Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  “A powerful and compelling novel about one family’s dramatic resurrection after the devastation of the Chicago fire.”

  —Elizabeth Camden, author, The Spice King

  “Veiled in Smoke offers a story line that draws the reader into the personal lives and historical events of nineteenth-century Chicago on the eve of the Great Fire. Jocelyn Green is a masterful storyteller who understands the power of the narrative tale and its impact on historical reality.”

  —Kevin Doerksen, CTG; owner, Wild Onion Walks Chicago; president, Chicago Tour Guide Professionals Association

  “In Veiled in Smoke, Green frames a story of loss and redemption with sensory details, a nuanced historical backdrop, and an intelligent eye for flawed and utterly engaging characters. Shadows of the ongoing War Between the States as well as a deep literary resonance underscore what is, at its core, a study of the fallacies and strengths of the human heart. Green’s eye for suspense is coupled with her passion for an American city on the rise. A thoroughly enriching and thoughtful reading experience by an absolute master of inspirational fiction.”

  —Rachel McMillan, author, Murder in the City of Liberty

  Books by Jocelyn Green

  THE WINDY CITY SAGA

  Veiled in Smoke

  The Mark of the King

  A Refuge Assured

  Between Two Shores

  © 2020 by Jocelyn Green

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949898

  ISBN 978-1-4934-2275-3

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Dan Thornberg, Design Source Creative Services

  Author is represented by Credo Communications, LLC

  To all those who feel wounded

  by loss and pain.

  May God bring you beauty from ashes.

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Half Title Page

  Books by Jocelyn Green

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  The strength, if strength we have, is certainly never in our own selves; it is given us.

  —Charlotte Brontë

  Chapter One

  CHICAGO

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1871

  Meg’s father was gone. Again.

  She stood in his empty room for only a moment, summoning her wits. Crickets chirred outside the open windows, and moonlight spilled across the unrumpled bed. Surely he hadn’t gotten very far.

  A gust of wind swung the door closed behind her. Dread mounting, Meg pulled out the top drawer of Stephen’s desk and found it empty. Oh no.

  She hurried into the hallway of their second-floor apartment to find her sister, Sylvie, emerging from her room, her dark hair in a braid down her back. At twenty-one years of age, she was two years Meg’s junior, but her brow wore the cares of someone much older.

  “I heard a door slam. Did he leave?” Sylvie asked.

  “He has his gun.”

  Meg rushed to the building’s exterior stairwell. Cold metal met her skin as she climbed up the stairs barefoot, one pale hand on the railing, the other hoisting her nightdress as dew-heavy air flowed around her.

  “Wait!” Sylvie cried from below, but Meg didn’t slow until she gained the landing halfway between the third floor and the roof. The stairs shook as Sylvie chased after her. “Stop!” Wild-eyed and breathless, she caught up to Meg and grasped her arm.

  “Shhh!” Meg pointed above them. Stephen was pacing the flat, block-long roof, patrolling to keep his property safe from dangers only he imagined. “Don’t startle him. I need to talk him back inside before anyone else sees him.”

  “Please don’t!” With uncharacteristic force, Sylvie jerked Meg down so they sat together on the landing, the bricks at their backs pressing through their cotton gowns. Coronas of light surrounded the lampposts on the street below.

  “What are you doing?” Meg whispered. On the other side of the wall was the third-floor apartment they rented to James and Flora Spencer. Meg hoped the elderly tenants wouldn’t stir.

  “Listen to me.” The end of Sylvie’s braid swirled in the wind that moaned past the building. Her fingers dug into Meg’s arm. “You remember him as he was before the war, before Andersonville changed him. I know him as he is. He’s unpredictable, Meg. Stay away from him. I wish Mother had.”

  Meg’s voice bunched into a hard lump at the base of her throat. Swallowing, she forced it back into service. “She was ill and never should have gotten out of bed.”

  Sylvie’s jaw hardened, and her nostrils flared. “You make it sound as though it were her fault.”

  Meg’s blond hair pulled from her braid and whipped across her face. “If I blame anyone, it’s myself.” Even in illness, Ruth’s first concern was for her husband. Meg had fallen asleep when it was her turn to keep vigil through the night, or she could have stopped her mother and checked on her father herself. The drenching that Ruth endured in the storm that night while trying to coax Stephen down was too much for her weakened state. She never recovered. “With her last words, she begged me to take care of him. I promised. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

  Sylvie drew her knees up beneath her chin and looked toward the city’s dark silhouette. Bats stitched their flight across the moon. Several blocks away, voices crescendoed, signaling a crowd’s exit from a music hall, theater, or saloon. Hearing them, Stephen grew more agitated, muttering to himself as he paced.

  Sylvie gripped Meg’s hand. “I think he needs help.”

  “I agree. Before he hurts someone.” A dim light flickered behind the window of James and Flora’s apartment. Meg started to rise.

  “No.” Sylvie pulled her back down. “Not our help. Other help.” She waited until Stephen’s voice receded as he marched to the opposite end of the roof. “I thin
k he needs more than we can give him.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It has been six years, and Father still isn’t himself.”

  “He’s not insane,” Meg hissed.

  “I didn’t say he was. But he isn’t well either. It’s time to reconsider some kind of treatment.”

  “Treatment.” Frustration licked through Meg. “That happens at the asylum. No. Mother never wanted that for him.”

  “Mother isn’t here and hasn’t been for two years.”

  “I don’t want that for him.”

  Stephen’s voice grew louder, hovering above them. He about-faced, and splinters of tar-coated wood from the roof rattled through the stairs and fell into Meg’s lap. He was walking too close to the edge. Her heart banged within its cage. What if he slipped, with his foot or with the finger on the trigger?

  Below, a dog barked and gave chase through the leaf-strewn alley, upsetting a crate of tin cans. Two gentlemen jumped out of the way, nearly falling over, then laughed drunkenly before weaving their way to the front door of the Sherman House hotel, which shared the building with the bookshop Meg’s family owned on the ground level.

  Sweat misted her skin, then chilled it as wind rushed by. “After being in a prison camp for so long, how do you think he would respond to being locked in an asylum?” A cloud passed over the moon. “He’s not going.” She stood without waiting for her sister’s response.

  “Who’s there?” Stephen’s pace increased as he neared. “Show yourself!”

  Unmoving, Meg called out, “Father? It’s me, Meg. It’s all right.”

  “Meg?”

  “Yes, it’s Meg and Sylvie. We’re on the stairwell. No one else is here.”

  Stiffly, he marched to the edge of the building and peered over. “What on earth are you doing? This is my watch, not yours.” His Colt Army revolver glinted in his hand.

  Meg steadied her voice. “Put the gun away. There’s no need for it. Come on inside.”

  Moonlight gleamed in Stephen’s eyes. “I can’t go in. I must stand watch.”

  As Meg began to climb the stairs, Sylvie tugged her from behind with a whisper. “Don’t you dare. Don’t go up there.”

  Caught between her sister’s fear and her father’s paranoia, Meg felt her shoulders knot. How could she care for one without neglecting the other? Little wonder her mother had suffered chronic nosebleeds after Father came home.

  Lifting her head, Meg tried to reason with him. “It’s really windy up here. We’re tired, and we’d like to go in. Let’s all go in together. We’ll lock the doors once we’re inside, and we’ll be fine.”

  Silence met her request. Long moments later, the stairs shook with his heavy tread. She knew better than to embrace him, for touch was no longer a comfort. It was just as well, considering she felt less affection than irritation right now. Compassion, she had discovered, was not a bottomless well.

  “They took John.” He glanced over his shoulder, then down below, scanning. Cares etched his face. “I received a letter today that said they took him right from his home and locked him up. They say it will keep him safe, but it won’t, you know. It isn’t right. They took John from his home.”

  “You need to rest,” Sylvie told him. “Let’s go inside.”

  A puff of air escaped his nose. “I don’t feel restful.” He hushed his voice. “There’s devilment afoot, I know it. John must have stopped his lookout, or he’d never have let them take him. I won’t be caught unawares. I won’t be locked up again. Upon my life, I won’t.”

  “That’s right, you won’t.” Dust itched over Meg’s skin with each gust of wind. “Now, let’s go home.”

  He pulled at his beard, considering.

  “Please, Father?” Sylvie whispered. She rubbed her arms.

  Before he could form a response, the fire bell sounded from the cupola of the courthouse, jerking his attention that direction.

  “It’s all right,” Meg said. “Look around, there’s no blaze within sight. It’s just a small fire somewhere else. You know the watchman in the tower is required to ring the bell whenever the firemen are called to action anywhere in the city.”

  She’d grown up hearing that bell and ignoring it, though lately it clanged more often than ever, thanks to the dry summer and strong winds sweeping in off the prairie. But the number of strokes indicated where in the city the fire was located, so she knew they were well out of harm’s way.

  Even so, each strike of the enormous bell heaped another layer of dismay upon Stephen’s countenance. “Get inside, girls,” he said at length. “There is devilment afoot. I know it. I won’t be taken unawares.”

  Sylvie stomped down the stairs, Stephen marched back to the roof, and Meg stood in between, reaching out to both with empty hands.

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1871

  Meg could barely admit to herself, let alone to Sylvie, that aside from keeping her father from being locked away, she was at a loss as to how to soothe his mind and spirit. That uncomfortable fact was far easier to ignore during business hours, when she could lose herself in what she did know how to do.

  So in the southeast corner of her family’s bookshop, framed by the display window, Meg squeezed paint from metal tubes onto her palette, then added a portion of medium to the center. She felt the tension in her shoulders slowly release as she began to mix the colors.

  “Ten o’clock. Let’s hope we’re busier today than we’ve been so far this week.” Sylvie unlocked the front door and flipped the sign to announce that Corner Books & More was open.

  Meg glanced at the bustle outside. From their vantage point on the corner of Randolph and Clark Streets, she had a full view of Court House Square diagonally across from the store. Horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and drays clattered over the pine-block street. Ladies in smart jackets and skirts and men in sack suits streamed out of a streetcar and onto raised wooden sidewalks. Chicago held more than three hundred thousand souls. It did not seem too vain a hope that a small fraction of one percent might be persuaded to buy a book.

  “We still have the rent coming in from our tenants,” Meg reminded her sister. “And if Beth and Rosemary don’t visit today, you’ll have more time to devote to customers.” Sylvie’s two best friends from their school days were nice enough, but they ought to know better than to distract Sylvie from work. It should be enough that the trio saw each other at church, at Hoffman’s Bakery down the block, and at Beth’s and Rosemary’s homes.

  Sylvie stiffened. “If your friends stopped by to see you, I wouldn’t turn them away.”

  But that was unlikely to happen, and they both knew it. The few friends Meg had were married now, tied by their apron strings to their households. They had husbands and babies to tend. Meg had the store and her father, and no girlish dreams of more. She’d accepted that the war had claimed many young men and that, regardless, her lot was to take care of Stephen. Not a husband, not a babe of her own.

  Resolved, Meg turned back to her painting of Margaret Hale, the heroine of the novel North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Once completed, the portrait would join the dozen other beloved characters hanging on the shop’s walls. Patrons came not just to purchase books, but to see which character Meg was painting next, which was why she so often painted here instead of in her art studio upstairs. A few paintings had even sold, but not nearly as many as she wished.

  After mixing a little medium in with her paint, she scrubbed in the background on the canvas. She was so focused that she didn’t notice anyone had entered the shop until she sensed someone at her elbow.

  “Good morning, my dear!” Leaning on his walking stick, Hiram Sloane stood even with her height, his accumulated years stooping the shoulders beneath his brown herringbone frock coat. For years he’d played the part of benevolent uncle to her and Sylvie, and guardian of their family while her father was at war.

  “Father will be so pleased to see you,” Meg told him. The two men first met at an abolition rally a decade before
the war began. They’d bonded quickly, meeting time and again to discuss shared convictions, the news, and literature. He was the only friend Stephen still had. “He’s in the backyard, I believe.”

  “Fine day to be out in the sunshine. I would have walked if my carriage driver had let me.”

  “Then Eli has more sense than you.” Meg laughed to take the sting out of her words. Hiram’s home was two and a half miles south of the store. Not only was it too far for a man of Hiram’s years to walk, but three times last summer he had set off and completely lost his way. Thank goodness he hadn’t wandered into any of the vice-ridden patches along the river. Each time, a policeman had brought him home before he’d been in any danger.

  “Yes. Eli.” The way Hiram repeated the name, Meg could tell he was attempting to commit it to memory once more. “Well, then. I will visit with your father after I pay my respects to your sister.” He moved toward the interior of the shop.

  A few passersby paused outside the window, watching Meg blend the background with a large, flat bristle brush. Her thoughts, however, remained with her father, who ought to be bent over his worktable in the rear of the shop, repairing broken bindings on rare first edition books. Before the war, he had taken great pride and satisfaction in mending what was torn, restoring and renewing old treasures. These days he could not always muster the concentration required. She breathed in the smells of linseed oil and turpentine, then exhaled slowly. Her cares had finally faded to the corners of her mind when the door opened again.

  Dried leaves somersaulted inside, crunching beneath a pair of shoes creased with use but polished to a shine. Their owner consulted his timepiece, then slipped it back into his vest pocket before removing his derby hat. Chestnut hair brushed the collar of his sable-colored suit.

  Stepping away from Hiram, Sylvie approached the customer, her plaid pleated skirt rustling. “Mr. Pierce, what a pleasure to see you.”

  He gave a slight bow, then pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “Thank you again for the invitation to come.”

  “Yes, of course. This is my sister, Meg. Meg, this is Mr. Nathaniel Pierce with the Chicago Tribune. We met at the Soldiers’ Home last Sunday.”