Cinnamon Moon

by Tess Hilmo

  “That’s Nettie,” Quinn says.

  Father Farlane continues, “She likes to sit with some of her friends from the orphanage.”

  I didn’t know Nettie met other children at church, but it makes sense. They grew up together. No wonder she never misses a Sunday. It is a chance to see old friends. “Do you know who? Maybe they know something,” I ask.

  “I can’t recall names. One has red curls and another is blond,” he says, thinking. “And then there’s that gentleman who came last week and sat with them. I was glad to see an adult watching over the children.”

  “What did he look like?” Quinn asks.

  “Oh, large of stature, bald on top.” Father Farlane rubs his hand along his head.

  “Charlie?”

  “Never got his name,” Father Farlane says. “But they seemed happy to see him.”

  “He was their cook at the orphanage,” I say.

  “Is there anything more you can tell us?” Quinn asks.

  “I’m sorry, there isn’t. With so many churches damaged in the fire, my congregation has tripled. It’s difficult to keep track of everyone and their situations.” And then he says something that almost knocks me off my seat. “There was a woman who came asking about Nettie earlier this morning.”

  “What woman?” I ask.

  “The mistress of the boardinghouse where the girl resides. Or did reside, I suppose.”

  “Miss Franny?” Quinn and I say in unison.

  “That’s right.”

  “What did she want?” I ask in shock.

  “She inquired if I had seen the girl and asked me to be in touch if I came across any information. I’m glad to know Nettie has so many people looking for her and am certain she will turn up soon.” He stands up and swings an arm out, showing us to the door. His black robe sways with the movement. As I pass him, he says, “I’ll add her name to the prayer roll.”

  We go back down the narrow, dark hallway and out into the day.

  “Why would Miss Franny talk to Father Farlane?” Quinn asks, shielding his eyes as they adjust to the light. Sun is breaking through the layer of clouds, making the snow gleam.

  “Maybe she’s covering her tracks,” I say. “Trying to play the part of the concerned guardian.”

  “No, I think she really is concerned,” Quinn says. “Remember how she came into the kitchen this morning covered with snow? She must have been out looking for Nettie.”

  I think about that. “But if Miss Franny didn’t chase Nettie away, who did?”

  “Let’s go to the police,” Quinn says. “They’re supposed to help find runaways.”

  “I guess we should,” I say, knowing they won’t help. The city of Chicago is operating on a thread. With all that is going on, why would they care about one orphan girl gone missing?

  “We also need to find that Charlie guy,” Quinn says. “Maybe Nettie told him something.”

  When Quinn says those words, I remember Charlie’s perfectly polished blue-black shoes with their oversize silver buckles. Shoes too nice for an out-of-work cook. I think about how friendly Charlie was with Nettie and I realize there are chunks of her day when she is away from us and that we have no idea who she talks to or spends time with.

  Later, after we finish the last of our chores, Quinn falls asleep next to me in Miss Franny’s front room and I say a prayer. I can’t bring myself to pray to God, but I curl my knees up under my blanket, tip my chin down, and ask Mother and Father for help. I ask them to make the police care enough to try (they took a report halfheartedly and told us they couldn’t make any promises). I ask them to bless Nettie’s teacher (who said that Nettie was at school yesterday) and her schoolmates (who got worried when Quinn and I went to the school and asked around). I feel bad giving those children one more thing to fret about. And finally, I ask them to comfort Nettie, wherever she is. To let her know we are trying to find her.

  10

  The pointed toe of Miss Franny’s boot wakes me up the next morning. I must have overslept, because Quinn’s blanket is folded and I can hear his ax striking a log out back.

  “Get up,” Miss Franny says.

  I rub my side where her boot jabbed between two ribs and sit up. “Sorry, I haven’t slept much lately.”

  “And we all should suffer because of your laziness?” Miss Franny asks, going into the kitchen.

  I’m not sure how my oversleeping on her front room floor is making anyone suffer, but I know Miss Franny doesn’t mean for me to answer her question.

  I quickly get to work on my chore list and meet Quinn by the woodpile just as he is finishing.

  “I have to go to the hat shop today,” I say.

  “What about looking for Nettie?”

  I feel awful delaying our search, but I know Ida needs me. “There’s a big gala tomorrow and I can’t leave Ida to finish all the orders alone. I know she accepted extra work because she thought I’d be there to help and she already gave me yesterday off.”

  “Ida would understand,” Quinn says.

  “You’re right, she would understand. But her customers are the type of people who want their fancy hats finished in time to show them off at the event. If she fails them, it could really hurt her business.”

  Quinn raises the ax over his head and thuds it into the cold, dark earth. Then he kicks the last quarter log into his finished pile and says, “I’ll go alone.”

  “No!” My heart jumps at his words. It never occurred to me Quinn might want to investigate on his own. “It’s not safe for either of us to go alone.”

  “I’m not a baby, Ailis.”

  I know Quinn is right. He is much taller than a typical eleven-year-old and chopping wood for the boardinghouse is making his arms grow thick and strong. But big or not, eleven is still young and he is no match for an adult. “I’m just asking you to wait a few hours for me, that’s all.”

  He lets out a ragged breath. “Fine.”

  “Thank you. And will you play next to the jerky cart by Ida’s shop? He usually keeps his fire pit going. We can even eat lunch together.”

  It is a lot to ask but he says, “Okay,” which makes a smile come to my face. I can’t stop myself from stepping forward and giving him a hug.

  “We will still look for her after you’re finished,” he says, not hugging me back but also not pushing me away.

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  * * *

  I only took off one day of work, so it surprises me to learn that Ida has hired another girl.

  “Meet Greta,” Ida says, gesturing to a dark-haired girl, who smiles at me as she stacks squares of felt. “It is just for a while.”

  “But I’m here today,” I say.

  “Finding your friend is more important. She’s here to help me put the finishing touches on these orders.”

  On the one hand, it is thoughtful of Ida to allow me to leave and I really can’t blame her for getting help. On the other hand, I don’t want to take the chance of being replaced. What if this new girl is better? More helpful? Greta looks slightly younger than me but she is obviously prettier and wearing a suitable dress that I know isn’t Ida’s. And she isn’t Irish. No doubt Lady June would find her a more appropriate choice for a shopgirl.

  “I’ll stay,” I say.

  Ida’s eyes are uncertain as she says, “If you insist. That pile of felt needs to be pressed and then you can cut twelve pieces of yellow satin ribbon into ten-inch strips.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” As I work, I keep an eye on the new girl with her raspberry smile. She is a quick study and the more she works, the more I try to show Ida how helpful I can be. I complete each task and ask for another, striving to be the better employee.

  A few hours into the day, as I attempt to unravel a mess of tangled eyelet, I remember the dreadful trick I played on Lady June. Surely she will take that silly parasol to the gala tomorrow and be laughed at and then come rushing back here to demand I be fired.

  And Ida is perfectly set with a replace
ment girl already in the shop.

  I imagine Ida shaking her head and saying, I suppose you must go.

  I can’t believe I was so impulsive. What was I thinking? I pull at the eyelet in frustration.

  “Achtung,” Ida says in German. “Be careful, that is delicate trim.”

  “Sorry.”

  The front door pushes open, the bell tinkles, and Quinn pops his head in. “Time for lunch, Ailis?”

  I rush over. “I can’t take a break now,” I whisper. “You go ahead and eat without me.”

  “Will you finish early?”

  “No, I have to work a full day.”

  “But Nettie—”

  “I can’t lose this job. When we find Nettie, we’ll need money to move out on our own.” Then I glance in the direction of the dark-haired girl and say, “Ida hired another girl.”

  “Who cares? You can find a different job after we figure out what happened to Nettie.”

  “I care!” I say, and I am surprised at how much I really do. I push Quinn out the door.

  “Fine,” Quinn says. “But I’m eating lunch. Then I’m moving someplace warmer. It’s cold out here, even with the fire pit.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, clearly annoyed. Then he softens. “In the bazaar by the tea shop.”

  “Okay,” I say, pushing him the rest of the way out and closing the door in his face.

  “Is it time for your break?” Ida asks.

  “I’m not hungry. Let her go on break.” I gesture to Greta.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Truth be told, I am starving. I didn’t eat breakfast. Still, I want to stay and work. This job may seem like a small thing to Quinn, but it is important to me. It makes me feel like a person, somehow. It gives me something to hope for in the future.

  And with all I have lost, I can’t bear to lose that, too.

  * * *

  At three o’clock, when I come upon the tea shop, I can’t see Quinn and my heart starts galloping in my chest. Within a second, he comes out, eating an oversize lemon cookie.

  “The owner of the tea shop gave me a cookie for my song instead of a coin,” he says, holding it up and setting his fiddle down by his feet. “She said my music has been good for business.”

  “You scared me.”

  “How?”

  “When I came into the bazaar, you weren’t where you said you’d be.”

  Quinn rolls his eyes dramatically.

  The sight of him eating a fresh, soft cookie makes my stomach rumble and I imagine the tang of lemon on my tongue. “Do you think she’d give you another?”

  “Here,” Quinn says, handing me the cookie.

  “Thanks.” I close my eyes and take a bite, trying to remember the last time I had a cookie. It was when Mother and Gertrude made shortbread a month or so before the fire. Mother wasn’t known for her baking and, with Gertrude as a distraction, the batch came out partly burned.

  Quinn and I move over to sit on a bench. “Shouldn’t we finish our chores for Miss Franny?”

  “Miss Franny can wait,” I say.

  “Fine by me,” Quinn says. “Where do you think we should start?” he asks.

  It’s late Friday afternoon and the streets are starting to fill up. “We’ve already checked all the places she went,” I say.

  “And knocked on every door in our neighborhood,” he adds.

  I kick a heel in thuds against the ground. “I can only think of one person who has enough influence to help us find her.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mr. Olsen. Maybe he’s home.”

  “Do you know where he lives?” Quinn asks.

  “Ida might. Let’s go ask her.”

  So we walk the two blocks back to the hat shop and ask Ida if she knows where we can find Mr. Olsen.

  “Follow Canal Street over the bridge and through the rubble,” she tells us. “Turn left on North Avenue and keep walking until you see a gigantic brick house on your left, with massive iron gates. A perfect waste of good money.” Then she adds, mostly to herself, “Such show-offs, these Americans.”

  And I guess that’s what she would think, given what she sees most days.

  * * *

  Quinn and I walk down Canal Street into the burned section of Chicago where we see an old man sitting inside an uprighted piano crate.

  “Ailis,” Quinn says under his breath.

  “Just keep walking.”

  “But look at him.”

  The man’s arms are bird thin, caked in dirt, and covered with open sores. His fingers bend in waves and lumps. His coat is tattered. “I see him.”

  “Do you think he lives in that crate?”

  His blanket and a few personal items shoved into the corner clearly show he does. “Yes.”

  Half of Chicago is burned out, but only a small fraction of the population is gone. According to the newspaper, that forces the almost three hundred thousand remaining people to live along the surviving edges of the city. All of it makes for crowded conditions and I suppose people have to find a bed wherever they can.

  Quinn goes over to the man and empties his pockets of the day’s wages. I don’t know how much he earned, but it looks to be a pretty good haul of coins and a few bills. The expression on the old man’s face takes away any thought I have of scolding Quinn for giving up our hard-earned money. The man accepts the gift by cupping both hands above his gray, balding head and calling Quinn an angel boy. From where I stand, I think I can even see a glimmer of tears in the man’s dark eyes.

  Quinn returns to me and we keep walking. He doesn’t say anything more until we finally make it all the way across the city to North Avenue. At this point, it is getting dark and the temperature is sliding down. “It’ll be pitch-black on our way home,” he says.

  “We can’t go back now,” I say.

  We turn left as Ida instructed and keep walking up the side of the street. The fire didn’t go onto North Avenue and the homes in this area of the city are beautiful. The neighborhood is like a garden in the middle of a burned-out wasteland. We walk until we come upon what is unquestionably Mr. Olsen’s home. It is brick and has towers and turrets and white stone walkways and an ivory bird fountain and black iron gates jabbing up into the night sky. Small lanterns line the main walkway and two enormous ones flank the front door. Ida was right; the majesty of it all seems to buzz, Look at me, look at me, look at me.

  “Are you ready for this?” I ask Quinn.

  He answers by reaching up and pulling the string that swings the call bell at the gate. It clangs out across the dimming night and then a slice of light shines between the two massive front doors. “Who’s there?” the butler asks, stepping out onto the stone porch.

  “Ailis and Quinn Doyle. From Peshtigo.”

  The light disappears as the door shuts and then the man comes back out, walking down the path. “Mr. Olsen will see you.”

  11

  “Let me do the talking,” I say as the butler leads us through the grand doors and toward a library just to the left of the entry hall.

  Quinn doesn’t argue. He is too busy twisting his head from left to right, gawking at the magnificence that is Mr. Olsen’s home.

  “Mistress and Master Doyle,” the butler says by way of introduction as we come into the library. I have only ever been called Ailis, not counting the list of names Miss Franny throws at me.

  Mr. Olsen sits in a fat chair, leaning into a circle of lamplight and scribbling numbers in a notebook.

  “Will you look at this?” Quinn says as he takes in the shelves and shelves of books that begin down at the flowered carpet and rise all the way up to the shiny wood beams of the ceiling. Hundreds of books.

  Mr. Olsen laughs and leans back in his chair. “Come,” he says, “sit.”

  Quinn is still gawking, his chin turned up and his jaw hanging open. I take his hand and lead him over to a small couch.

  “To what do I owe this vi
sit?” Mr. Olsen asks, placing his notebook on the side table.

  “We need your help,” I say.

  “Is something amiss at the boardinghouse?” he asks.

  It is a perfect opportunity to let him know about the quality of person he hired in Miss Franny, but I know now is not the time. I can’t let anything distract from why we came. “It’s Nettie,” I say. “She went missing two days ago.”

  “The little one I saw you with?” Mr. Olsen asks. “Missing, you say?”

  I tell him about how Nettie disappeared and about all the places Quinn and I have searched for her.

  “Have you told the police?”

  “Yes,” I say. “But they didn’t take it seriously. Perhaps if you spoke to them?”

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Olsen says. “Unfortunately, children disappear all the time. It’s a sad fact of our city.”

  “What happens to those children?” Quinn asks.

  “Sold, most often—as field hands or house slaves. Sometimes they’re even carried across state lines.”

  Quinn leans back into the cushions of the couch. “Sold.”

  “Has she been keeping any odd company that you know of?” Mr. Olsen asks.

  “The cook from the orphanage,” I say. “A man named Charlie.”

  Mr. Olsen drapes his arm over his chair and fiddles with his pen on the side table. Then he shakes his head. “It’s not unusual for a child to seek out those she knew before being displaced.”

  “No,” I agree, “but there is something creepy about Charlie.”

  I know it sounds crazy. But I also know how Charlie looked at Nettie and me when we were walking away from him and how Father Farlane said he saw Charlie at church sitting with orphans. “How do we know if she’s been sold?”

  “It’s the most likely situation,” Mr. Olsen says. “Stories of children being taken have increased dramatically since the fire. I suppose disasters of this size make people act in desperate ways.”

  “How will we find her?” I ask.

  “Do you know her full name?”

  “Nettie Cane,” I say, remembering her story about how the nuns found her on their doorstep when she was just a newborn baby. Nettie was wrapped in a loosely crocheted brown blanket and tucked into a basket made from sugarcane reeds. The nuns told her they named her Nettie after the blanket that reminded them of a fishing net and gave her the surname Cane to honor the basket in which she was delivered, as well as her sweet nature. It was one of Nettie’s favorite stories.