by Mona Hodgson
More than a little curious about the conversation taking place in her parlor, Hattie glanced toward the kitchen door. Each of the Sinclair sisters had a story to tell her father, a new life to share with him. They needed their father.
And Cherise needed a mother.
The kettle rumbled. As Hattie walked to the stove, her thoughts rumbled too.
What if she’d found herself in the same situation as Mr. Sinclair? Would she be able to raise an orphaned child?
It made more sense than a single man trying to do it.
Willow breathed in the cool morning air as she walked down the hill on Fourth Street. She glanced at the two envelopes tucked against her side. Today she’d meet Mrs. Gortner, her first client. But not before she stopped at the post office and then at the Photography Studio for a word with Mr. Van Der Veer.
“Good day, Mrs. Peterson.” One of Miss Hattie’s neighbors waved from her wagon.
Smiling, Willow returned the wave. “And a pleasant day to you, Mrs. Eger.”
Willow liked the way the small town familiarity merged with the economic benefits and social opportunities of a large city. Yes, Cripple Creek was starting to feel like home. She considered Miss Hattie a friend, and she liked living close enough to Tucker and Ida for more frequent visits.
To the east, a sunbeam defied the clouds overhead and cut across the hills above the Midland Terminal depot. Autumn would soon chase away any lingering days of summer.
At the corner, Willow stepped onto the boardwalk. Bennett Avenue teemed with life in all shapes and sizes. Two-legged and four-legged. Businessmen on foot. Cowboys on horses. Even a boy walking a bleating goat.
An older couple dressed to the nines and engaged in lively conversation strolled toward Willow. The woman looked up and stopped. She smiled. “Pardon me, Miss. Might you know where we could find the Raines icebox store?”
Willow smiled. The town may be growing by leaps and bounds, but the world was small. She directed the couple to the showroom and bid them a good day. With the post office in sight, Willow crossed the street, thankful Ida had returned to work and would be the one regaling the couple with the features and benefits of the various appliances.
After mailing a letter to her mother, Willow proceeded up Bennett Avenue to First Street. She’d just turned the corner when Tucker stepped out of the Photography Studio, his fancy felt hat in hand.
Why would her brother visit her place of employment? He would have no cause, except to seek her out. Had something happened to Ida? to Mother? Her heart began to race, and her steps quickened.
He met her gaze. Smiling, he didn’t seem the least bit distressed. “Hello, sis.”
“Tucker.” She glanced at the studio door behind him. “Is everything all right? Why are you here?”
“Everything and everyone’s fine, as far as I know.” He set his hat on his head. “I was just paying your employer a friendly visit to welcome him to town and to invite him to church.”
“Is that all?”
“I am a pastor, you know.”
“Mr. Van Der Veer has been in town for at least two months, and you waited until after he’d hired me to pay him a friendly visit?”
“Yes, well, I did happen to mention my sister was a businesswoman and that I understood she now worked for him.”
“I’m not helpless.”
A shadow crossed Tucker’s face. “Seemed like a nice enough fellow. Talented too. I saw the photographs he took at the train wreck yesterday.”
“Mr. Van Der Veer is allowing me the opportunity to prove myself as a painter. I think it will be a good partnership, and the timing of his family’s move to Cripple Creek couldn’t have been any better.”
A grin made her brother’s brown eyes shine. “You don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Your boss is a single man.”
Her face warmed. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t speak of your business.”
“Except to let him know I have a brother who thinks he has to watch out for me.”
Tucker looked back at the studio door. “Guess I best let you get to work. See you at supper tonight.”
She sighed. “I’m not sure I should come. Ida’s father, your father-in-law, is new to town and … it’s a family dinner.”
He arched his eyebrows. “I’m part of Ida’s family, and you’re part of mine. Big sister, that makes you family too.”
“But with the train wreck and Cherise, things are complicated.”
“All families are complicated.”
His matter-of-fact tone made her giggle.
“Besides, Ida knew about the complications before she invited you to supper.”
She had. Hopefully, by tonight Mr. Sinclair will have answered his daughters’ questions about the little girl he’d brought to America and eased their concerns. “All right. I’ll be there.”
Her brother touched the brim of his hat and strolled away, leaving her alone to face the man she’d happily assumed was married. But this was the nineteenth century, not the dark ages. Single women had every right to intermingle in society.
Willow stepped into the main office, and bells jingled overhead. Mr. Van Der Veer stood up from a desk situated between two closed doors.
“M-Mrs. Peterson.” He walked toward her, wearing a crisp white shirt and no jacket. “You received the first of your assignments?”
“Yes.” She set the envelope on the counter between them and began unwinding the string on the clasp. Mr. Van Der Veer was obviously successful in business, to have his own shop and be adding employees. Miss Hattie had told her about seeing a write-up on him in the Denver Post. He was well-mannered and pleasant to look at. Why wouldn’t he be married?
She pulled Mr. Van Der Veer’s note from the envelope. Because of her brother’s meddling, she was having trouble concentrating. Willow blew out a breath. If Tucker hadn’t interfered in her business, she wouldn’t be any wiser. No wonder she’d seen her boss alone at the ice-cream parlor.
But it was good she knew he was a single man. And as long as he believed she was married, they’d be able to avoid any awkwardness. Besides, they wouldn’t be together that much. She’d do most of her work at the boardinghouse.
“Is s-something wrong?” Concern creased Mr. Van Der Veer’s forehead.
She needed to focus her thoughts and regain her composure. “Your note didn’t mention a date of completion for either of the projects.”
Mr. Van Der Veer reached for the note just as she held it out to him. Their hands collided. “Oh!” He pulled his hand back as if he’d been stung. Yes, it was good he continue to think of her as married.
She extended the paper, and he carefully took it from her, his ears taking on the color of a persimmon.
He stared at the note. “An oversight.” He looked up, but not directly at her. “The thirtieth of S-September for the p-portrait and the third of October for the photograph. Does that sound agreeable, Mrs. Peterson?”
Colorizing a photograph wouldn’t take more than an hour or two. She nodded. “That gives me more than a week to complete them both. That should be sufficient.” She slid the note back into the envelope. “You said Mrs. Gortner owns the Mollie Kathleen Mine?”
“She does.”
“I need to see her skin tone and hair color before I begin painting.” Willow didn’t bother looping the string on the envelope before tucking it beneath her arm. “I’m on my way to see her now. I’ll return the completed portrait to you straightaway.” She turned to leave.
“Mrs. P-Peterson.” He moved to her side of the counter. “I p-promised you a tour of the st-studio.”
She glanced at the two closed doors behind him.
“It is office hours,” he said.
She was curious about the workings of a photography studio, and he’d given her no reason to distrust him. Besides, he thought of her as a married woman. “Since we’ll be working together, I suppose it
would be beneficial for me to know more about your business.”
He motioned for her to follow him and opened the door on the left first. “This is my studio. Wh-where I conduct the sittings. Occasionally I’ll take my c-camera equipment to the client, but I p-prefer to shoot the photographs here.”
Willow stepped inside the small room, feeling as if she’d stepped into another world. And she had—into Trenton Van Der Veer’s world of photography. A wooden box camera atop a tripod. Lights on movable stands. A Greek column. A corner full of furniture, including a library table and a deacon’s bench. Several printed canvas backgrounds hung from a rod on the back wall.
“I like varying p-possibilities for a pose.”
Willow studied a peculiar side table in the corner. Made of cast iron, it had a long, skinny neck, like a music stand.
“That’s a Brady st-stand. A model’s armrest, adjustable for s-sitting or standing.” He slid into its narrow seat. “Civil War photographer Mathew Brady used it. If I have s-someone who can’t stop fidgeting, I can s-stand them beside it and steady their arm, which tends to still their whole body.”
He carried the Brady stand to the deacon’s bench and lowered the flat surface on top. Sitting on the bench, he began to wiggle. He then rested his forearm on the flat surface and stilled. His smile deepened the creases on either side of his blue eyes. “It doesn’t always work, but it’s one of the t-tools of the trade I p-picked up while w-working in New York.”
“You had a studio in New York?”
“No. I was p-portable in my photographic van, but I had several clients in the c-city.” He motioned toward the door. “Next is the darkroom where I develop my photographs.”
Willow followed him into the adjacent room. He pulled the chain on a hanging bulb, shedding dim light on a tidy worktable and shelves lined with various bottles and flasks.
“Those are the chemicals I use for developing the photographs.”
Photographs of leaves and fences hung from a line. It seemed there was much to learn about this man. His photography skill was not limited to portraits. “I didn’t know you also worked in landscapes,” Willow said.
“More of a hobby, I suppose.” He looked away. “They should be dry by n-now.”
She watched him unclip one print, then another. He carefully laid each one out on the worktable, creating a collage. Under the counter sat several shallow boxes, their contents neatly ordered.
“You’ve done a good job on the photographs and the studio,” Willow said. “It’s well organized.”
“Thank you.” Satisfaction flickered in his blue eyes.
Her mouth suddenly dry, Willow moistened her lips and looked down at the photographs on the table. They had more in common than she’d realized—including a penchant for capturing landscapes.
And they were both single.
Oh dear, she needed to do away with that thought.
“I couldn’t do m-much organizing in the van.”
“No, I suppose not.” She smiled. “It couldn’t have been easy, making the switch from traveling and working out of a wagon to setting up a stationary business.”
“At f-first, the adjustment was difficult, but it’s g-growing easier by the minute.” He met her gaze. His face reddened, and he abruptly looked away and took quick steps toward the door.
Willow followed him into the main office, feeling a bit flushed herself.
Stopping at the counter, he cleared his throat. “I’m anxious to see wh-what you do with Mrs. Gortner’s portrait. I think your w-work will create quite the demand for our new method of p-portrait paintings.”
“I hope you’re right.” For her sake, and for his.
He smoothed his neatly trimmed mustache. “We could set the portrait in the wi-window for advertisement before I d-deliver it.” He glanced at the window behind her. “I’m quite sure Mrs. Gortner would be am-amenable to that.”
“That’s a wonderful idea.” Even better than hanging a flier in the post office. “In two or three days much of the town folk will have seen it.”
“Have you thought about a name for your b-business?” he asked.
Her business?
He crossed his arms. “You are a b-businesswoman, correct?”
She hadn’t thought of herself as such. Grieved woman. Fragile woman. Widowed woman. Those were the titles she’d assigned herself.
She nodded. “I am a businesswoman. Yes.” She’d added the second affirmation for her own benefit. “I’ll have a name for you when I return with Mrs. Gortner’s portrait.”
“Until then.”
The bells jangled on her way out. Thoughts of a name for her business powered her steps down Bennett Avenue to the livery. She hadn’t considered assigning a name to the service she offered Mr. Van Der Veer’s photography patrons. She had expected to work in anonymity.
At the corner, while she waited for a delivery wagon to cross, she made a mental note of the various shops and stores up and down the main streets of town. King’s Chinese Laundry. Glauber’s Clothing. Butte Opera House. Carmen’s Confectionary. Etta’s Fashion Designs, where Vivian Sinclair Alwyn worked as a designer. If Willow followed Mr. Van Der Veer’s example, naming her business would be as easy as calling it what it was: “Portraits.” But not very interesting or modern. Something more progressive would better fit Cripple Creek’s new image as Colorado’s up-and-coming cultural center.
Her employer wasn’t a man easily defined. What possessed him to consider her need for a name for her business? She’d expected her work to blend into the background of Mr. Van Der Veer’s artistic endeavors.
A considerate man. Most businessmen, even in the West, weren’t known for sharing the spotlight with anyone, much less a woman.
Considerate and surprising. And not married. Willow moistened her lips.
“Mrs. Peterson.”
She startled and jerked to her right. The tall woman from the icebox showroom strolled toward her, a broad smile on her thin face.
“Good day, Mrs. Johnstone,” Willow said.
“I’m pleased to see you. The mister and I are quite happy with the icebox you sold us.”
Willow felt her shoulders lift a notch. “That’s good news.”
Mrs. Johnstone shifted an ornate, oversized handbag to her other arm. “I went to the showroom to thank you for your recommendation.”
Willow smiled inside and out. Was it too much to hope folks would respond as well to her paintings? That Mr. Van Der Veer would be pleased with her work? Perhaps she should wait to name her business. At least until she’d proven herself worthy of it.
“Mrs. Raines said you found other work,” Mrs. Johnstone said.
“Yes, my work at the icehouse was temporary.” Thankfully. “I work for the Photography Studio now.”
Mrs. Johnstone raised a thin eyebrow. “You’re a lady photographer?”
Willow suppressed the laugh that accompanied the thought of her trying to manage a camera and all that entailed. “No ma’am. I’m a portrait painter. An artist.”
“Is that a fact?”
“I paint portraits from Mr. Van Der Veer’s photography prints.”
“That’s nice.” Mrs. Johnstone pressed a carefully manicured fingernail to her angled chin. “I’ll have to tell my mister.”
“Yes, please do. The studio is on North First Street.” Willow glanced down the street behind them. “By the end of next week I’ll have a portrait on display in the window.” Thanks to Mr. Van Der Veer’s good business sense and his willingness to take a chance on her.
“This is wonderful. We could have a photograph taken and then a portrait made for our son.” Mrs. Johnstone moved the handbag back to her other arm. “Our boy is impossible to shop for. He’s an attorney in Denver and has everything money can buy.”
The street cleared momentarily, and Willow said her good-byes and crossed to the boardwalk on the other side.
When a breeze brushed her neck, she realized she was holding her head high. Perha
ps with her new job here, she was taking a step toward the other side of grief.
The livery and blacksmith shop sat on a corner, back from the main road. Willow stepped into the barn through the gaping doorway and blinked to adjust her vision.
The scent of horses carried memories of the Raines family home in Stockton. Her father’s barn wasn’t this big, but it always housed three or four Belgians. She wasn’t even tall enough to reach the drawer in the kitchen cupboard when her father first put her up on Blue, one of his delivery horses. Remembering, she could feel the pounding in her chest and hear her own squeals as her daddy rested his hands on hers at the horse’s mane and clucked his tongue. As the horse walked the circle in the center of the barn, she’d felt like a princess riding atop her hero’s steed.
“Ma’am?”
A voice as deep as a canyon drew her attention to the back corner. A mountain of a man in soiled coveralls stood in front of a forge. A piece of steel glowed yellow at the end of his tongs. Laying the scrap on the anvil, he started shaping it with a hammer.
“Don’t mean to be rude,” he shouted between ringing beats, “but I gotta shape this S hook before it goes cold. Should only take a minute.”
“I understand.” She wanted to say she wasn’t in a hurry, but she didn’t want to lie. She glanced at the open door at the back of the barn. He must keep his rental rigs outside.
He put the project back into the flames and gave the bellows a few pumps. “What can I do for you, Miss?”
“I need to go to the Mollie Kathleen Mine, and I’d like to rent a buggy.” If she could get on her way, the visit with Mrs. Gortner needn’t take long, allowing her to return to the boardinghouse in time to spend a few hours working on the portrait before the evening’s festivities at the parsonage.
Straightening, he studied her from shoe to bonnet. “You have business out at the mine?”
“I have business with Mrs. Gortner.”
“Well, you won’t find her at the mine.”
“Mr. Van Der Veer at the Photography Studio told me Mrs. Gortner owns the Mollie Kathleen Mine.”