Man in the Blue Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing but swamp with a spring that bubbled eternally at the surface, but it was hers alone to lose. In the end, when the last hand was dealt, Clive had to publicly sign the deed back over to Harlan on the torn green velvet that covered the steamboat poker table. Everyone said it was the repetitive public humiliation that hurt Clive the most. Once again Clive had lost to the charismatic man who first beat him all those years before when he stole Ella’s schoolgirl affections.
    In his office, Clive leaned forward and rotated his head in a way that made Ella think of a reptile. He bit the cigar, spat the end to the floor, and laughed. “Do you really think I’d put so much energy into a piece of swampland for the sake of revenge? Ella . . . precious . . . you’re much brighter than that. It’s business. Pure and simple. Now if I let you pass, I’ll have to let all the others out of their debts too. And my shareholders wouldn’t be too pleased with me, now would they?”
    “All I know is that shame has a way of festering.”
    “Now let’s get something straight, Ella Wallace. You’re one of many . . . just an account with numbers.”
    Ella got up from the chair and pulled her shoulders back the way she had learned to do all those years before at Miss Wayne’s school. Her back was turned to Clive Gillespie when he said the words that caused her to grip the door handle tighter.
    “You know, when my father started this bank, your aunt was one of his best customers. Lord rest her soul. Miss Katherine was a good woman. A measured woman. And man alive, was she ever proud of you.” Clive tapped a pen against his desk. “If I had a half-dollar for every time she told me what a gifted young lady you were . . .” Clive’s words became a chuckle. “And what I’m sitting here trying to figure out is, what exactly happened to that young lady with so much potential?”
    Ella opened the door. Her voice cracked, but she said the words loud enough for the tellers out front to hear. “You’ll get your money, mark my word.”
    Outside on the sidewalk, Ella leaned against the brick wall of the bank and struggled to catch her breath. Across the way stood Miss Wayne’s school, the cold stone building where Ella had been polished into a lady. Shuffling through the people on the sidewalk, Ella cursed Harlan Wallace and Clive Gillespie all in the same breath.
    At the drugstore she found her sons sitting on the burgundy stools by the soda fountain. Ella stood in the doorway watching them and refused to hurry them along. There was something about the way they both held their glasses and the way Samuel licked the rim of the glass that comforted her. They were still boys. When Keaton dropped his napkin on the black-and-white tiled floor and bent down to retrieve it, he saw her. “Are you about ready to pick up our surprise?” she asked.
    Along the dock where the river met the sea, shrimp boats with tall skinny masts competed for space with steamboats. Black smoke drifted from the steam engines and created a haze over the workers who moved through an obstacle course of fish, blocks of ice, and crates stamped with the names of exotic ports of call. Boys the size of men gathered nets, and old, weathered sailors cussed them for not moving faster. The smell of rotting fish and urine caused Ella to cover her mouth, but then, fearing she might seem vulnerable, she quickly pulled her hand away.
    The blue moon-shaped logo with the face of a smiling man was stamped on a seven-foot-tall crate. It sat in a warehouse that still had faded, peeling letters that read Bailey’s Cotton Exchange on the brick wall. A cast-iron cage separated the shipping clerks from the chaos of the dock.
    A clerk with a crooked nose and wiry eyebrows flipped through a stack of receipts. “Parcel paid.”
    His monotone words caused Ella to breathe deeper than she had all day. She loosened the grip on her purse and lowered it to her side. The money she had