I turned to the reporter. “I don’t speak to my father, sir. But thank you for your time.”

They still came after that, but not as often. The scandal still splattered the front pages with too much ink, but I was rarely mentioned. The papers usually spelled contemptuously, “Miss Stanton refuses to comment.” I supposed that was the best I could ever hope for.

It seemed that the ink had barely dried on all the stories when one of Chas’s speakeasies was raided. It wasn’t uncommon, but it was unexpected. Chas had such solid connections with the police that it was usually not hard to pay them off. As far as raids went, it wasn’t terrible. The bartender was the only one arrested and let go before he ever got to jail.

I walked through the wreckage with Chas afterward, my heels crunching on broken glass. He squeezed my hand a bit before helping his workers begin the cleanup. I looked around at a few broken mirrors, broken bottles. A shredded painting. Knowledge ran up my spine with an ice-cold finger and I shivered despite the fur around my shoulders.

“It was just a warning, Chas,” I whispered it in the car afterward, as he took me home.

“I know, love.”

“What will you do?” I hated the worry that seeped into my voice, and he smiled because he knew. He cupped my face very gently and shook his head a little.

“I have a few ideas. Everything will be fine. I promise.” I knew he could handle it, and I knew that he was most likely right. It wasn’t really that stoking the worry and fear in the pit of my stomach. It was the memory of reporters fresh in my mind. It was the memory of my father coming out of back rooms. It was the memory of black letters spelling out the truth on the front page. But Charles Truman was not my father. He was everything.

“Will you come upstairs?” I wanted him with me that night. I wanted his steady heartbeat and the comfort of his touch. I wanted that unbreakable bond between our hearts to remind me that neither of us were made of our scars.

“I’ll try to come by later. I have calls to make.” I had known he would say that, so I nodded and walked inside. And then I made a new dress instead of sleeping.