Ellie's Advice (sweet romance) (6 page)

"It's not necessary," he said. "And I do appreciate you washing them no matter what. Everything else is dry and
fine, so now I can walk home without catching a chill." Actually, he probably could have walked back wet and been all right for it, or else taken a cab and asked the driver to turn up the heat. But her offer to take care of him while his clothes dried had simply been impossible to resist. She'd felt so firmly about it, and he'd have taken almost any excuse to see her for longer.

"I'll go and change now," he said. "And, if it's all right with you, I'll come back tomorrow to see how our dogs are doing."

She turned to him then, her eyes large and liquid, clearly filled with tears. But she was smiling, her whole face filled with light and emotion — all for him, he realized, with a shaky inward jump of his heart. Her hands clasped together briefly. "I — I should very much like that, Mr. — Shel."

He returned to the bathroom
carrying his clean-smelling dry clothes, even the jacket that would now fit his nephews. Reeling inwardly, he met his gaze in the mirror and saw the quirked, impossible-to-remove smile there. Slightly cocky, gleaming, and full of life and hope.

Because anything was possible now.
They barely knew one another; he was already starting to realize they came from entirely different social and economic lives, but oh — anything, anything could happen. Because it wasn't just him. It was her, too.

She felt
the same way!

Shel found his footsteps quickening. His heart picked up speed as he climbed the steps to Ellie's building. He was visiting so often, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The puppies provided the excuse, and indeed, he loved them dearly. But Ellie was the real reason.

Whenever he
arrived to see her, she'd be here with a big smile on her pretty, calm face, looking at him with that perfect understanding they seemed to share. She was always as glad to see him as he was to see her.

He was almost jogging on the last few steps before he reached her apartment and knocked. The door across the hall was open a crack, one eye visible, watching him judgmentally.

"Hello, Mrs. Jansen. Good morning to you," he said loudly, and gave her a quick smile and tip of the hat. The offended woman retreated, banging the door with a loud sniff. Her retreat was probably more to do with not wanting any of the neighbors to think she was on speaking terms with him than embarrassment. But at least she was gone now.

Ellie d
idn't answer the door herself. Instead it was her maid, Mrs. Fine; she wore an apron around her ample waist, and she always had a comfortable, competent air about her. Not today. "Hmph," she said, standing back and holding the door open. "You'd better come in, then."

"Thank you." He swept his hat off grandly to greet her, but it didn't earn
him the flattered, scolding smile it usually did. Instead, she looked troubled. "Can I ask what's wrong?" he ventured.

"Oh, you'd best ask Miss Goldman. I'm sure it's not my place to say." She looked angry, which made him wonder if she even knew what was wrong.

He glanced around. "Where are the pups?" It was strange not to be greeted by them running around his ankles and trying to gnaw his shoelaces.

"In with Miss Goldman," said Mrs. Fine, shooing him in that direction. She barely gave him time to get off his coat, grabbing one of
the arms to help him out, tugging it off him. Whatever was wrong must be severe indeed; Mrs. Fine was usually very much in the background. She seemed to believe it was her duty to be present but not
too
present during his visits.

"Go on," urged Mrs. Fine, making shooing motions with her hands. She had strong, pale hands that looked like bread dough and were good for kneading it.

The kitchen smelled of soup and something baking. He took another appreciative sniff as she pushed him from the room. "Is that bread? Cinnamon rolls?" he guessed.

"Raisin bread, and you'll have some if you can fix whatever's wrong with her," said Mrs. Fine.

He stared at her in astonishment. "Why, Mrs. Fine—" He found himself as touched as he was surprised. "I didn't know you… you like me!"

For the first time since he'd arrived, a hint of a smile touched her face. "You knew well enough.
Miss Goldman deserves a good gentleman like you." She hesitated, looking about to say something more, but then shook her head instead and retreated back to the stove. "Hurry now." She gave him a stern look, and picked up a long-handled wooden spoon to stir her soup.

"Ellie?" he called, knocking lightly at the study door. It was closed, as often was the case while she worked, but he didn't hear the typewriter going
today.

He loved coming for visits while she worked, his industrious, beautiful Ellie sitting
up straight in her wooden chair, but leaning forward just a little as if she couldn't contain her enthusiasm for the words. She pounded them out with her delicate, dainty hands at a surprising speed. She'd been self-taught from a book on typing, she told him once. The fierce, energetic way she typed looked incongruous to her delicate frame.

Her face seemed to show all that she was feeling as she typed, whether anger, indignation, joy, interest, or thoughtfulness. Sometimes her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth with her concentration, a cute
, unconscious gesture that always made him smile and sometimes made him want to laugh aloud.

Strands of her
red curls often escaped while she worked, giving her a beautiful, slightly disheveled look. He longed to reached out and stroke the hair back. Who was he fooling? He longed to touch her for any reason whatsoever.

Today she wasn't doing any of these things. She sat in an overstuffed armchair on the opposite side of the room, as if hiding
from the typewriter. Papers sat in neat piles at the desk — answered and unanswered, he knew. But where the 'answered' pile was usually tall, today it was remarkably short.

Ellie
sat curled on the chair with her legs tucked up beside her and the puppies on her lap. She wore elegant dark slacks and a green sweater. The pups' little tails wagged slowly back and forth as they sucked on her fingers. Her head was bent and she looked down at them, but not as though actually seeing them.

Shel's throat constricted.
"Ellie!" He stepped toward her. "What's wrong?"

She looked up at him, her eyes appearing larger than normal in her pale, pinched face.
"Oh, hello Shel. It's good to see you." She tried to smile.

"What's the matter?" He moved closer, and accepted the puppy she handed him.

She heaved a sigh. "I'm sorry. I know I'm foolish to take it to heart so, but… I got a letter." She shuddered, as though even talking about it was difficult. She picked up the other pup and rose.

"I see." His heart clenched, as he immediately knew what sort of letter she must have re
ceived. "May I see it? If you haven't trashed it, of course."

"I haven't. I didn't… know if you kept such things on file." She shuddered. "In case…"

"Yes," he agreed. He followed her to the desk, stroking the dark pup automatically. She put the puppy she carried down on the floor, where it began bounding around awkwardly.

The pups
were getting big quickly. He was starting to wonder just how big they might eventually grow. Ellie would never get rid of them, but would the dogs outgrow her apartment? Well, they could always take them for lots of walks, he supposed. He put down his dog as well, and it joined the other in play; they found a piece of leather and began to tug on it from either side.

"
Here." She handed him the letter, looking as if she wanted to say something. She passed the back of her hand across her mouth, the haunted look still in her eyes. "If you'll excuse me for a moment."

"Of course."

She rushed from the room, looking as though she was going to be ill. He watched with sympathy, feeling a tightness in his chest. Then, grimly, he opened the letter.

It was nothing he hadn't read before. As a Jewish man working in an important position at a newspaper, it was easy for anti-Semitic
letter writers to reach him: they merely needed to address him at the paper. He opened all of his correspondence himself, so it wasn't as unusual as he would have liked to see poorly-spelled, hate-filled missives.

But now, as he ran his eyes over the capital letters that scrawled out the ugly words, he was filled with a blinding sense of
injustice. Someone had written this to Ellie, to this dear, sensitive, caring person: the woman who had more than once cried over a letter from a hurting person, even as she tried to give the best advice she possibly could. Her heart was too big, perhaps, yet he loved that about her.

And someone had written these ugly words to her. Someone who didn't think she deserved to live
just for being born Jewish.

He noticed his hands were shaking a little, and he folded the paper up and shove it back in its envelope
, before he could crumple it in rage. Ellie was right; they saved any threatening letters the newspaper or people who worked there received. Just in case. So far there hadn't been any incidents, and he certainly hoped it would stay that way, but he still saved them. Occasionally he spoke to a policeman friend of his over a really bad one.

Perhaps this
poison pen had gotten all of his or her rage out with one letter to Ellie, but either way, she wasn't going to be seeing any more unopened letters.

Ellie
returned, looking pale but composed.

He smiled at her.
"I'm sorry you got this. It's inexcusable. I'll be sure to go through the mail from now on before I send it to you."

"Oh, but…" her brow wrinkled with a trouble expression. "Th
at will mean you have to read them."

"It's no hardship, I assure you. I've seen this sort of thi
ng before. They're from cowards. Cowards who can't even spell." His attempt at injecting humor must have worked at least a little bit; she returned his smile faintly.

"Now, how a
bout we have some of that soup?" he suggested. From the look of her pale face, he'd have been willing to bet she hadn't eaten anything all day.

She nodded. "It does smell quite appetizing."
She glanced back at the puppies, and as she turned around, straightening to leave the room, she wobbled.

He caught her before she could fall, an
d she cast him an embarrassed, grateful look, biting her lower lip sheepishly.

He smile
d back to assure her it was all right, but inwardly, he raged at the person who'd upset her so much. It wasn't good for her to skip meals with her health.

"If I may?"
He extended his arm for her regally, and she accepted it gravely. They walked from the room together.

Though they didn't talk about it often, she
'd shared with him certain details about her health. She'd been so open and trusting with him. Why couldn't he be the same with her?

Dear Ellie, I love you. You're the woman of my dreams. Will you marry me, please?

He sighed inwardly. No, he certainly couldn't say that, at least not yet. They hadn't known one another long enough. But would he be brave enough to ask, even when they had?

They headed out to the kitchen, where a relieved Mrs. Fine served
them bowls of beef and barley soup and some of her fresh-baked raisin bread, still warm from the oven. She gave him an extra-large slice as his reward. But surely he didn't need a reward for cheering Ellie up; her smile was enough.

After they ate together and played with the pups some more, he went home. The letter crinkling in his pocket reminded him of the reason she'd been so tense, and wiped the smile off his face yet again. Tomorrow this was going to its grave
in the file, but not before he compared it to the handwriting of the other letters there. He wanted to know if this was someone who'd written before or a new person bent on harassing Ellie specifically.

*

The next day, after a careful comparison, Shel closed the threatening letters' folder, frowning. He hadn't seen any with the exact same handwriting. It was large, strong handwriting on heavy paper with a thick red marker. The paper confused him; why would a poison pen bother with expensive paper? He apparently hadn't wanted his words to bleed through to the other side, which seemed to indicate a certain amount of care had been put into thinking about this, rather than just a raging hothead writing the ugliest thing they could think of to a prominent Jewish person.

T
he words gave him pause as well. The writer had misspelled "death" but correctly spelled "exterminate." Almost as though the person wasn't poorly educated at all, just pretending to be. He had half a mind to talk to his friend the policeman again and ask for advice.

In the meantime, he fetched
the letters for Ellie's column and got to work slitting them open and pulling them out, glancing through to be sure they weren't more of the same.

On the third letter, his back prickled.
The same thick paper. The same red words written in neat, precise capital letters with a thick red marker. He passed his gaze quickly over the lines, then set it aside and went through the rest of the letters, giving himself time to calm down. This letter was for Ellie personally; the insults were very personal, not just ranting about Jews, but about her specifically. The poison pen had even had the nerve to say she gave rotten advice! What was he or she thinking? Not that he expected a woman would have written such a thing, but he didn't really know, did he?

There was a light knock at the doo
r and Miss Wolfe opened it without waiting for his answer. "Boss, the article you wanted," she said, hurrying in with them.

"Thank you.
" He reached out to accept the paper.

As she handed it
over, her gaze fell on the open letter with its slashes of red, angry words. She stopped.

"No need to look at that, Miss Wolfe," he said calmly, covering it quickly. "I'll take care of it."

She looked up at him, confused. "It's… to you?" She moistened her upper lip with her tongue, looking as if she couldn't quite believe it. As if that fundamentally didn't make sense to her. Surely she'd lived long enough not to be surprised by such a letter. Miss Wolfe had always struck him as someone who saw the world exactly as it was with no illusions to blind her. Sometimes he wished she had more illusions. It was a funny way to feel about his employees, especially such a good newspaperwoman; he just had the feeling sometimes that she'd earned her cynicism the hard way, and he wished she'd been able to keep hold of some innocent, idealistic beliefs instead.