Siri Mitchell

by Unrivaled

  “Several hundred. And some empty wrappers.” Lots of empty wrappers.

  “For what?” He leaned forward in his chair.

  “For the Stix Christmas window. Just think how many people will see Royal Taffy at the display. They’ll see it along with all those toys and presents they’re wishing for. With a big sign saying Santa’s Sweetest Gift. Even the newsies who can’t afford to buy any of those things will see the poster. We couldn’t pay for that kind of advertisement.”

  “Apparently, we can.” He leaned back as he rolled his cigar between his fingers.

  I forced myself not to beg. It hadn’t gotten me anything when I was a child. It wouldn’t do anything for me now.

  “‘Santa’s Sweetest Gift,’ eh?”

  I nodded.

  “I like it. We’ll give it try. Just this once.”

  “Just this once.”

  I had Mr. Mundt call the store manager and arrange for another meeting the next day. I was driven over to Stix by Nelson. We were followed by a delivery truck carrying cases of Royal Taffy and rolls of wrapping. I met with the display supervisor, and we talked through the ideas.

  “When can you have that sign to us?”

  I had to figure out how to have it made first. “I think . . . well, when do you need it?”

  “Sooner would be better.”

  “Then you’ll have it soon.”

  Soon was easier said than done. The company that usually did our printing didn’t have the time. “We’re booked through Christmas. Busiest time of year.” The supervisor shoved a pencil behind his ear as he shouted the words over the rattle and bang of the presses.

  “But I really need—”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “It’s only one poster.”

  “Then I really can’t do it.”

  I returned to the car and climbed into the back seat, slouching into the corner.

  “Something wrong, Mr. Charlie?” Nelson shot me a glance over his shoulder before pulling the car out into the street.

  “I told my father I could have a poster done up for the Stix display and I don’t think I can do it.” I didn’t want to see his face, didn’t want to see the disappointment when I told him. I’d seen enough disappointment on my parents’ faces to last a lifetime. I really thought I’d had a great idea when I’d come up with the display. A way to increase our sales without directly harming City Confectionery. I didn’t mind outselling them, I just didn’t want to know that I’d hurt Lucy and her company directly.

  “You’ll think of something.”

  I wished I felt as confident as he sounded.

  I was still worried Wednesday evening while at the opera. It was some story about a man and a woman who were madly in love but couldn’t be together. Truth be told, it seemed to me that’s what they were all about—at least the three operas I’d seen. Only this one was set in Persia. The stage background was a palace painted in gold and blue and green. Last week’s had been some kind of workshop decorated with orange and red and brown. From where I sat, the background almost looked real. I wondered how it was they managed that.

  During intermission, I went down front to take a look.

  No one was really watching, so I walked up onto the stage and ducked behind the curtains. If the theater was empty behind me, it was a madhouse there on the other side of the curtains, with people running here and there, carrying things on and off the stage.

  “Hey, you! Get out of here.” A man with a surly look to him picked up a candlestick and pointed it out toward the theater beyond me.

  “I just . . . I was only taking a look.”

  “Not allowed.”

  I pointed to the background scenes. “I was hoping to talk to the person who painted these . . . these things.” Whatever it was that they were.

  “The backdrops? That’s me. What do you want?”

  “I wanted to tell you how swell they are.”

  He crossed his arms. “Are they now?”

  “I think they are. They’re the best I’ve ever seen.” They were the only ones I’d ever seen. At least up close.

  His stance relaxed. “I like to think I do good work.”

  “The best. A man of your talents shouldn’t be so modest. You do the best of work.”

  “I went to school to study.”

  I blinked. Isn’t that what people usually did at school? Study?

  “For art.”

  “Ah.” He went to school for art. That meant . . . he was an artist! “Say. You wouldn’t be interested in doing a little something for me on the side, would you?”

  “What? You mean, like a commission?”

  “Exactly. A commission. I want to hang your work in a place where everyone in the city can see it.”

  23

  November swept by in a whirlwind of conventions and banquets and balls. Needing a reprieve from my duties, I’d found comfort in the kitchen, where Mrs. Hughes was bustling about.

  I was quickly losing hope that we could save the company. I wished I had the time to develop a premium line of sweets, the way I had hoped to when I’d come back from Europe, but my failure with the hazelnut chews made me reluctant to try again. Besides, any new recipe required experimentation, and experiments took money.

  I looked down at the colorful nuts I held in my hand.

  If only we could sell something fancier than Fancy Crunch. Although . . . Fancy Crunch was fancy. At least . . . it was supposed to be. All those brightly colored candy-coated dragées. Father had created them from an old French recipe. I’d seen dragées by the jarful in Europe.

  Maybe . . . was there any way to make them even fancier? What if I could turn them into my premium line of confections?

  If we didn’t mix the colors . . . and if we put them into a different sort of package and tied them up with a ribbon . . . Maybe, just maybe, we could charge more for them.

  The next morning, I mentioned the idea to Mother.

  The Women’s Society at church was having a rare Saturday meeting to sort through donations for the missionaries. I found her in front of the hall mirror adjusting the position of the feathers in her hat. She pulled one of her hat pins out and then stuck it back in with a vengeance that made me wince. Then she stopped and sighed as she listened to me speak.

  “Do you realize this is the first time I’ve left the house since that candidates’ meeting last month? I was hoping to be able to go somewhere I wouldn’t have to think about heart attacks or candy or money. For one blessed hour I would like to pretend that everything is all right. Is that too much to ask?”

  As she turned I realized dark circles had gathered in the hollows beneath her eyes. And lines had been pressed into her cheeks. When had she gotten so old? And why hadn’t I noticed before?

  She clamped her handbag beneath her arm as she pulled on her gloves. Then she turned and walked toward the door.

  I followed her outside, down the front walk to the carriage. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. Never mind.”

  The coachman offered his hand, but she stopped and squared her shoulders as she faced me. “No. Tell me again. You were talking about different packaging for Fancy Crunch. What are you proposing?”

  “Well . . .” I hadn’t thought that far ahead. And I hadn’t realized the toll that Father’s illness had taken . . . now I wished I’d never opened my mouth. But she was standing there looking at me, waiting for me to continue. “What about clear cellophane instead of that green wrapper? So that the color of the candies could be seen?”

  “There would still need to be a label.”

  “And there would be one. We’d paste it on the front, just like we do now.”

  “I don’t see what difference any of this makes. I’ve already told you, Lucy, the company is going to be sold.”

  “I just thought maybe—”

  “All of these thoughts about candy are a waste of your time. Especially since you have more important things to think of. Like suitors.”

  “But
if it didn’t cost any money . . . ? Please?”

  “It serves no useful purpose. The company will be sold whether the packaging stays the same or changes.”

  “Please.”

  “In fact, it’s not a bad idea, and if I say yes, it’s not because you’re changing my mind about anything. It’s because if we don’t finish this conversation, I’m going to be late.” She put her hand into the coachman’s.

  He helped her up into the carriage.

  “So you’re saying . . .”

  “I’m saying yes.” She pinned me with her look. “But I don’t mean anything by it except to hope that you’ll finally stop all this foolishness. I have plans, Lucy, and I won’t be dissuaded from them.”

  “I know.” I was hardly able to refrain from clapping, but I did let a smile slip. I couldn’t wait to try my idea.

  On Monday morning, I went down to the confectionery to talk with Mr. Blakely. The staff was panning Fancy Crunch, layering on the candy coating, so I had to shout over the din of a thousand nuts tumbling back and forth across the metal trays.

  “You want to what?” He squinted as he leaned closer.

  “I want to change the packaging.”

  He blinked. “Why?”

  “So we can charge more.”

  “So we can . . . ? How?”

  “If we can separate them by color, and sell them in clear cellophane and tie it all up with a ribbon, then we can say they’re fancy.”

  “They already are. They’re Fancy Crunch.”

  “Fancier.”

  “Fancier.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then began to nod. “All right. If we don’t have to mix the colors, then we can save some time. That might help. Only . . . what do you want to charge?”

  “Seven cents? Instead of a nickel?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  “And do you think we could get some boxes out by the end of next week? So they can go on sale those first few days in December?”

  “We’ll try.”

  Thanksgiving was on Thursday and then Christmas was coming. With a new year on its way and Fancy Crunch becoming even fancier, the Kendall family’s luck was about to change. I could just feel it.

  24

  My father was pacing in front of his desk when I went in to see him on Tuesday morning. He greeted me with a smile as he took the cigar from his mouth. “Charles! I’ve been inspired. What if we could make Royal Taffy fancier?”

  Fancier? It was taffy. There wasn’t anything fancy about it. “Fancy how?”

  “Packaging.”

  “Then . . . you’d make more money. Maybe.” At least that’s the way I saw it.

  “Right!”

  “As long as the packaging didn’t cost more and you could raise the price.”

  “Can’t raise the price, but we need to be fancier. That’s your new job. Figure out a way to do it without costing us more.”

  I felt my brow lift. “That might be asking for the impossible.” Again.

  I worked the next day on the problem, keeping Mr. Mundt busy making telephone calls to our packaging suppliers. By the end of the afternoon, we’d figured out how to do it. I told my father about it later that evening.

  “So it can be done?”

  “It can, but the question is whether you really want to.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It won’t be easy. We’ll have to change the whole packaging process. Cellophane instead of waxed paper, although I got in our Royal Taffy red on a separate label. Looks like the old one, only it’s white with red lettering. We can twist and tie, with ribbon, instead of using glue for sealing.”

  “Not a problem as long as we can change it all back.”

  Change it back? “You mean . . . you don’t plan on—”

  “It’s only a temporary measure. Few weeks . . . just through Christmas. Then we can go back to the way things were.”

  “But it’s going to require the girls learning a new way to do things. The process is going to get slower before it can get any faster. And slower means we won’t make as much money. At least not right away.”

  “We don’t have to.”

  “But I thought—!”

  “Leave the thinking to me. Just tell me how we’re going to do it. And fast. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, but I still want the fancier taffy in the stores by early next week. Before the first of the month.”

  It nearly killed me and Mr. Gillespie, but we did it. On Monday, boxes of the fancier taffy left the factory on the morning trains. That was two whole days before December first. By then, people across the nation would be able to celebrate Christmas with fancier-looking taffy.

  It was a shame there was a symphony that evening. I would have preferred polishing Louise to hearing more screechy fiddles and banging drums. I was coming to hate my swallowtail coat. But it couldn’t be helped.

  And neither, apparently, could talking to most of St. Louis’s unmarried daughters. It was funny how many of their mothers pushed them toward me; I wasn’t used to being considered a catch. They’d all run away screaming if they knew the kinds of things I’d done, the sort of business I’d been involved in. But I tried to treat it all as seriously as they did. If only to have someone to talk to, even if it was just Winnie Compton. She’d turned her smile on me when she saw me, and when Augusta went over to talk to her mother, she came to stand beside me.

  “You should go talk to Lucy. She looks lonely.”

  “I’m the last person she’d want to talk to.” The last person she should be talking to.

  She sent me a frank glance. “I think you’re about the first person she’d like to be talking to.”

  I laughed. “Then you must not have heard how much she hates me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what she says, what matters is what she believes.”

  I knew that what Lucy thought and what she believed were the same things, but Winnie wasn’t the worst of the bunch of girls I was supposed to talk to, and I wasn’t ready to go back into the auditorium, so I played along. “Then why doesn’t she say what she believes?”

  “Most people don’t, you know. I think you’re one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen, and one of the nicest, but I would never actually say that because you might take it the wrong way.”

  “How could anyone take that the wrong way?”

  “You might think I’m sweet on you.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “I don’t think it would make much difference whether I was or I wasn’t, do you?”

  How was I supposed to answer that?

  “I think you like Lucy just as much as she likes you.”

  “Lucy?” I did, in fact, like her. But there wasn’t much point in admitting it. “I think she’s one of the meanest girls I’ve ever met.”

  She swatted me on the arm. “You’re just saying that. It’s not really what you believe.” She considered Lucy again, tilting her head first this way and then that.

  “Then what do I believe?”

  “I just told you what you believe. But I wish someone would ask me what I believe.”

  “What do you believe?”

  “I believe it would be a lot less trying and much more pleasant if you both just stopped saying things about each other and started talking to each other.”

  “I . . . can’t. As much as I’d like to. I’m not the person she thinks I am.”

  Winnie put a hand to my back and pushed me forward. “So you need to go over there and tell her that. Don’t listen to what she says. Remember what’s important is what she believes deep down inside.”

  “You don’t understand, Winnie. I’m really not who she thinks I am. I’m much worse. There are some things in my past that I’m not very proud of.”

  A frown pinched her pretty eyes at the corners. “It doesn’t matter what she says or what she believes she believes. What matters is what she really believes. So go over there and tell her what you believe.”

  “I believe . .
. if she knew what I believed . . .”

  She raised a brow. “Yes . . . ?”

  “If she knew what I believed . . . you know what? It doesn’t matter what I believe, what matters is what is. And there’s no way to get around that.”

  She was shaking her head. “But you’re not talking about what is. You’re talking about what was. Those are two different things. You’re not the same person anymore.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Haven’t I seen you at church, Charles Clarke?”

  “Every Sunday.” Whether I wanted to be there or not.

  “Don’t you listen?”

  “ . . . No.”

  She threw up her hands. “Well, why on earth do you go?”

  Winnie was looking at me for an answer, but I didn’t have one. “Because my father expected me to” sounded pitiful, even to me.

  “If you did ever happen to listen, then you would hear what I just told you: You don’t have to be who you used to be.”

  “You’re talking about sin. And sinners.”

  She fixed me with a look that made me think she might just be a Sunday School teacher in disguise. “We’re all sinners, Charles Clarke.”

  “Let’s just say for a minute that I agree with you.”

  Winnie smiled. “But that’s not really what you believe, is it?”

  “Let’s pretend I do. But what if . . . what if I watched someone get murdered?”

  “Watching isn’t the same as doing.”

  “No. But say I knew what was likely to happen, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?”

  She nodded. “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because I . . . wasn’t brave enough. I was afraid the same thing might happen to me.”

  “So the other man died because you were afraid.”

  That was about the way of it. “Yes. So I stood there and watched. It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  She stood there looking at me, but it wasn’t judgment that shone from her eyes. It was concern. The same concern that used to shine from my mother’s eyes. And I couldn’t stand it from her any more than I could from Winnie. So I tried to distract her. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”