Sunshine

Part 10

Every once and a while, Alice would drift off in the middle of the day and feel as if she was watching her life fall apart. After the day Michael pointed a gun at her and said all of those terrible things, she had started feeling anxious. She knew she had had a sheltered life back in the village. She knew that she could be naive and she knew that she couldn't fully comprehend the terrible circumstances she had come to call her normality in the past two weeks.

With that being said, Alice was also very intelligent and a deep thinker. However, piling that on top of her recently agitated nerves made her overanalyze everything that had been said or done pertaining to these Peaky Blinders. Besides, she thought, if no one would give her any answers, she could at least figure them out herself. She often thought about Michael's strange role in both the semi-legal business and in his new family.

The only thing she thought about more than the Peaky Blinders was her parents. They never said anything, but she knew that they were beginning to struggle with the expenses of simplicities like food. The guilt of her lying was starting to grow like a cage around her heart and it was becoming more difficult to deal with every day. The only reason she had not given in and told them already was because she barely ever saw them. While it was disheartening, she had absolutely no intention to stopping working. She knew that Michael and the others wouldn't let her go anyway.

These thoughts about her parents and her guilt were the only breaks her mind took from frantically trying to understand the Shelby business. So even thought it hurt, she welcomed it most of the time. This particular day, it had clouded her thoughts more than usual. "I need to know when I'm being payed." She finally summoned the nerve to say out loud.

At first she thought Michael had just not heard her. She had a habit of talking too quietly when she was unsure of herself, but then, she realized he was just ignoring her. Sitting in his fancy leather chair, smoking another ghastly cigarette. She knew that he was about to take note of something by the way his eyebrows had pinched themselves together. Sure enough, he then picked up his pen and scribbled down a sloppy note on the corner of the paper.

Looking down at her files, Alice sighed. She had been doing the exact same math with the exact same coded words ever since she had started working there and it was quickly becoming boring. At first, she relished in the fantasies of what each word could possibly be referencing. What would make the business over a grand in a month that had to do with a pigeon? She had no idea, but it was fun to imagine. However, the fantasies were running dry and the numbers only ever changed by a single digit number, three at the most. They had nearly made the same amount of money every single week for the past two years.

She knew that she would run out of room on their timeline eventually and couldn't wait to see what else they would trust her to do. She had a feeling that she had gotten this particular job only because of the code words, leaving her as close to in the dark as possible.

Sighing louder, she unintentionally made Michael grit his teeth. How was it possible that a noise so small, coming from a girl so innocent, could make him so angry? She was an unnatural creation, Alice Mason, just not the glorious miracle most people assumed her to be. "Next week." He finally grumbled, making her head snap back up at him in surprise. He snuck a glance up at her, trying not to smile at her reaction.

With a smile, she asked, "How much?" She leaned forward on her elbows and he thought about ignoring her again, but she just so happened to be shining brighter than usual that day in her floral cardigan.

"I guess you'll see next week." He replied unhelpfully, but Alice didn't care. No matter how small it was, it felt wonderful to know she was doing something to help her family. Her smile slowly fell as it dawned on her that she would have to tell her parents where the money came from. She would have to tell them she quit school and got a job, and she would still have to lie about where she worked. There was no way she could tell them all of the truth.