Best to be Paranoid
He often wondered whether or not she knew where her letters were going. The boarding house wasn't exactly on any kind of company property, but she wouldn't know about that, he thought. She'd never been to London, he knew that much. Or at least, if she had, she'd never told him.
There was a paranoid part of him that suspected that she knew, and it had some merit, certainly. There had to be plenty of things wrong with his letters, whether he knew it or not. After all, he'd never gotten to work in any sort of factory, so there must have been some things about the way things worked there that he couldn't have predicted. There was a regular who said he was an overseer, and as far as Izzy could tell, the only thing he'd been getting wrong was the tone of his letters. He wasn't miserable enough. Lately, he'd been trying to make his letters a little more dark, but that only lead to more things that he didn't know.
There was another little bit of evidence – she never really asked him about his job. She'd ask how he was keeping and maybe reference what he'd said a few times, but she never really seemed to care about the details of wage cuts and machine breakdowns. A hopeful part of Izzy thought that maybe it was just hard to hear about the pains her eldest went through to fix the mess her husband had left her in. Things weren't exactly good back home, after all. Or maybe she knew that he was lying and didn't really want to hear about it. She couldn't have known what he was gay*, it wasn't like there was anyone here to tell her, but maybe she'd figured out that he was doing something that wasn't exactly legal. At least, he assumed most jobs didn't pay so erratically.
If she knew that, then she wouldn't have seemed pleased with him. She had a way of projecting her anger over any medium. He would have felt her disappointment right to his bones, practically the same way he did when she actually scolded him. But she seemed pleased right now, perhaps because things were getting better or perhaps because he'd sent her quite a lot more this week than he had last week (or could afford to send her this week). Her tone was amiable, almost. Perhaps that was all the more reason to be suspicious.
A large drop of water fell from the awning and onto the letter, rolling down the page and taking the ink with it. Cursing silently, he stuffed the letter back into his pocket and looked out into the rainy night. Once again, there was almost no one out on the street that he could see. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe and made an expression that he hoped gave the "off guard but adorable" feeling without trying too hard. He hoped there was some sense in it. God help him if there wasn't.