Her face flushed with the heat of a summer’s day, Sylvie stood and thanked Jasper once more while the maid knelt at the hearth. “By the way, Nate’s family has invited us to join them for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.”
“Have you agreed?” A shadow flitted over his expression. “I should have asked you to come here sooner. It won’t be the same without you.”
“The invitation extends to you as well, Jasper. I wouldn’t think of leaving you to dine here alone. Besides, I hear you don’t yet have a cook.”
“In that case, I accept.” He gave a charming bow before gazing at her in a look that stretched overlong.
Suddenly flustered by the attention, Sylvie told him the time to arrive and hastened to go, nearly tripping over a cardboard box in the hall.
He steadied her. “My apologies. Helene must have brought this down from my uncle’s room. She cleaned out his clothing. I’ve no use for it, and I reckoned it might fill a need for someone else. I need to take it to one of the relief depots to donate it.”
“Oh, I’ll do that. It’s no trouble, since I’m already going that way.” She bent to lift the box, but he stopped her.
“I appreciate that. But allow me to load it into the cab for you, at least.”
Sylvie smiled. “I’m sure I can manage one box. You’ve no idea the crates of books I’ve handled for the shop.”
“Your capability isn’t in question.” He hoisted the box of clothing and straightened. “You’re a lady, Sylvie. Allow me to treat you like one.”
When was the last time she’d been taken care of like this? Sylvie couldn’t recall.
From the hallway, she turned to gaze at his portrait once more and imagined hers on the wall beside it. Same artist, same background, a matched set. It was as though it was meant to be.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1871
“You’re not too cold, are you, Louis?” Meg turned from the easel she’d set up among the ruins of Court House Square. Woolly clouds drifted across an ice-blue sky. The air, damp and sharp, still held the smell of burned things and of the coming winter.
“Ah, this is nothing, Miss Townsend.” Newsboy cap worn backward on his head, Louis’s cheeks rounded with a grin. A knobby scarf wound about his neck, the tail of which dangled over his shoulder. “Don’t you know I spend every day outside anyway? How else do you think I make a livin’? I reckon I can outlast you by a mile.”
“I reckon you can.” Laughing, she turned back to the portrait unfolding on her canvas.
After Mr. VanDyke’s rejection, she hadn’t been in the mood to paint again right away. But she’d found such a fascinating subject in Louis Garibaldi, the child relic seller of Court House Square, she couldn’t help but try to capture him. His older brother, Lorenzo, handled most of the transactions today while Louis sat gamely at their table, a mound of fused washers in his gloved hand.
Painting was also a refreshing distraction from her failure to bring her father home. In addition to her own efforts, Sylvie had talked to Jasper, who had also addressed the board by letter. What the result of all this talking was, Meg had yet to learn.
“You’re good for business,” Louis said, scattering thoughts of the asylum. “People come to see what you’re up to, and Lorenzo makes them an offer they can’t refuse.”
“Happy to oblige. Now hold still.” With her palette knife firm in her grip, she mixed colors until satisfied she had a perfect match for his olive skin tone, then began adding it to the sketch she’d completed yesterday. Later she would fill in the background of the skeletal structures behind him, and only then would the portrait make sense. Then it would showcase the beauty of this child, so full of life, right here among the ruins. He had a long future ahead of him, just like Chicago did.
Louis and his family were survivors, he’d told her. His parents weren’t as fluent in English as he and Lorenzo were, but they’d found work where that didn’t matter—his father at the docks, and his mother in a garment factory. Selling relics was great fun for Louis, far better than shining shoes or getting up before dawn to sell papers. His mother was going to have another baby, so selling relics was a job he took seriously. There would be another mouth to feed soon.
“That is going to be simply marvelous, I can already tell.” Bertha Palmer’s voice rang bell-like beside Meg.
“Mrs. Palmer!” Meg nearly dropped her paintbrush but caught it in time and set it on the easel. “It’s so good to see you. How have you been?”
“Better than many.” Mrs. Palmer reached for Meg’s hands, then hesitated and offered a smile instead. Too well-bred to inquire about the scars, she glided gracefully into her next sentence. “We lost the hotel in the fire, your lovely paintings included. I’m so pleased to see you painting again.”
The sight of Mrs. Palmer’s long, elegant fingers brought a twinge to Meg’s chest as embarrassment flared and died. The wind kicked up, and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear while searching for something to say. Would Mrs. Palmer consider any further talk of paintings a bid for charity? Mr. VanDyke’s words still shadowed her.
“Fire relics!” called Louis. “Get your memento of the conflagration right here, and remember the event of the century for all your living days!”
A genuine smile unfurled over Mrs. Palmer’s countenance. “Excuse me for one moment.”
She crossed to Louis’s table and bent to peruse the merchandise. Her perfectly bustled silhouette in emerald green was a striking contrast to the child’s mismatched and threadbare attire and to the ruins behind her. Engaging in amiable conversation with him, she selected an item and handed him his price. Beaming, Louis presented her with the charred remnant of a statue.
Meg sucked in a breath as she beheld them. Quickly, she traded the brush for the charcoal and roughed in the outline of Mrs. Palmer at the moment her hand met Louis’s. This one small interaction brought the spark of him to life, and it illuminated Mrs. Palmer too. By the time the socialite threaded her way back to the easel, Meg had sketched her image upon the canvas.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Meg watched Mrs. Palmer’s eyes alight with recognition.
“Do you really think it an improvement, or are you trying to earn my affections?”
Heat rushed to Meg’s face. She wasn’t sure if Mrs. Palmer was teasing or if she really suspected Meg was manipulating her. She hid her right hand behind her skirt. “Truly, this is far better than I’d planned. This is an even truer context for Louis’s portrait than just a relic in his hand with the destruction behind him. That was only the beginning. But your presence tells a story, don’t you think? In a single moment, the rich and the poor connect, both equally representing the spirit of the rebuilding city. You are compassion. He is resilience. Both of you are Chicago.” In the pause that followed, she wondered if she’d said too much.
Mrs. Palmer stood back from the easel and studied it, then looked at Louis and Lorenzo at their table, already chatting with another potential buyer. At length, she turned to Meg with tears glossing her eyes. “Sold,” she said.
Meg blinked. “Pardon me?”
“My dear, I’ve already been to your shop. I saw the ad in the Tribune that you’ve reopened, and wanted to see if you were still interested in painting Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey for me. Your sister showed me the portrait you made of her, and I saw that your talent extends to translating from life. But this.” She gestured toward the canvas. “This may be your finest work.”
Meg was stunned. “This was intended to be practice.”
“I want it. There is a new movement in the art world in France, barely begun. It’s a softer technique, meant to portray an impression rather than copy the reality. Your painting reminds me of it very much. What I want to know is, can you produce more of the same?”
“A series of paintings in the same style,” Meg confirmed. “Of everyday people in and about the city.”
“Exactly.”
Excitement took hold of Meg as she thought it through. “I could call
it ‘Spirit of Chicago.’ It could showcase the courage and the potential of our city by featuring the people who will rebuild it. I wouldn’t ignore the calamity but allow it to serve as a backdrop, a poignant contrast to hope. I’ll show glimpses of beauty even though we are surrounded by ruins.”
Mrs. Palmer agreed. “I’ve rented space in Mr. Jansen’s gallery to auction some of the art I brought back from France as a fundraiser. Be ready in time, and I’ll include your work as well. A percentage of your profits could be donated to the charity of your choice, and the rest will be yours to keep, to help with the cost of your own reconstruction.” She laid her hand on Meg’s shoulder. “Leave everything to me, and I’ll see that your art gets the attention it deserves.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1871
It worked. It was through no power of Meg’s, but it worked.
Between the conversations with Dr. Gilbert and the board, the legal letter from Jasper and his professor, the article Nate had threatened to write, and an untold number of prayers, something finally convinced the authorities to release Stephen from the asylum. If he proved a threat to anyone's safety, however, he'd be committed again, for good.
It had been one thing to sign forms this afternoon, and another to truly bring him home. This was the burden weighting Meg as she ushered her father into the shanty. The last time he’d returned after an extended absence, he’d never fully adjusted. After almost two months in an asylum, what new horrors had followed him here? The elation of his release quickly transfigured into worry.
Nate had accompanied her and Sylvie to the institution to retrieve their father but left them to continue their reunion with more privacy. “This is a time best reserved for family alone,” he’d whispered to her after she’d invited him in.
The brief tour of the two rooms finished, Sylvie took off her wraps, hanging them on the pegs along the front wall. “It’s so good to have you home.” Her voice was tentative, and she looked like she had when she was fifteen years old, welcoming Stephen back from war. Unsure. Hopeful. Cautious.
Meg felt the same. How had she devoted so much energy hoping and praying for and pursuing his release, and so little imagination to what it would look like to have him home? She had no idea how he would handle the confined space of the shanty in the middle of the burned district.
“Home,” Stephen repeated, looking around the front room, then at the window, where dirt spotted the pane from last night’s hard rain. Was that sarcasm in his voice, or just disappointment? He was thinner than when she last saw him, especially in his face, which was startlingly exposed without a beard.
“You’re where you belong,” Meg said, reassuring herself as well as him. “With us.”
He looked at her with large grey eyes, his gaze moving to her hands. Lips straight, he nodded in acknowledgment.
She wanted him to take her hands in his, as Nate had done. She wanted him to touch her scars, to touch who she was now, and to say he loved her the same, or even more, perhaps, because now they both were marked, visibly or invisibly.
He did neither. He did nothing.
Meg’s throat tightened. She reminded herself that he hadn’t been comfortable with human touch for years. But for mercy’s sake, if there were ever a day to take exception to his customary standoffishness, this would have been it.
Had that hateful Dr. Franklin been right? Was she expecting—if not demanding—more from her father than he was able to give?
This was not a reunion fit for fairy tales. It felt as stiff as the scar tissue on her palms.
Skirts swishing, Sylvie moved toward the stove, putting space between herself and Stephen the way she’d done so often before. Meg wondered if she felt ignored or insignificant.
“Coffee?” Sylvie called over her shoulder.
Stephen swung his attention to her. “I’ll take some.”
There were so many things Meg longed to ask. How had he been treated? Was he hungry or cold? Did they hurt him? Was he afraid? Did their letters help him at all? Whatever had transpired, could he recover from it, or had those weeks in the asylum added permanent layers of trauma atop the others he hadn’t been able to shed? And Sylvie asked if he wanted coffee.
Meg’s queries would have cut too quickly, too deep, too soon. It would have been a mistake to ask them, a selfish grasping to ease her own conscience. Instead, Sylvie had posed what might be the only question he could handle. Meg caught her sister’s eye and nodded her approval.
With a sigh that sounded relieved, Stephen rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Smells good. What else have you got to eat?”
Meg set a plate of cold biscuits on the table along with a crock of butter and a jar of blackberry preserves. “We have chicken and gravy from last night too. I’ll boil some potatoes to go with it.”
Stephen slathered one biscuit after another with butter and preserves, until he’d eaten three in less than five minutes. Only then did he pause to look around the shanty. He licked his lips. “Did we have to pay for this?”
Meg detected disapproval in his tone and struggled to dismiss it. “No, this was built as part of a grant we received from the Relief and Aid Society, remember?”
He cut his gaze to hers. “You probably wrote that to me. I read your letters, but there is a lot I don’t remember. The poetry, though. That I do recall. Thank you for bringing what you did.”
With a satisfied smile, Sylvie poured a cup of coffee and placed it on the table before him. “Would you like to hear how business is going? Or would you rather . . . not?”
Wrapping his fingers around the earthenware mug, he sipped the coffee, brows plunging, as though even this was too great a question to consider.
“We can wait until another time to tell you about it,” Sylvie offered. “Just know that it’s going as well as it could right now.”
“Good.” Oliver bounded onto his lap, and he stroked the cat’s fur, the lines of his face softening. The purring was audible from where Meg warmed the gravy on the stove.
She bit her tongue to keep from ruining the quiet he obviously preferred. But she wanted to report that five customers had already come and placed orders for books, including Anna Hoffman. She wanted to explain the evolution of her painting and about the new show she was going to do, sponsored by Bertha Palmer. She wanted to point to the portrait of Sylvie which now hung in the front room and ask him what he thought. If he’d noticed it, he hadn’t given any indication. Instead, she added salt to the pot of potatoes and replaced the lid.
After pouring herself a cup of coffee, Meg sat with Sylvie and her father at the table while she waited for the potatoes to boil. “We’ve been invited to celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow with Nate’s stepsister Edith and her family. Jasper Davenport will be there too.”
A shadow fell over their father’s face. “Thanksgiving? I had no idea that was tomorrow. You want to spend it with Nate and Jasper?”
Meg’s grip tightened on the mug’s handle. “We want to spend it with you.”
She was about to say she understood why he didn’t want to go, and that she would stay home with him, when Sylvie shook her head.
Right. They had talked about this at length. Meg had to stop excusing her father at the slightest sign of his discomfort.
“We want to spend it with you,” she said again, “but it would also be nice to accept the invitation, after everything all of them have done for us.”
“They’ve become good friends,” Sylvie added.
Stephen frowned. “As I recall, Jasper thought I killed his uncle.”
“Only because of what the police said,” Sylvie said gently. “And yet he still allowed us to live in the house for weeks. Not to mention, his letter outlining the law helped open the door that set you free.”
Stephen looked up, surprise etched across his face. “No one told me that. I didn’t know I was beholden to him.”
Meg stretched her fingers backward from her palms. She wanted nothing more than
to accommodate her father, but Sylvie was right. Such dependence wasn’t healthy. “You do what you feel most comfortable with, Father. Sylvie and I will be sharing the Thanksgiving meal with our friends tomorrow. We’d love for you to join us, but the choice is yours.”
Wordlessly, he turned his attention back to Oliver on his lap. The pot boiled over, and the water hissed as it hit the stove. Stephen startled violently, knocking his knee under the table, and the cat leapt away.
Her own pulse skipping at her father’s reaction, Meg hurried to lift the lid and allow the steam to escape. She could hear him breathing too fast, too hard.
“It’s all right,” Sylvie told him quietly. “It’s just the water. All is well.”
But Meg wondered if it truly was.
Nate didn’t like keeping secrets from Meg. But how could he tell her that something wasn’t right with Otto Schneider’s confession when it was that very confession that had cleared her father’s name?
This was what troubled him as he took his leave from her reunion with Stephen. Almost without thinking, he followed Randolph Street toward the river. It had been a while since his shoes had been shined.
Martin Sullivan was bent over another customer’s shoes when Nate arrived at the foot of the bridge. Fog hovered, plucking the color from the scene. The river looked cold and grey as it snaked between its banks. Fists stuffed into his trouser pockets, Nate’s thoughts flowed in one direction too—back to Otto Schneider.
His confession had come too quickly, even before a lawyer had been assigned to him. Schneider had claimed the false witnesses lied to the police without any payment first. What kind of person risked prison on the mere hope of being paid for it later? It didn’t add up. And Nate still didn’t know how Otto Schneider knew to frame Stephen Townsend, of all people. The confession had said nothing about that. In fact, it said nothing about the false witnesses at all. Nate still hadn’t learned their names.
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