The Ringmaster's Wife by Kristy Cambron Page B

face. Dark violet half-moons shadowed the underside of her eyes.
    “You mean to tell me you’d turn love away if it walked in your door? What gives you the right?”
    Mable felt a twinge of empathy at her friend’s sullen appearance. The hollowness in her eyes spoke volumes. Still, Mable felt she had to speak truth. She’d always spoken from the heart with those whom she loved, and Sally was dear to her.
    “No, Sal. I wouldn’t turn it away. But I won’t live in a cage while I wait for it either. And I certainly don’t think that marrying for money is the same as marrying for love. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t.”
    Sally’s forearms tensed and her knuckles turned white in their grip on the chaise. She’d rebuffed Mable’s view before and no doubt would again.
    Mable leaned forward and placed a hand over her friend’s. “You look tired,” she began, treading as gently as she could. “Did you sleep last night?”
    Sally tore her glance away and instead studied the spread of bottles and canisters of rouge on the dressing table. She nibbled on her bottom lip, seeming distracted. “Some.”
    “But you were up, weren’t you? I heard you coughing again in the middle of the night, even through my bedroom door.”
    Sally bounced up and gathered her skirts to cross the room, then sat down on the bench at the oval-mirrored dressing table. She ran her fingertips over the ivory-handled hand mirror and horsehair brush on its surface, staring off in the distance as if lost in thought.
    “Maybe I was.”
    She lingered with her fingers smoothing over the top of a small group of bottles bunched together in front of the mirror. Though most were near empty, she grabbed one with the printed label Dr. Bull’s Cough Syrup and pulled out the cork.
    Mable watched as her friend put the bottle to her lips and took a long sip. She used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth and looked up in the mirror to find Mable staring back at her from behind.
    “Something to say?”
    “No.” Mable shook her head, keeping a firm connection with Sally’s golden eyes.
    Sally was goading her to a quarrel, she knew. And as always, it wouldn’t work.
    “You may be a starry-eyed dreamer, but you’re no better in that uniform than you were in any hostess or shopgirl’s uniform before it. Even at the World’s Fair. And you were rejected then too, weren’t you? Same as me. Rejected by life.” Sally spat the venom at the mirror, then curled her lips around the bottle once more.
    Mable tapped the corner of the chaise with her heel, itching to cross the room to her embattled friend. But she stayed put, waiting for the outburst to subside.
    Though they came more frequently now, the eruption would eventually pass.
    “I’ll wear any uniform I’m given—as long as I’m happy while doing it. For now, I like it here.”
    “What’s to like about this place?” Sally pounded a fist on the dressing table, causing Mable to jump and shaking the vase of roses until errant petals drifted to the floor. “Nothing but the taffy and spun sugar you can buy on the boardwalk, if you have more than two nickels to rub together, that is.”
    “You’re tired, Sally. This is your lack of sleep talking . . .”
    “It’s not sleep,” she choked out, her voice cracking.
    Sally sniffed loudly, upending the bottle to drink the last of the tonic. She coughed again, choking slightly over a swallow of liquid that caught on an inhale of breath.
    Mable rushed to her side and knelt, placing a hand on the space between Sally’s shoulder blades. She pulled a kerchief from her skirt pocket and handed it to Sally, whose chest erupted into fits again. She coughed into the kerchief with one hand braced against the dressing table.
    “You can’t sing tonight,” Mable argued firmly. “Not like this.”
    “I have to. We need the money.”
    “Not at the expense of your health,” Mable said, lowering her chin to position her face in the sightline of Sally’s