“What is it?” Kristof moved toward her. “What can I do?”
She was even paler than she’d been that night on the Wooded Island, her pressed lips a colorless portent. “Did Rose come to her lesson this afternoon?”
The question alone was not alarming. But paired with her agitation, it dropped a stone in his gut.
“Yes,” he told her. He did not say she’d been distracted and played poorly.
“Did she say anything about where she was going after that?”
“She did not.” Kristof held her red-rimmed gaze.
Karl exchanged a startled glance with Anna. “You’d better sit down, ja?” He leaned over and shoved out a chair for her. The blue braided chair pad peeked out from under the yellow cloth that covered the table.
Sylvie wouldn’t sit. She paced from the kitchen into the parlor, cinching her grip on a hat that would never be the same. Kristof had seen her do this once before, when Rose was ill and not responding to the doctor’s treatment.
Anna followed her. “I take it you haven’t been able to ask her yourself.”
“She’s not home. She didn’t come to Readers Club like she said she would, and she didn’t have dinner with the Jane Club, which she also told me she planned to do.” She crossed to the window and stared out.
From where Kristof stood, he could easily see what she saw. The granite courthouse building, wrapped in columns and topped with porticoes, filled the view. The structure grew ever darker with the setting sun. Soon homeless men would begin trickling over streets striped with cable car rails to find their spot of floor space in City Hall’s corridors, in which they’d spend the night.
“It’s dark. And I don’t know where she is.” Sylvie spun around. “I’m afraid. Tell me not to be if there is no reason for it, but right now, I am terrified. Am I wrong to feel this way?”
She wasn’t wrong. But Kristof didn’t want to say so.
Anna gathered one of Sylvie’s hands in both of hers. “Could she have gone to your sister’s?”
Sylvie shook her head. “If she had, Meg would have sent word.”
With a grunt, Karl pushed himself out of his chair. “The police, then. We’ve got to file a report.” He passed a hand over his pate, combing his thinning hair from right to left.
“Karl, wait.” Kristof stayed him. “The police won’t file a report unless someone has been missing for at least forty-eight hours. I saw Rose at three o’clock today, so we have to wait another forty-two and a half hours before they will listen to us.”
Karl muttered in German as he stiffly retook his seat. Sylvie looked outside again.
A pigeon landed on the windowsill. Streetlamps shone, marking the official beginning of night. Anna turned on a lamp to chase the shadows away, then lowered herself onto a sofa. Lines etched her face.
Kristof wouldn’t sit until Sylvie did. “Something was clearly bothering Rose during her lesson, but it didn’t seem the right time to inquire, rushed as we were.” If anything, he had urged her to set the circumstances of her day aside and focus on the music like a professional.
“I know what was bothering her.” Sylvie’s posture flagged for the first time since entering the apartment. Dropping the mangled hat to the rug, she sank onto a cushion beside Anna. “Me.”
Straightening a pillow on the armchair, Kristof sat across from the women, burdened with the knowledge that it was he who had last seen Rose, as far as they knew. The cuckoo clock clicked on the wall behind him.
He should have made sure Rose had a chaperone waiting for her after the lesson. He should have seen her to safety himself. Those Columbian Guards had become a joke on the fairgrounds, after all, incompetent at even clearing a restaurant at closing time. No one was laughing now.
“This is my fault. Could this be my fault?” Sylvie rested her head in her hands.
“Now, now,” Anna crooned, spreading her hand over Sylvie’s back. “I doubt that.”
“I said the wrong thing. Again. She told Olive that her real mother died, and I was so hung up on convincing her that I love her that I didn’t acknowledge her grief for her own parents, at least in words. I know better than that!” She marshalled her composure. “I lost my own mother and father. I understand that grief.”
Kristof leaned forward. “Telling Rose you love her is never a mistake.”
“But my timing came across as dismissive. I’m so sorry she lost both her parents. That’s what I should have told her. But I’m not sorry that raising her fell to me.” She looked at Kristof, guilt lining her brow. “She’s right about me, after all. I’m not like a real mother. Mothers are not this selfish. No wonder she stopped calling me Mimi today.”
“What’s this?” Anna’s surprise reflected Kristof’s.
“She asked me to call her Rozalia, and then she called me—Sylvie.” She spoke her own name like a plucked string, untuned.
Kristof longed to comfort her, to snap the pieces of her world back in place. Instead, he left her to Anna’s motherly ministrations while he made a study of his hands, from the indentations on his finger pads from violin strings to the nails he’d just trimmed.
Oh no. Johnny Friendly. O’Bannon. Quinn. They’d tried to confiscate his violin as collateral for the rest of the debt Gregor owed them, then realized the folly of that plan. “Then I’ll take out a different insurance policy on you boys. And this time, I’ll get creative.” Had Quinn heard Kristof talk to Sylvie on the Wooded Island? Had he seen them pointing out Rose, or even followed them home despite their precautions?
Sweat sprang beneath his collar. This wasn’t Sylvie’s fault, it was his—or at least that was a possibility too strong to be ignored. They would know the police wouldn’t search for a missing girl for at least two days. Their next meeting to pay the rest of the debt was exactly two days from now, after the Midway Ball. Kristof wasn’t sure which was harder to believe: that all of this was a coincidence, or that it wasn’t.
“All I want is for Rose to be safe,” Sylvie went on. “Then she can call me a skunk cabbage, for all I care. But this not knowing where she is or if she’s all right . . . I don’t know how I’ll endure the uncertainty until the police will accept a report, let alone after that. I do know I can’t just stay here.”
From the kitchen, Karl cocked his head, brows sinking. “What do you intend?”
Sylvie looked from him to Kristof with as much doubt as determination in her expression. “I’m going to look for her myself at the Fair. Many of the exhibitors know us from my having given so many tours. I’ll ask if they’ve seen her. She’s hard to miss. Either Tessa can mind the store on her own, or I’ll close it. Either way, I’m searching first thing in the morning.”
Madness, Kristof thought. Not including the exhibitors and staff, the visitor attendance was between fifty and seventy thousand every day.
But he said, “I’ll go with you.” There was no way he would let her take this on alone.
Karl’s chin bobbed. “Quite right.”
Anna exhaled, visibly relieved.
Sylvie’s eyebrows arched. “You will?”
Of course he would. “This is what friends do, Sylvie.” Or had he misunderstood their relationship entirely? He didn’t expect love, but he had supposed there was a measure of loyalty between them. “Besides, not everyone you’ll want to question speaks English. Would it not be helpful to have an ally who speaks Hungarian, German, Polish, Czech?”
Her shoulders relaxed. “It would be. I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you.”
She wasn’t used to needing help, he realized. Given all she’d accomplished on her own, she was even less accustomed to asking for it.
“Do you have time?” she asked him.
“More than ever. My next performance isn’t until Wednesday night. By then, either Rose will be back, or you’ll be able to get the police involved.”
Anna absently traced the crocheted lines of a doily with her finger. “Sylvie, dear, did you check her bureau? Are any of her cloth
es missing?”
“I would feel better if they were. But no, her room is just how she left it this morning. Wherever she is, she has her parasol, her violin, but no changes of clothing or nightdress.”
“She could still come back tonight, then, couldn’t she?” Karl lumbered from the kitchen, the arthritis in his joints slowing his pace. “She is young. Hasn’t she been late before?”
“Not like this,” Sylvie whispered.
Anna closed her eyes, the lines smoothing on her face, and placed one hand on Sylvie’s knee. Karl pulled Kristof into the little knot of neighbors until they were all entwined, Karl touching his wife’s shoulder, Kristof resting his hand on Sylvie’s. Sylvie bowed her head, fingers digging into her hair.
“Gracious Father,” Anna prayed, “Good Shepherd, one of your lambs has gone astray. Keep her safe, make her strong. Lead her back to where she belongs, and make her paths straight. Show us what to do while we wait. Give Sylvie peace. Help us trust you and entrust Rose to your care.”
Kristof added his amen to the chorus that followed.
“Thank you.” Sylvie embraced Anna, then rose and hugged Karl, too. “I needed that.” When she turned to Kristof, he steadied her trembling hands in his. “And thank you, Kristof. Meet me in the store tomorrow morning when you’re ready to go?”
He nodded, aware he still held her hands in a way he never had before. Her eyes and touch told of a woman barely staying above a rising panic, a woman who had lost her moorings and fought for faith in the dark. That he could be to blame for that in any way made him sick. He had to make this right.
“You’re not alone, Sylvie,” he told her.
She withdrew, and he watched her go, presumably to her empty apartment, just as he would return to his.
CHAPTER NINE
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1893
Morning had not come soon enough.
Rose’s absence took up space in the apartment, siphoning air from the atmosphere. Every tick of the clock had marked a new worry. Was Rose trying to get home in the dark? Was she happy to be gone? Was she hungry? Afraid? Unanswered questions had crawled beneath Sylvie’s skin, merciless and unreachable, stealing any chance of slumber.
Each moment was burdened, laden with the necessity of hope and a terrible imagining of the worst.
When Rose had first come into Sylvie’s care, the little girl had proven her love for exploring. While Sylvie worked in the bookshop, leaving Rose with her father in the apartment, Rose had wandered off, just as she’d done in the Polish neighborhood when Nikolai was at the stockyards. That first time, she’d found her way to the Hoffmans, who had fed her pastries and returned her to Sylvie before she even knew the little girl was gone. It had been a shock, but there’d been no time for fear.
At least, not that time.
A year later, Rose had gotten all the way outside the building and across a busy street. A policeman found her on Court House Square and brought her back, but not before Sylvie noticed she was gone. She still cringed when she recalled shouting at Stephen out of the deepest fears she owned, and his tearful, anguished response. He’d dozed off in his chair for a few minutes, he’d said. He hadn’t slept much the night before. But a few minutes was all it took.
Sylvie had known terror before, running from a wall of fire destroying the city. Losing a five-year-old child in Chicago rivaled that. When the policeman escorted Rose home, a lollipop in her hand, Sylvie had been so overcome that she’d collapsed to her knees, unable to speak while she clasped Rose to her.
“Don’t cry,” Rose had said, wiping the tears from Sylvie’s cheeks with sticky, sweet fingers. “I only wanted to see. I was coming back for you.” Then she’d demanded that the policeman give Sylvie a lollipop, too. “She’s been through a lot,” Rose told him, echoing what she’d no doubt overheard Sylvie saying about Rose.
Everything that could have happened to Rose had haunted Sylvie. Was it Stephen’s fault for not watching more closely? Was it Rose’s fault for wandering away again, after being told not to? Possibly. But Sylvie was to blame for trusting either of them. For not managing Rose’s safety herself.
This morning, by the time Tessa had arrived and agreed to mind the store on her own for the day, Sylvie had already dusted, straightened, reckoned accounts, refreshed the window display, collected and arranged the Hoffmans’ baked goods on glass-domed pedestals by the cash register, and placed an order for more inventory. When Kristof appeared, she whisked him out the door.
Eight miles later, they stepped off a crowded cable car and entered the Midway beneath a sky bunched with clouds.
Kristof drew Sylvie’s hand through the crook of his elbow. “I suppose you’ve prepared a list of folks you want to talk to.” His long strides had no trouble keeping up with her brisk pace.
“I have. The first one is Meg. I need to tell her what’s going on. She mentioned she was coming back to paint Mr. Ferris’s wheel this morning, before the crowds get too thick.” They walked past the Hungarian Orpheum and Lapland Village on their right, and the American Indian Village on the left. “She may be there already.”
“Good. I’m sure she’ll want to help.”
“She’ll want to. But she has responsibilities with her own family, too.” As they passed the Austrian Village, golden-crowned fräuleins in laced-up dirndls trickled through the entrance on their way to work. “In a way, I envy you and Gregor. You have so much in common, and you’ve forged a life together you’re content with. I remember when Meg and I imagined we’d remain spinster sisters living above the bookshop to the end of our days. We wanted to be like Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra. Their mother once said they were ‘wedded to each other.’”
He chuckled, the sound almost too low to hear. “Interesting choice of words. Gregor is the only family I have left, but there are days when I am reminded that when God said it wasn’t good for man to live alone, He didn’t give Adam a brother.”
Any other day, Sylvie would have laughed out loud. Today, she barely smiled. “Don’t tell me Gregor is not your perfect helpmate.”
“Not by a long way.”
“You mean, a long shot.”
He winced at his mistake. “Ah, yes. A very long shot, indeed.”
Sylvie patted his arm consolingly. Her stomach soured on the smell of coffee coming from the Vienna Cafe. She’d had too much of the stuff this morning, with no food to support it.
“Do you see her?” Kristof peered through the men and women gathering around the wheel’s ticket office.
“There.” Sylvie’s middle clenched. “She brought Olive. I thought she was leaving her with her aunt Edith today.” Her voice trailed away beneath the bawling of an uncooperative donkey near the Cairo Street entrance.
“Why don’t I stop at the Fire and Guard Station, give them a description of Rose, and see if they know anything?” Kristof suggested.
Sylvie agreed. “Show them this.” She opened the chatelaine bag hanging from a silver clip hooked to her belt and withdrew a small framed photograph of a smiling Rose. “It was taken on her birthday this year.”
He took it.
Sunshine broke through the clouds, casting long geometric shadows from the giant metal wheel. Walking through them, Sylvie reached Meg and Olive.
“Aunt Sylvie!” Olive lunged to give her a hug. Her hair smelled like lavender soap, her pleated dress like starch.
Paintbrush in hand, Meg spun to greet her. “Well, this is fortuitous! Edith came down with the flu and couldn’t take Olive this morning. I know you weren’t expecting to, but do you have time to watch her for a bit? My work bores her to tears, and I can’t paint and keep an eye on her simultaneously.”
“I want to see the giant map made of pickles today!” Olive spread her arms as though to reach from sea to sea. “Will you take me?”
Sylvie swallowed. “I wish I could. But, Meg—” She hated what she had to say next.
Meg lowered her paintbrush. “Sylvie?”
That was all it t
ook for everything to grow blurry. “Rose didn’t come home last night.”
“What?” Meg set the brush on the easel’s ledge and came closer.
“What do you mean?” asked Olive. “Where did she go instead?”
“Well, sweetheart, that’s what I’m here to find out. Mr. Bartok is here to help me.” She didn’t want to say much more for fear of upsetting Olive. “I’d like to talk to Walter and Hazel, too.”
“They’re both working today.” Meg’s voice held restrained alarm. “Come for dinner tonight, and you can have as much time with them as you need.” She glanced up as Kristof approached. “Both of you would be most welcome.”
“I still don’t understand,” said Olive. “Where is Rose? Can she at least come tonight for dinner?”
Sylvie forced herself to answer her. “I—she—it is my dearest hope that she can.”
Meg pulled out a notebook and began sketching a portrait of Rose from memory. The emerging likeness was remarkable. “I’ll canvas the Midway with this. See you tonight.”
Gratitude washed over Sylvie. After embracing her sister, she kissed Olive on the cheek, told her to stick close to her mother, and left the Midway in Meg’s capable hands.
“You’re not going to talk to anyone else here?” Kristof asked as she hurried east on the main thoroughfare.
“For now, Meg will do it. At least all the ticket takers speak English. This gives us more time on the fairgrounds, since that’s where Rose was last seen. What did you learn at the Fire and Guard Station?”
“Nothing yet.” He handed the framed picture back to Sylvie. “I showed them the photograph, gave them Rose’s physical description and where we saw her last. If any guard has any information, they’ll telegraph it to all the stations around the fair. We can check back later at any one of them.”
It was a start.
Sylvie hooked her arm through Kristof’s and remained quiet as they passed various concessions. Everything felt monumental. The Midway and the Fair. Her feelings. The stakes.
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