by Kelsey Gietl
“Mother of omelets, Henry, I told you to stay outside!”
“No!” Two hazel eyes glared at his father from over the shirt collar held up against his face. “You need me.”
“Leave, Henry! I won’t have you dead too.” Coughing, Hugo pushed his son towards the stairs and in the process dropped his wife. Sweat dribbled into already watering eyes as he rushed forward and slammed closed what was left of the bedroom door. That would hold the fire for a minute longer, maybe two, but not enough. He reached again for Maggie’s arms.
“You need me,” Henry repeated. “If you die because you’re stupid, then I’ll hate you forever.”
His only son blocked the stairwell. Hugo would either need to let him help or push him down it.
“Take her legs.”
Half carrying, half dragging Maggie’s body, they managed down the stairs and across the yard, finally collapsing onto the grass. Hugo tugged the shirt from his face while Molly danced beside them, great tears cascading down her cheeks.
Something shattered in the blaze, the sound splitting through the air and drawing the children’s attention. Hugo focused only on Maggie as he pressed a palm to either side of her face to force her chin up and mouth open. Her breath shuddered as though it were being drawn through the rock of a riverbed. She needed clean air; she needed to open her eyes. He needed her with him.
“Henry, take your sister and run to the Kincades’. Tell them to phone for help.”
“What if they’re not there?”
“Then keep moving until you find someone.” He met his son’s determined gaze. “I love you, Henry.”
“I love you too, Dad.” Taking Molly’s hand, he led her away still crying.
Flames and smoke billowed ash into the air. Their house would be little more than memories by the time the fire had its way. Everything they owned would be destroyed. “We’ll sort it out together,” he imagined Maggie would say. She would have the answer. She was the answer.
His forehead pressed into hers, her face gently cradled between his fingers. “I know I can do this without you,” he shouted over the din. “I can, but I don’t want to. I never wanted to. Please don’t make me.”
Hugo didn’t doubt he could face tomorrow, then the next day, and each one after that on his own. That had been the plan two weeks ago when he walked out the Archers’ front door. He had married a resilient woman who in turn taught him how to finally be resilient. He just didn’t want that to be her final gift to him.
“Hugo.”
He felt the word more than he heard it. Maggie’s lips moved against his chin and to him, her rasp was the sound of angels singing. When he raised his face, her irises reflected the bright blue sky above. Gasping, she folded handfuls of his undershirt between her fingers and wrenched him to her. They lay on the grass side by side ... holding on, never letting go.
“Your photographs ...” Maggie breathed. “Can we save them?”
Hugo could only stare at the life in her eyes and the breath on her lips, and marvel at how during such a time, she could think only of him. How much this woman had changed ... and changed him. He was the most fortunate man alive.
“Leave them. We have each other. We’ve already saved everything we need.”
FORTY-EIGHT
The police caught up to Damaris at Union Station. She waited on the railway platform with a one-way ticket to Chicago, carrying only a camera and a single worn traveling case. $187 lined her pockets—the exact amount now missing from her and Hugo’s shared account.
They located Isa in a corner of the central terminal, unharmed although babbling uncomprehendingly through her tears.
Tena too wept when Hugo rang from the hospital. While the doctors couldn’t determine if there would be any long-lasting health effects from the ordeal, thankfully Maggie would live. Reuben could only watch Abigail asleep in Elsa’s arms and think how close she came to losing her mother.
In the weeks that followed, Hugo refused to even set foot near the courthouse prior to the trial. His only words to his sister came in a note sent to the jailor: “You were supposed to be on my side.” All she returned were, “And you were supposed to be on mine.”
Reuben attended the trial. He listened to Damaris explain how Emma’s death was necessary for the sake of her brother’s overall well-being—as though heaving someone from a cliff in the dark of night was the same as extracting an infected tooth. When he read back over his notes in an attempt to make sense of them, he simply couldn’t. What malice needed to be in a person to commit such crimes against their own blood?
The proceedings became front page news. His words were read in households around the city, and sales of the Mid-Mississippi were the highest since his piece on Titanic one year ago. Eric Smithson at long last offered his lowly obituaries writer a place in the front section, right below the fold.
“’Bout time you climbed out of the muck,” Stanley teased when Reuben told him about the promotion. He clapped a hand to his friend’s shoulder. “You’ll get used to writing grizzly details. Eventually the sight of blood won’t make you vomit.”
“I turned him down,” Reuben replied.
“What? After all the grousing you did about wanting your own beat?”
Reuben chuckled at the shock on Lee’s face. He knew his response didn’t make sense after receiving exactly what he wanted. Even Smithson had turned a darker shade of red than he usually wore when Reuben rejected his offer.
“And exactly why not, Radford?” Smithson shouted. “You got another paper schmoozing for you? Is it the Post-Dispatch?” He reached for the telephone. “I’ll give them a piece of my mind. They’ve stolen too many of my best reporters already.”
“Put the receiver down, Mr. Smithson. It’s not the Post-Dispatch.”
The chief editor returned the mouthpiece to its cradle. “Then who is it? I’m doing you a favor here. I won’t do it again.”
Reuben pressed a finger to the open ledger on Smithson’s desk. “If you want to do me a favor, you can hire Hugo Frye as our official staff photographer. No more one-off work. Pay him a decent wage. Children should be proud of their father and a father should be able to provide.”
“Frye’s never complained. You’re out of your tree if you think I’m upping his rate.”
“He’ll go elsewhere. The Post-Dispatch, perhaps, or the Globe. I’ll see to it.”
“It sticks me to admit that Frye’s work influences our numbers. But I’m not running a charity case here. I know what the Post-Dispatch pays their designated staff photographers. The Mid-Mississippi can’t compete.”
“You can if you take me off the payroll.”
Facing Stanley from across the desk, Reuben packed the personal contents of his desk drawers into his satchel. “Priorities change, Lee. I’ll have my beat, but today someone else needed the money more.” He slung the bag across his chest and held out a hand. “Enjoy the violence beat, Lee. Take no offense, but I hope I never see you in my line of work.”
Stanley gripped Reuben’s hand and his lips folded into their usual good-natured grin. “Just so long as I see you sometime.”
“Blimey, Lee, that goes without saying.”
~~~
The following Sunday, Reuben walked the two miles from the boarding house to the Kischs’, surprised he hadn’t yet encountered remorse at his hasty decision to quit his job before securing another. It had been the opposite of wise—outrageously foolish in fact—yet it hadn’t brought him the worry he imagined it should. Probably because Tena kissed him the previous night when he told her his reasons, and even after six months together, he still couldn’t get enough of her. Charles had given him a gift and he would try to never take it for granted.
“You did this for Abigail, didn’t you?” Tena said when Reuben told her.
“Some for Abigail, some for me. Mostly because it was simply the right thing to do.”
Isa attacked him as he walked through the front door, her little arms stringing ar
ound his knees. “Uncle Reuben, play with me?” Since the fire, the Frye clan had boarded with their neighbors, the Kincades, but attended every Sunday night dinner with the Kischs. Within a few weeks, they settled in as an extension of the family. With the strange web already between him and Hugo, Reuben found their quickly-formed amity an incredible relief.
He ruffled Isa’s hair and pried her arms away. “After dinner, Isa. I can’t play on an empty stomach.”
“Okay!” She raced off to join her brother and sister on the living room floor. Henry bounced a small ball and scooped up an entire handful of jacks, while Karl and Hugo sat on the sofa watching the excitement. Through the window at the end of the hall, Reuben observed a heated game of improvised cricket between Emil and Friedrich, the former of whom was obviously cheating the latter. From the smells wafting out of the kitchen, the women had not allowed Maggie to assist with dinner. Even with Hugo’s—and later Elsa’s—help, her skills had only marginally improved.
“Would you care to hold her? She’s crawling her way into everything.”
Before he could respond, Tena slipped Abigail into Reuben’s arms and pressed a kiss to his lips. She smiled. “Thank you, love.” Then she was off down the hall and back into the throes of dinner preparation.
It wasn’t the first time Reuben held his daughter. He fought through the inevitable many months ago. Unfortunately, familiarity still couldn’t lessen the emotion he experienced every time he encountered his own flesh and blood.
For a man who always wanted children, he never fully comprehended how much he would care about the one he never planned on. This little child, now ten months old, with her dark hair and even darker eyes had stolen inside parts of him he wasn’t even aware existed. He may have lost Mira all those years ago, yet here she was returned to him in the face of this precious child. Abigail laid her cheek against his chest and when she nuzzled closer, he knew that someday his own children would bring him completely to his knees.
He prayed he could be a father his own would admire. Harris Radford hadn’t expressed enough of his hidden faith in his son. Reuben would make certain that his children always knew.
Abigail wriggled her little hand out from under her, those wondering eyes bending upward to find him as she toyed with his jacket buttons. Her incomprehensible babbling sent his heart fluttering. It wouldn’t be long before those sounds took meaning and she, like the other Frye children, would call him Uncle.
Could he truly allow another man to father his child? he had asked himself a thousand times.
Surprisingly, it was always Laurence Archer’s voice to reply. “You will, Reuben. You already have. What is done is done.”
“I wish you could meet your grandfather,” Reuben whispered to Abigail. “He would have done anything for his girls.” With a tender kiss to her brow, he entered the living room to set the child on her father’s lap. Grinning, Hugo bounced her on his knee to the child’s delighted giggles.
And I will do anything for mine, Reuben thought. Even if it means giving you up.
Maggie always told him everyone deserved a good story for their lives. Thanks to her, he now had a beautiful one.
~~~
From the dining room doorway, Maggie observed the Kischs’ living room in silence. Her life was one she stumbled into, and she wouldn’t forget how she ultimately found her happiness—through the sad chocolate eyes of a boy in a cemetery who loved her when she was less than lovable. She owed Reuben a debt she could never repay.
Entering from the front hall, he handed Abigail off to Hugo as though it was the most natural thing in the world, although she knew better. It still crushed him every time, but he did it because he had to.
“This is how it was always meant to be,” Reuben told Maggie only a few weeks after the fire. “I’m satisfied being the doting uncle, and you need to allow yourself to be at peace with that. I’ll never come back and ask for more; I’ll never tell anyone the truth unless you want me to. You don’t owe me anything, and I want nothing from you. Letting Abigail go only hurts because I know it’s right.”
“Still ...” she said, “There may come a day when Abbie needs to know. What do we tell her?”
“The truth—how much she’s loved. Blood doesn’t make a family, Maggie. Love does.”
Creating a child did not make you a parent any more than your parents’ mistakes didn’t destine you to do the same. A person was more than a sum of their parts. She understood that now.
Maggie’s father was the man who raised her when she wasn’t even his. He was the man who taught her to walk, who read her Journey to the Center of the Earth, and embraced her at the railway station for what would be the final time. He looked like Tena, but always understood Maggie best. That man was her father.
She had a choice, as her mother did before her, of how to raise Abigail, and she could have done it alone. Instead, she gave her a father who loved his daughter in the same way Laurence Archer loved her. Every day she would tell Abigail the truth—that Reuben Radford was her uncle, sometimes people make all the worst mistakes on the path to happiness, and above all else, a home was only as happy as the love that filled it.
Hugo Frye was Abigail’s father. Laurence Archer was hers. And no amount of blood would ever change that.
Maggie caught Hugo’s gaze as he approached. He ran a hand through his crimson hair with a shy smile, those locks not unlike the man whose true fire lay inside. With her own eyes, she counted the specks in those emerald irises, one for every piece of her happiness her husband claimed. Then she traced the thin hazel line that rimmed their worn edges and marveled at what a wonder they always were.
Hooking a hand around her waist, he drew her close, and when he kissed her, his lips lingered a moment even in the crowded room. “I could live like this forever, you know.”
“Good.” With a slow smile, she lifted Abigail from his opposite hip. “Because that’s how long you’ve got us for.”
Nothing was ever impossible, she thought. There were merely possibilities we hadn’t yet believed in.
~~~
The story continues in
Hope or High Water Book Three: Broken Lines
HISTORICAL NOTES
I hope you enjoyed taking some new twists and turns with Maggie, Reuben, and the rest. They sent me on a wild ride, forcing sharp turns from my original outline. For instance, Hugo was supposed to be wealthy, Stanley’s character barged his way in when I wasn’t looking, and there were no plans to send anyone back to England. In the end though, I’m glad I listened to my characters’ demands.
While Across Oceans will always hold a special place in my heart as my first novel, Twisted River was even more of a joy to write. It was wonderful to visit so many locations within my hometown, learn new facts about them, and then introduce them to you, the reader. St. Louis is a city of fantastic history, amazing people, and hidden gems, and well worth the visit. I have always loved living here, and writing this novel gave me so many more reasons to stay.
A few interesting facts about the locations in Twisted River:
Shaw’s Botanical Garden, now known as the Missouri Botanical Gardens, was built by Henry Shaw. He did, in fact, consult with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, as well as many German botanists both in St. Louis and abroad. The Palm House at Kew and the South London Botanical Institute still remain to this day; however, St. Louis’s Palm House was replaced by the Climatron in 1959. Alois Schweitzer’s character and the Magdalena flower are completely from my imagination.
Cave Hall was one of the premier dance halls of the time and for many decades after, under the name Castle Ballroom. Built in 1908 by Cornelius Ahern and Herman Albers, the hall was completely non-alcoholic, allowing it to thrive even throughout Prohibition. According to records, the infamous Morality Squad only visited one night in December 1911, hoping to enforce laws against inappropriate dancing. Supposedly forgetting that the hall was closed on Monday, they simply left. Otherwise, they may have witnessed the
dances performed by Reuben, Tena, and their friends: the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, and Lame Duck, amongst others. After many years in disrepair, Castle Ballroom was demolished in 2012.
All the World’s Fairs Hugo attended were actual events, including the 1904 fair in St. Louis. The Flight Cage (within the St. Louis Zoo), Palace of Art (now the St. Louis Art Museum), Apotheosis of St. Louis, and Grand Basin are still visited year-round. In 1912, the Basin sat around ten to fourteen feet deep, making it a legitimate hazard for those sledding on Art Hill. After updates in 2003, its depth was raised to around four feet and the hill is considered the most popular sledding spot in the city.
The Mid-Mississippi Daily is not a real newspaper but was based on many newspapers of the time. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which Reuben mentions always gets the best stories, was founded in 1878 and is still in circulation to this day.
In addition, some of my early readers asked me about how slowly the Fryes’ house seemed to burn. How did they have time for those lengthy conversations and still make it to safety? According to my research, it would have been far more possible in 1912 than if a similar fire occurred today. One hundred years ago, a home’s framework and furniture were constructed of more natural materials instead of the synthetics we tend to use now. Therefore, without the use of a stimulant, an older home could take thirty minutes for one room to completely burn into the next. If the fire began shortly before Hugo arrived, he would have had just enough time for a little chit-chat and still be able to save his wife. Although it did cross my mind to have Maggie perish, I love happy endings, and it only seemed right for she and Hugo to finally claim their own.
Finally, I love connecting with my readers! To send me a line, or for updates on future projects, visit: kelseygietl.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR