by Tess Hilmo
She is nowhere to be seen.
“Maybe she’s waiting somewhere else,” Quinn says. “These trees all look the same in winter.”
“She has found the right tree every day until now. She knows where it is.”
“Maybe she stayed after school.”
My stomach starts turning around on itself. “Maybe.”
We walk over to the barn that the city converted into a make-do schoolhouse until a new one can be built, but it is locked and no one is around.
“She’s probably back at Miss Franny’s,” Quinn says.
I pull on the barn door again, hoping it will somehow slide open and reveal Nettie staying after school to sweep the floor or wash down the blackboard. That’s the kind of thing she’d do. “Nettie!” I holler.
“I know!” Quinn says. “She’s talking to that chicken.”
“You’re right.” We take off in a sprint.
But when we get to the McGintys’, our lungs burning from running in the cold snow, we find the hens huddled in their coop, alone.
I make Quinn wait by the buckeye tree while I go up and down the street, asking everyone who comes by if they have seen a girl with brown braids and a huge smile, dressed in a beige coat.
A couple of people know who Nettie is, but no one I talk to has seen her recently.
My heart is beating in a thumpity, thumpity, thumpity panic-skip sort of way but, as I walk toward Quinn, it slows down and falls into a heavy thud, thud, thud. Quinn reaches out and takes my hand. “She’s waiting at Miss Franny’s for us.” He says it like it’s true but we both know it isn’t.
“You’re late.” Miss Franny is in a huff when we come in the back door.
“We were looking for Nettie,” I say. Then, to cover our working situation I add, “She disappeared from the school yard while Quinn and I were inside. Is she here?”
Quinn comes in behind me, after sneaking Miss Franny’s shovel into her shed, along with his fiddle.
“No,” Miss Franny says, “and you should be chopping the onions.” She points a finger toward a burlap sack in the corner.
“You’re not listening to me. Nettie has gone missing. We can’t find her anywhere and it’s starting to get dark outside.”
“Because it’s late,” Miss Franny says. “We have a houseful of boarders expecting dinner soon and you’re off looking for a nothing girl who is likely playing in the streets or singing to stupid chickens.”
“How can you say something so awful?”
Quinn pulls on my hand and I know he is warning me against my temper.
“Nettie!” I holler, pulling away from Quinn and searching the house. When I get to our room I see that the blanket on the bed is neatly folded and the sheets are stripped off. I turn and stomp into the kitchen where Miss Franny is pulling out a stack of tin plates for dinner. “What did you do with her?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You must have done something because the bed is all stripped down.”
Miss Franny sets the plates on the table and flings her arms in the air. “Now I can’t even wash my own sheets? Do the laundry in the boardinghouse I am charged to manage? So ungrateful, this one!” She turns to Quinn on that last part as if he will tell her she is right, but he just stands there. She drops her arms and says, “Useless, both of you!”
I storm out of the house, slamming the back door behind me. Quinn comes out quietly right after.
“She’s never stripped off the sheets before,” I say to him.
“Maybe you just never noticed,” Quinn says. “Maybe she really was doing laundry.”
“Miss Franny’s behind this, I know it.”
“What would Miss Franny have to gain from hurting Nettie?” Quinn asks.
I don’t have a good answer for that. “I don’t know,” is all I can think to say.
Quinn sighs and pulls his coat closed in the front. He looks up to the sky, which has finally stopped spitting snowflakes, and says, “Let’s start searching.” It is the best thing he could have said.
We go down the street, knocking on every door and calling out Nettie’s name. When Miss Franny’s street has been checked, we move on to the next street and the next after that. After several hours, people quit answering their doors and Quinn says they are all in bed for the night.
We wander around through yellow spots of lamplight and patches of darkness and end up at the tall line of walnut trees by the community garden.
“Nettie!” I holler out once more, my voice cracking at the end.
“We’ll look again tomorrow,” Quinn says.
I lean up against a tree and drop my head into my hands. “She didn’t even have good shoes on.”
“It’s pointless to search when everyone is asleep,” Quinn says. “Let’s go back, I’m freezing.”
My feet went numb at least two hours before and the tips of my ears ache from the cold, but thinking about it only makes me worry about Nettie more. Only makes me think about how little she is and how the coat she was given from the church’s donation box is more the fall type and not really the middle-of-December type and how she might be twice as cold as Quinn and I put together. Not to mention hungry. And scared. She must be terrified, wherever she is.
I shake my head. “I can’t give up.”
“We’re not giving up, we’re just saying it’s too late right now.”
I ignore Quinn and start wandering again. “Nettie!” I holler over and over, wondering if she’s hurt and can hear us from wherever she is but just can’t answer. At least then she’ll know we are trying.
I am so distressed I don’t even notice Sam until he is standing right in front of me.
“Ailis,” he says, and I smell the bitter malt of ale on his breath. The pub must have just closed. “What are you two doin’ out here at this hour?”
“Nettie’s missing. We’ve looked everywhere. I think Miss Franny did something … Maybe she threatened her and Nettie ran off, I don’t know. But Nettie’s gone and we can’t find her.”
“Why would Fran do something like that?”
“Because she’s the devil!”
Sam pulls me in to his side. “Now, there,” he says, and leans on me more than I am leaning on him. “That Franny’s a tough bird, but she wouldn’t hurt Nettie.”
“How can you say that?” I ask. “What do you see in a person like her?”
Sam sways and says, “There’s all kinds of beautiful in this world,” and I know he is a lot more drunk than I originally thought. “Let’s get you two home,” he mumbles as his knees start to buckle. Quinn swoops in on the other side, helping me hold Sam up. He leans heavily on us and keeps mumbling about how he is getting us home but, really, it is Quinn and I who are struggling to lead him back through the frozen streets.
When we get to Miss Franny’s, Sam stands up and tucks his shirt front into his trousers. Then he straightens Quinn’s coat collar.
“Looking presentable and all of that stuff,” he says before staggering up to the porch and swinging the front door wide open. “Darling!” Sam shouts into the dark house.
“She’s going to kill him,” I say, but Quinn shakes his head as we follow him up onto the porch.
“No. He comes back drunk like this all the time. She’ll make him coffee and help him to his room.”
I wonder what other things Quinn sees sleeping in the front room. Things none of us other boarders have any clue about.
An oil lamp flickers on inside, illuminating Sam propped up against the door frame. Golden light shines through his blond curls and from where I stand he looks like some sort of angel.
Miss Franny tightens the sash on her robe and tucks her head under Sam’s arm, lifting him away from the door frame. “Come on, you,” she says.
“I brought the little ones.” Miss Franny must have thought it was the ale talking because she starts to pull the door shut, but Sam reaches his hand out, stopping the door, and says it another way. “Ailis and Quinn. I brought t
hem home.”
She notices me and Quinn standing behind Sam.
“I thought you both had run off, too. Did you find the sick girl?”
“No,” Quinn says.
“Well, we had a need for her room and it’s been rented. You’ll both have to sleep on the floor.” Then she goes back to tending Sam.
I turn to Quinn. “We didn’t tell Miss Franny that Nettie was gone until just a few hours ago. How could she have rented the room so soon?”
Quinn shrugs and walks inside but I can’t seem to make my feet move.
“It’s late. Let’s get some sleep,” Quinn says, turning to me.
And even though I’d much rather keep searching for Nettie, I follow him.
9
The new boarder is a scrawny old man with teeth so yellow they are almost orange. Quinn and I watch him from the kitchen. He plops down at the dining room table and scoops more than his fair share of the oatmeal into his bowl. Then he turns to smile at me and swipes four pieces of toast from the pile. He gives me the creeps and I make a wish that he will move along soon.
“I honestly can’t believe Miss Franny rented that room so fast,” I say after the man leaves the table. “How does she know Nettie won’t be back?”
“It’s not even a room, it’s a closet,” Quinn says. Then he lowers his voice and adds, “She dumped our other things in the shed, but our money is still there in that candle.”
It is an excellent hiding place—a fat pillar candle Quinn hollowed out from underneath. When it stands on the shelf, it looks just like any other candle, but it is really a mini-bank that holds two and a half weeks of earnings. And that piece of sunshine-yellow chalk the girl on the street left behind.
“Maybe we should just leave it where it is,” Quinn says. “For now.”
“I don’t trust that man. He’ll pick the room clean of anything that’s not nailed down before he checks out. Did you see him with the oatmeal?”
Quinn agrees. “You’re right. But where else can we hide it?”
I stack the bowls that are on the counter, preparing to wash them. “Let me bring it to the hat shop. There are shelves in the storeroom that haven’t been touched for years. Ida won’t notice an extra candle.”
“You’re going to work today?”
There is a heavy lump in my chest, weighing my words down. “I thought about it all night and I can’t risk losing my job. But I will ask Ida if I can get off work at two o’clock today so we can visit Nettie’s schoolteacher before she leaves, and Father Farlane. I’m hoping they’ll have some ideas.”
Quinn places two dirty spoons side by side on the counter next to the bowls and asks, “What if she’s gone, Ailis? What if we never find her?”
“Don’t talk like that. We just need to think like Miss Franny and figure out how she could benefit from this situation. Then we’ll know what she did with Nettie.”
“Wasn’t the state paying for Nettie’s boarding?” Quinn asks. “Wouldn’t she lose money by making Nettie leave? I really don’t think Miss Franny is behind this.”
I know Quinn is probably right but there is part of me that simply doesn’t trust her. “Help me with these dishes,” I say.
Just then, Miss Franny comes inside through the back door. Her gray shawl is wrapped up around her head and is spotted with snowflakes and I wonder where she has gone so early in the morning. “New day, new wood for the fire,” she says to Quinn. That is her lousy way of asking him to please chop a pile before going to school.
“Yes, ma’am.” He pulls his coat off the nail and goes outside.
“I have already ground the wheat and churned the cream into butter,” I say, offering a submissive bow.
She looks over to where I have the wheat flour in a wooden bowl. “And you’ve made quite a mess with it, I see.”
There is one tiny area of flour powder on the edge of the bowl, but the table and floor are perfectly clean. “Sorry,” I say, taking a finger and carefully brushing the flour into the bowl.
“The chickens won’t lay again if eggs remain in their nests,” she quips.
“I have gathered the eggs and placed them in the basket. I also cleaned out the henhouse straw.”
That surprises her. She leans over, looking out the window toward the henhouse. “How many eggs were there?”
“Four.”
“How am I expected to feed ten people with four measly eggs? You and the boy will have to go without.”
Is she really blaming me for there being only four eggs? I feel a pulse of anger rise up, but shake it off. “I also dusted the front room.”
“When?”
“I was too worried about Nettie to sleep.”
“I hope you didn’t wake my paying customers by stomping around like some thoughtless elephant.”
I remember Mr. Frankel teaching us about how elephants are as compassionate as humans—how they suffer from depression and even cry when they lose loved ones. “No, ma’am, I was careful to be quiet.”
She unwraps her shawl, hangs it on a nail, and says, “Are those breakfast dishes still dirty?”
“I was just about to get water from the pump.” Then I add, “But I will have them done before school.”
We stand there for a moment, looking at each other. “What are you gawking at?” she finally says, and I know that is as close to a thank-you as I’ll ever get from Miss Franny.
At least she isn’t screaming at me.
* * *
Ida has her head down as I come into work.
“Morning,” I say, rushing by her toward the storeroom. Quinn recovered the candle from Nettie’s room when the boarder was in the outhouse. I have it tied up in a square of cotton, trying to make it look like my lunch bundle.
“No running in the shop,” she says. As I pass by her, I notice she is sewing red berries onto a navy blue hat, looping thread in circles around each berry.
I slow to a swift walk. “Sorry.”
“I’m glad it has finally stopped snowing,” she says as I go into the back. “Better weather, better business.”
I pull a chair from the corner over to a single shelf that runs above a window. When I untie the square of cotton, I see that our money has spilled out. “Oh no,” I mumble as I turn the candle upside down and begin shoving coins and bills into its hollow middle.
“I placed your dress on the railing,” Ida says from the front.
“Thanks!” I say, grabbing at a nickel that has escaped and is rolling on its side across the floor.
“It’s the plaid one.”
“Okay.”
Then her voice is close. “What are you doing?”
I look up and see Ida standing in the doorway.
With a wad of bills in my hand, it seems pointless to make something up. “We’ve been saving our money to get a place of our own, but now Nettie’s gone,” is all I can manage before my throat closes off.
Ida has me sit in the chair and then drags another one over. “You tell me everything,” she says.
And even though Sam warned me against sharing personal information with others, I start at the beginning with how we came to Miss Franny’s and how Nettie shared her room with me. I tell her about the way Miss Franny treats us and go all the way through Quinn and me working to earn our way into a better living situation and, finally, Nettie’s troubling disappearance.
When I share the last detail, Ida clicks her tongue and says, “Poor child.”
I don’t know if she is talking about Nettie or about me, but it doesn’t matter. Nettie and I are both in a horrible mess.
“You should not be with that woman,” Ida says. “Perhaps you and Quinn could come live with me. It is not fancy, but you will be safe and warm.”
Ida lives in a tiny one-room apartment on the second floor of the four-story building where her shop is. I consider the offer, but her apartment is too small and I hate the thought of crowding her space, especially when she has been so kind. Besides, if we leave the boardinghous
e, we might not figure out what happened to Nettie.
“We can’t,” I say, and she seems to understand. “I need to keep an eye on Miss Franny. Maybe I can learn something about what she did.”
“If it is indeed her who did anything,” Ida says.
“Right.”
Ida wraps her arms around me and pulls me in to her soft, round shoulders. “So much trouble for someone so young.” And then she adds, “Where is God in these moments?”
And I love her for saying that.
She holds me close for a while and then helps me put the last of the money into the candle. “You can trust me to keep this safe.”
I thank her and then ask if I can leave at two o’clock so we can keep looking for Nettie.
“Go now,” she says. “I’ll take care of things here.”
“What about the shipment coming from New York?” I ask. “Don’t I need to help unpack the boxes?”
“Who cares about boxes when there is a child missing?”
“Are you sure?”
“I have been running this business for forty-seven years. I can manage.”
“Thank you, Ida!” I say, already halfway to the front door. “Thank you!” I run all the way to the bazaar where Quinn is playing his music. “Ida gave me the day off,” I tell him.
“I haven’t been able to play anyway,” he says, putting his fiddle into the case.
“Too worried?” I ask. The crease across his forehead tells me I am right.
He flips the two latches, locking the case, and says, “She’s only six. She can’t even fight for herself.”
“Not that she’d try,” I say.
School is still in session so we decide to start at the church.
Father Farlane isn’t what I expect. He looks about the same age as Sam and Miss Franny and is one of those happy people with high, round cheeks and an easy smile. He invites us down a narrow hallway to his office.
“Sit, please.” He motions to a bench beside his desk.
We explain about how Nettie didn’t come home and that we are concerned something has happened to her.
“I know the girl,” Father Farlane says, leaning back in his chair and pressing his fingers into a steeple. “She loves candles and would light all of them if I didn’t remind her to leave a few for other parishioners.”