Behind the counter, Dave Rossi looked over his glasses at Nolan. “You’re not going to faint, are you?”
“What gave you that idea?” Nolan straightened his shoulders.
Dave smirked. “I used to be a runner. I had one knee replaced, and the other is just bad enough to take the fun out of even pretending to run. Plus I’m pretty sure I have a dozen years on you.”
The shop door opened, and Jillian blew in. “You made it.”
“Not only have I made it, but I have read six books while waiting for you.”
Jillian dragged an arm through the perspiration on her forehead. “You can give me the SparkNotes on the walk home.”
“Nolan, is this your daughter?” Dave asked.
Jillian pivoted toward the counter. “You know my dad?”
“He’s my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer? I thought you were new to Canyon Mines.”
“I am. Just updating some documents. Stephanos not only employed me but recommended a good attorney.”
“Full-service bookstore,” Nolan said.
“Jillian,” Dave said, “I hear our girl Tisha was the subject of some commotion at Ore the Mountain yesterday.”
Nolan winced. “I guess it would have been too much to hope that incident would have been contained.”
“Last I looked, this isn’t Vegas,” Dave said.
“What do you mean, ‘our girl’?” Nolan asked.
“I met Dave at the Cage,” Jillian said. “You know. When I was entrapping Tisha.”
Dave bellowed. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Grandpa Rossi?”
A tiny voice made Nolan spin around. “I’m sorry. I’m in your way.”
“That’s my grandpa.” The little girl looked fourish, perhaps a young five, with dark bangs colliding with long eyelashes when she blinked. “He said I can have a new book.”
“Put it right here on the counter, sweetie,” Dave said. “Your mom will be here soon.”
“Grandpa Rossi, can I have two books?”
“Well, I’d like to read a book about baseball with you. What do you think?”
“I like baseball.” The girl scampered back to the children’s section.
“Nadia,” Dave said. “Spitting image of her grandmother. She doesn’t remember her, but she’ll see the pictures someday. I’ll ring up your book, Jillian.”
Joanna careened through the store, sneezing three times on her way and too busy to stop and say hello.
“Does she always come through the store?” Nolan asked.
“There’s an outside entrance at the rear,” Dave said, “but I suspect she thinks this is faster when she’s in a hurry to get back to work.”
“I guess it would be more direct to go straight out to the street than walk halfway around the block.” Jillian slid her debit card into the machine at the counter.
“She has a puppy, you know.” Dave bagged the book.
“A puppy?” Nolan said.
“Strict schedules. Comes back down with a silly grin on her face and hair on her jeans. And sneezing. Every time.”
“She’s allergic.”
“Yep. She takes that puppy out in the alley and then back upstairs.”
“A workable theory.”
“A confirmed theory. In the evening, after dark when she thinks it’s safe, she has it out for a good long walk away from any streetlights. I’ve seen her.”
“It makes sense! But how does she keep it quiet?”
“That I don’t know. But I’m fairly certain Stephanos knows nothing about it, and it’s against the lease.” Dave handed Jillian a receipt. “I’m not going to snitch, but it’s not going to last much longer. I’ve seen the size of the dog.”
Nolan laughed. “I can’t decide if I’d like to be around when Stephanos and Clark find out, or if it would be better to be on the other side of the county.”
“Let’s go, Dad,” Jillian said. “Leo will be waiting for you, and we both need showers.”
Nolan sniffed. “You think? But we have time for the hardware store.”
“Hardware store?”
“Let’s go look at shelving supplies. I don’t want to be caught short on Tuesday. We want something nice in that room.”
They went down Tram Street to the hardware store in the next block, where Nolan made sure an order of finished wood, brackets, and assorted other hardware would be waiting for him when he returned to town on Monday evening with his truck.
Then they headed home, going up Ore Street to get back to Main.
One last shop window drew Nolan’s gaze. Ordinarily he didn’t pay much attention to Candles & Cards. He probably hadn’t been in there a half dozen times in the last five years. But he knew Brittany Crowder’s latest job was inside.
“Is she working?” Beside him, Jillian’s voice was soft. At least her presence gave him a credible cover story for pausing to look through the shop’s window and pretend to be interested in the display.
“It looks like she’s keeping her head down and minding her own business.”
“I guess being mean to your daughter in public is not grounds for dismissal from your job.”
Nolan shook his head. “No, but the gossip must be terrible after yesterday.”
“She’s been living with gossip her whole life. It’s true that after Mom died I stopped caring about the gossip at school, but it was always there. There weren’t that many pregnant girls at Canyon Mines High.”
“And now Tisha lives with it.”
“Dad, Tisha said the other day that her family used to be rich. What did she mean?”
Nolan lifted one shoulder. “A lot of families around here did well in mining for a blip in time.”
“It takes more than a blip to get rich.”
“In your line of work, you know better than most that family lore tends to enrich the facts.” Nolan chuckled. “I made a joke!”
“A bad one.” Jillian rolled her eyes. “Dad, look!”
Across the street, at the Canary Cage, Joanna rushed out the door. Clark followed, calling her name. Nolan hustled enough energy for one more sprint and headed Joanna off, forcing her to stop running on her path up the sidewalk. Clark still had one hand on the shop door, as if he couldn’t leave the place unattended.
“Let me get past,” Jo said.
“Give me two minutes,” Nolan countered.
Jo squeezed her eyes closed. “This is not going to go well.”
“But you know it has to happen.”
“Two minutes!”
Nolan had no proof of Dave’s puppy theory, and the Cage was too busy on a Saturday morning to pull Clark away for a true calm mediation with his niece, but Nolan could get them to look each other in the eye. He walked behind Jo as she shuffled back toward her uncle.
“Explain yourself once and for all,” Clark said.
“I have a proposal,” Nolan said. “Carry on today without changing anything.”
“What sort of proposal is that?” Clark said. “She’ll just run off again.”
“A temporary truce. Finish the workday. I’ll be back at seven o’clock tonight when the Cage closes, and I will help you talk to each other.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Denver, Colorado
Sunday, July 23, 1893
My favorite store!” Georgina’s lament was pure and palpable. “McNamara Dry Goods. What will I do without them? ‘Forced into reorganization.’ What does that even mean?”
“It’s better than point-blank bankruptcy.” Clifford held his wife’s hand to stop it from flapping against the arm of the dark green upholstered chair in the front room, which she had appointed with fine detail. “It may open again under new ownership or with new financial backing.”
“It won’t be the same.” Georgina resisted his comforts. “And assets seized by Union National of all things.”
“The bank is trying to recover as well,” Clifford said. “McNamara’s owes them a great deal of money—seve
nty thousand dollars, the papers say. If they can recover the store’s debts, it might be their best chance to open again.”
“What will a bank do with a dry goods store?”
“Georgie, we need to talk about a few things.” She was already upset. Clifford had little to lose.
She focused her eyes on him at last.
“Even if McNamara’s hadn’t closed—for now—we would have to close our account there,” Clifford said.
Georgina pushed her eyebrows together.
“We must economize more than we have, dear. I have to ask you not to make any new purchases for the house or clothing, and we could eat simpler meals.”
She huffed. “We may have to anyway. So many of the shops have shut. Who knows what’s happening in the cattle yards, but you can hardly get a decent cut of beef at the butcher.”
Cliff nodded. “And I’m afraid it’s time to let Graciela go.”
“Graciela!”
“Yes. We can help her out with food and a little money here and there, but I don’t see how we can keep paying her the wage she is used to when we have nothing coming in.”
“I saw the money from the bank just a week ago,” Georgina countered. “I did think it might be more, but it was hardly nothing.”
“Yes, we have something. But we have to manage it well. I have no hope of recovering what I’m due from Mr. Tabor. The inquiries I’ve made about other employment have led to nothing.”
“You’ll find a position. You are well thought of. This can’t last forever.”
“In the meantime, we have obligations.” Cliff’s throat had gone dry. “You know we’ve always had a mortgage on the house, Georgie.”
“But you’ve been paying it down. We agreed. I can see now that you were right not to carry the mortgage at the same bank where we did our usual banking, or they might have taken our house last week instead of giving you what we had on deposit.”
“I made some … adjustments … in the mortgage a few months ago.”
“Adjustments?” Georgina sat up straight.
“Silver has been falling since January. I needed to ease the cash flow for our mines, so I rearranged our personal debt with another bank. A New York bank.”
Her eyes turned to gray slits. “What have you done, Clifford?”
“I have done my best to take care of you and the girls,” he said. “That’s what I have done. And I have tried to spare you unnecessary worry, as much as I could. But our circumstances have changed in a downward manner nearly monthly since the beginning of the year, and now we face a significant payment on the mortgage at the end of August. We must economize. There is no question that you—we—must accept that our lives are affected by all that is happening beyond our control.”
“Clifford.” Georgina’s hand began flapping against the chair arm again.
“We will weather this, Georgie, just as we weathered everything we faced in our early days. Together.”
“We are not those people, Clifford.” Her voice was a growl. “We built something. A life. And you have put it all at risk.”
“Georgina, you don’t mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean.”
“We all feel the distress. And you’re upset about McNamara’s. It may open under another name, but chances are once it’s reorganized it will be back with all the departments you expect.”
“I always thought I could count on you, Clifford.”
“Of course you can. You’re my Georgie, and I will always look after you.”
She stood up. “It’s a sad state that women need men at all.”
Her words cut through him. Theirs had never been a marriage of necessity. At least he hadn’t thought so. Clifford had always felt incredibly lucky that a woman of Georgina’s loveliness and determination had chosen to settle her affections on him, and he thought she knew how much he treasured her. But she left the room and climbed the stairs without remorse for slicing into him and laying bare his efforts to care for her to hemorrhage on her imported rug.
Clifford forced air out of his lungs, deciding he needed a glass of water for his suddenly parched throat.
“What’s going on here?” Perspiration broke out at Clifford’s hairline as soon as he went through the kitchen door. How Missy tolerated the heat standing right beside the oven, he did not know. He took a glass from the cupboard and a pitcher of cold water from the icebox.
“Reverend Reed from the Congregational Church gave an appeal for bread money.” Missy flipped a mound of bread dough on the floured counter and dug the heels of her hands into it in a vigorous kneading motion. “Have you forgotten? Just this morning after church you gave me money for ingredients to help feed the unemployed so I can replace Mama’s supplies first thing tomorrow.”
“Oh yes.” Clifford swallowed a long draught of water, letting it flush through and cool him before swallowing another. “I see you are quite ambitious in your goals.”
“I calculated carefully. We had plenty of yeast and sugar. Mama will never miss what I used. Mrs. Benedict gave me the eggs. Her hens are laying very well right now, and she’s been quite eager to find someone who can take eggs. When I told her what it was for, she wouldn’t even accept any money. And a little goes a long way for flour. Obviously I can’t buy anything on a Sunday, but tomorrow I will go right out and purchase enough flour to fill the bin again. Surely one of the grocers will be open. Someone will find a way to manage for those who can still pay.”
“It certainly smells delicious in here.”
“I’ve already set aside three loaves for us, and I promised Mama I would make a nice family dinner before I go out tonight to help distribute the other loaves.”
“Out? Where will you be?”
“Just at the People’s Tabernacle. Parson Tom is overseeing the distribution. We’re hoping and praying that between the two congregations we’ll have hundreds of loaves to give out.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s not necessary, Papa.”
“The streets are getting rougher, Missouri.” Clifford filled his glass a third time. “Your mother has given you a wide berth and holds her tongue during the daytime because you are not a child, but it is unrealistic to expect her to approve of your going out to give food to homeless men on your own in the evening.”
“I’ll be with other people.”
“Loren?”
Missy’s face blanched. “I hope so. I’m never sure.”
“Well, I like Loren. He was a fine foreman at the Missouri Rise. But right now he’s one of the homeless men who make your mother nervous. So if it’s all the same to you, in the name of Christian charity and to keep the peace at home, I will accompany you to feed the hungry tonight.”
Missouri flipped the bread dough again and leaned into it extra hard but nodded.
For an early dinner, Missy made a hearty dish from leftover pot roast and vegetables Lity harvested from the garden that, thankfully, was yielding steadily through the summer. Lity’s interest this year had prompted planting a larger vegetable garden than most summers, long before the family knew they would come to rely on it as much as they had. At least Clifford had been relieved to see the bills from the greengrocer go down once the growing season was fully underway. Now he wondered if it was too late to plant squash or something else that would take them further into fall. The stew paired well with a loaf of Missy’s bread and seemed a soothing offering. Georgina ate without giving anyone at the table the benefit of full connection with her eyes.
Perhaps it was better that way.
Lity and Corah cleaned up, and Missy and Clifford filled empty flour sacks with the ten loaves she’d managed to bake. The evening was cooling nicely as it did most nights. They could have taken horses or the carriage—the animals weren’t getting enough exercise these days, and Clifford wasn’t sure how much longer he could afford to keep feeding both of them—but they opted to ride a streetcar and have the freedom to move as needed among the throngs of
hungry men. Clifford hated to think the worst of anyone, but right now a horse out of eyesight was a horse ripe for stealing. If circumstances got much worse, he might be able to sell a horse to someone who could put it on a train and auction it off in a city that still had currency circulating among its citizens. Georgina wouldn’t like it, but the carriage was disposable as well. He had to keep every consideration in mind.
Clifford and Missy walked a few blocks, carrying the bread sacks.
“I would think a streetcar would have been along by now,” he said.
“They aren’t running as many,” Missy said. “People can’t afford to ride them.”
He sighed. How had he not noticed in all his voluntary pedestrian wanderings? It did feel like a splurge for the two of them.
“I supposed some of the drivers have lost their positions, then,” Clifford said.
Missouri nodded. “We can walk. We’re both used to it.”
“I’m proud of you, Missouri. You’re doing a kind and generous thing.”
“ ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,’ ” Missy said. “I have so little to offer. But I can at least offer some balm to those who have even less than I. If I don’t at least do that, I have heard nothing Jesus ever said.”
Clifford drew in a slow, deep breath and only nodded as he shifted his bread sack to his other shoulder.
When they reached the People’s Tabernacle, even though it was past time for the evening meal for most residents in their homes, lines of those who had no homes still slithered in several directions, waiting for food.
“Do you know where to take your bread?” Clifford assumed there was a process.
“I think so.” Missouri led, and Cliff followed.
“It’s nice to see you.” Parson Tom greeted them both. “And with alms for the poor in your arms. Thank you.”
“Where shall we go?” Missouri asked.
“Mr. Wade has pitched in over there.” Parson Tom pointed. “I’m sure he would appreciate your assistance.”
Missouri blushed and glanced at her father.
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