He pulled his focus back to the rehearsal. It was time to dismiss the orchestra so they’d have a break before the noon concert, but he couldn’t do that yet. After stepping down from his podium and crossing to a table, Kristof began spreading out the scores for the music they were to perform tomorrow.
“Section leaders,” he called, “meet me up here and bring a pencil. The rest of you, take a break for a few minutes.” He extended a hand toward the second violin, since Gregor was still not present. “Charles, you’re up.”
Charles Krueger was twenty-six years old, young enough to be Kristof’s son. But he was always on time and didn’t complain. Kristof had no doubt he was capable.
Once all the section leaders had assembled, Kristof handed each of them a stack of music. “The former concertmaster failed to mark your music for you. So if you would, please refer to my master score, mark up one copy, and then take the rest for your section and see that each one is marked with the same phrasings.” He didn’t like keeping everyone here when they would normally be released, and inviting so many hands to mark the music almost guaranteed variation. This wasn’t going to be perfect, but they’d work that out. “I want everyone to be able to take their music home with them and practice tonight before tomorrow morning’s rehearsal.”
Charles’s pencil stilled. “Pardon me. Did you say former concertmaster?”
Footsteps announced Gregor’s approach. “Exactly what I’d like to know, Charlie.” His violin case dangled from his hand.
Gritting his teeth, Kristof clapped his hands to gain the orchestra’s attention. “Once you have your music for tomorrow and you’ve copied all the markings, you’re dismissed. See you in your places at 11:40. Good work this morning, everyone.”
Gregor stalked to a window and set his case on the floor. He folded his arms and planted his feet in a wide stance, eyebrows nearing his hairline.
After a few more words to the section leaders, Kristof told Charles, “You’re first violin and concertmaster now.”
The young man’s thanks came immediately. “I won’t let you down, sir.”
“No. I don’t think you will.” Why had he waited so long to give Charles a chance?
How many chances had he given Gregor?
Rolling back his shoulders, Kristof joined his brother near the window. “You’re fired, Gregor.”
A laugh burst from him. “Fired? You can’t be serious.” His face flushed, and he tugged his bow tie loose and unfastened the top collar button behind it.
“I’m very serious. For years I have protected you from your own consequences. Off and on I’ve wondered what it would feel like to finally let you experience the same laws of cause and effect the rest of us face. I thought I would feel guilty, as if I were failing our parents by not taking care of you.” He paused, allowing the weight of his words to transfer to Gregor’s shoulders. His brother was not a burden he needed to bear any longer.
“You’re saying you don’t feel guilty, then.” Gregor scratched his arm. “After all I’ve done for you.”
What Kristof felt was liberation. “I’ve done us both a disservice by allowing you to skate through life. So I spoke with Maestro Thomas this morning before rehearsal and told him what I thought should be done if you didn’t fulfill your responsibilities. He agreed. You’re done in the orchestra.”
Shrugging, Gregor shifted his weight to his other foot. “There’s only one more week of concerts anyway.”
Kristof took a deep breath. “You’re done in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, too. Maestro says if you want a job, you’ll have to re-audition.”
Shock registered in Gregor’s eyes, his pupils unusually small. His hand trembled as he raked it through his hair, which bounced back without any pomade to hold it. “That’s it, then? Just like that?”
“No. We’re just getting started.” It was a mercy to both of them that Kristof had had time to consider his response to the gambling receipt Lottie had shown him last night. He didn’t want to speak out of anger, although that emotion wasn’t far beneath the surface. Anger was not enough for the situation. This called for nothing less than logic, reason, and a firm resolve to do the right thing.
The room was emptying now. Musicians cast backward glances as they placed their instruments in a large locker and filed through the door. Metal clanged together as Charles closed the gates and locked them, then made a hasty retreat.
“What, then?” Gregor nearly shouted, throwing his arms wide. “I would think that after Lottie stole last week’s wages, you’d want both of us earning to help make up for it.”
Now this was too much. Kristof walked away, mastering himself before rounding on Gregor again. “How dare you pin your own theft on a fifteen-year-old girl?”
Gregor blanched. “Let me guess—you talked to her, she denied it. Did you think she would outright admit it? She’ll lose her job over this.”
“The only one losing their job today is you.” Kristof withdrew the receipt from the Garfield Racing Association from his pocket and held it up. “How much did you lose this time?”
Blood rushed back to Gregor’s complexion, and he squeezed his eyes tight. For all the world, he resembled the child who played seek-and-hide this way when they were growing up. “Closing your eyes doesn’t mean I can’t see you,” Kristof had repeatedly told him.
Gregor slumped into a nearby chair and groaned, holding his head in his hands. “I was trying to get Father’s timepiece back. I told you I would take care of it.”
Kristof sat beside him. “You also told me you were done gambling, and I told you I don’t need that watch.” They had drilled these lines repeatedly, with no progress to show for it. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “You stole from me, you tried to blame Lottie, and if we don’t have enough left to pay the rent, that affects Sylvie and the bookshop, too. She doesn’t charge us enough as it is.”
“You have a savings account, don’t you? In the bank. You can just use that.”
“Unless you found a way to clean that out, too.”
“I did this for us! For our family!” Gregor was on his feet now, shouting. “It was just bad luck that my horse didn’t win. But my motives were noble. I wanted to surprise you.”
Balderdash.
Kristof stood, folding his arms to keep his fists from curling into weapons. “If you don’t have enough money to cover half the rent, it’s time for you to move out.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. I will.” The only way for Gregor to grow up was if Kristof let him.
“Kristof!” Gregor exploded. “I don’t have a job, thanks to you, and now you want money or you’ll throw me out. Is that what brothers do? I’m all you have left! You can’t do this. You can’t just turn your back on me.”
“What happens next is up to you,” Kristof said.
And then he walked away.
Sylvie leaned on the Check and Guide Services counter at the Woman’s Building, scanning the schedule in The Daily Columbian once again. Not that she could retain a single thing she’d read.
“I don’t know what else to tell you.” Dorothy peered through her spectacles. “Miss Zielinski has been here every day for three weeks, eager to hear every presentation. But today she hasn’t shown up yet.”
“Would you know if she were here, though?”
Dorothy sneezed into her handkerchief. “All I can say is that every day so far, this has been her first stop so she can check her parasol. I don’t see why she would break that pattern. What’s this all about, anyway?”
Setting down the paper, Sylvie looked up. “I have reason to believe Rose is with her.”
“Your daughter, right?”
In her heart, Rose was. And yet Sylvie had begun to wonder if claiming that sacred relationship was as insensitive as it was inaccurate. “I’ve raised her since she was four. But I’m not her mother, really.”
“Sounds like a technicality to me. Why is Rose with Miss Zielinski? Is she h
er mother?”
“No.” Sylvie shook her head and immediately regretted it. Her headache had only gotten worse, and every movement was a torture. “No, Rose’s mother perished on the voyage to America. Her name was Magdalena, and she must have been a beauty.”
Dorothy’s smile flashed. “Miss Zielinksi is striking, too. Even if she couldn’t act a whit, I bet she’d have been successful on the stage.”
But Jozefa Zielinksi could act, Sylvie was absolutely certain. It was a talent Sylvie did not possess. Neither had her reflection this morning been able to hide the state of her inner disrepair.
Even with Jenny confessing what she’d done, Officer Thornhill had the audacity to ask things Sylvie never would have thought of. “Did Rose seem to enjoy her time at the Palmer? Was she ever in need of anything? Did she order room service? Did she ever try to send a note out with the dirty dishes?”
Sylvie had lashed out at him. “You’re implying she was on an all-expense paid vacation!”
“What makes you think she isn’t?”
Sylvie had wanted to scream. “Because Jozefa hired a maid to impersonate her!”
Officer Thornhill still maintained that Rose might be in on the entire charade. Perhaps she’d sanctioned the deception, he’d suggested. Perhaps she was content and simply unwilling to be found by anyone else. “That doesn’t make her missing,” he’d said.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. A wide trail of perhaps led them nowhere.
In the end, it was Kristof who had convinced the police to put out an alert so they could keep an eye out for either woman. Sylvie had persuaded the Columbian Guard at the Fair this morning.
“You unwell, Sylvie?” Dorothy’s gentle voice pursued her. “Need some water? Or a seat?”
She needed so much more than that. “Thanks, Dorothy. I’ll take a walk instead. Just to see if Jozefa is anywhere in the building.”
Sylvie began winding her way through the gift shop just as Beth scurried into it and blocked her path. They hadn’t seen each other since the night Sylvie had bailed her out of jail.
“Oh.” Beth clutched her umbrella in both hands. “Sylvie. I forgot you were working today.”
“My group canceled, but it’s just as well,” she said. “Have you seen Jozefa today?”
“No, I haven’t. You look awful. Just terrible.”
“Pardon me.” Sylvie squeezed past her. She didn’t make friends easily, which made conflict with the ones she had so disagreeable. But she didn’t have the time or focus to set everything back to rights just now.
Beth followed. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said at the station. You can be mad at me if it makes you feel better, but I can tell something else is under your skin today.” When they emerged into the Gallery of Honor beneath the rotunda, Beth caught up to Sylvie. “Will you tell me what’s going on if I promise to behave?”
Sylvie glanced at her, then paused to allow a rolling chair to wheel past them toward the display of laces sent by the queen of Italy.
“Walter?” she called.
Her nephew turned to her, gripping the handles of the chair he pushed. He was being paid by the hour, Sylvie knew, and that didn’t include personal conversations.
Still, she couldn’t help but ask if Meg happened to be at the Fair today.
Sunshine bounced off the shiny brim of Walter’s cap. “Set up inside Horticulture,” he tossed over his shoulder. With the smallest of waves, he faced forward again and asked the elderly woman in his care which exhibit she’d like to see next.
“Well? What’s going on?” Beth prodded with an elbow to her side, and Sylvie told her in hushed tones everything that had happened last night, from the laundry tag in Lottie’s gown to her escapade at the Palmer to Jenny’s confession at the police station.
“My, my. Doesn’t Kristof figure nicely as a hero from one of those novels you sell. What I can’t figure out is why you’re in the market for one.”
Frustration stilled Sylvie’s steps. Visitors parted and flowed about them like a stream around unmoving rocks. “Have you so little imagination, Beth? This is Rose we’re talking about. I know you’ve never wanted children and you’re through with men completely, but try to understand where I’m coming from.” One of the guards nearby raised his blue-black eyebrows. If Sylvie had spoken too loudly, she hadn’t realized it.
Beth’s shoulders slumped. “Sylvie, Jozefa is gone.”
“What?” All other noise dimmed into an indistinct blur in the background.
“She’s gone. And if Rose was with her, I imagine that she’s gone, too.” Beth’s hand came under Sylvie’s elbow and guided her to sit in one of the chairs encircling a statuary fountain.
Mist sprayed Sylvie’s neck from behind. Questions staggered around on her tongue, which grew thick and dry in her mouth. “Start over,” she forced out. “Tell me everything.”
“I sat with her at one of the lectures here last week. I invited her to the upcoming performance of the Hull House Players, and she said she’d love to but she wouldn’t be in town anymore. For all the hardships of living in partitioned Poland, where women are much further behind in their quest for equality than we are, she misses it. She’s seen enough of the Fair, enough of Chicago, and she’s ready to go home.”
“With Rose?” The words skittered out on a breath.
“She didn’t say that. You’re the one who said Rose was staying with her at the Palmer and that she checked out recently. Why else would she check out unless she was headed home?”
Sylvie tried to breathe, tried to think. Was this something Rose would have agreed to, returning to the land of her parents? She knew so little of the language, but she was young and smart and could quickly learn.
“The police said they would notify all the ports and train stations to keep an eye out for Jozefa or Rose.” But even as Sylvie said it, she felt the ineptitude of such a promise. Between commuters and fairgoers from all over the world, tens of thousands came in and out of the city every day. The idea that they could pinpoint two blond women—and the right two, at that—was ludicrous.
And Sylvie was only one person. Even if Kristof and every member of her family helped her, she couldn’t possibly hope to patrol every train station, livery, and port in the city.
“I am sorry, you know,” Beth replied. “Sorry about Rose, and sorry for not knowing what to say.”
Sylvie nodded but could think of nothing to say herself. What was she supposed to do now?
Sylvie wasn’t sure how long she sat in front of the fountain, staring vacantly up at a mural by Mary Cassatt that filled the arch above the north gallery. But by the time she rose to go, the back of her jacket was soaked through to her skin from splashing droplets. The damp clinging of fabric was the only thing she felt as she left the Woman’s Building. It was all she could stand to feel.
She had planned to return to the bookstore but found herself heading south instead, to the Horticulture Building. If it had been a different day, she would have admired the Venetian Renaissance architecture of the long structure. A huge central glass dome dominated its otherwise long, low silhouette, and it glittered and sparked as the sun climbed toward its zenith. Its front steps led down to the lagoon where Venetian gondoliers ferried visitors.
Sylvie closed her umbrella and entered beneath a frieze of cupids and garlands. Immediately to her left, a garden of hollyhocks, asters, and clematis exploded with color. The concentrated fragrances of exotic flowers and tropical fruits filled her nose. Prisms fell from the many-paned glass roof. Beneath the dome, ivy and other vines Sylvie didn’t recognize obscured balcony railings and cascaded in thirty-foot curtains. The building was a thousand feet long and swathed in light now that the fog had burned away. Courtyards, greenhouses, pavilions, and exhibits featured nations from every corner of the world.
Walter hadn’t said exactly where Meg would be, but Sylvie knew her sister. She would be amused by California’s tower of fourteen thousand oranges, impressed by the giant cider press in
daily operation with fresh apples, and interested in the many educational wine exhibits. But she wouldn’t want to paint them.
Rainbows rippling over her skirt, Sylvie circled the area beneath the central dome until she spotted Meg’s easel just off the main walkway. The canvas was a study in lush shades of green and gold. The towering cacti, bamboo, and palm trees were only the background, however, to the people craning to see.
“Meg,” Sylvie said when she was close enough to be heard.
Meg twisted toward her, a streak of flake white paint on her chin. Her smile slipped as soon as she saw Sylvie. “Oh no,” she said. “What’s happened?”
Covering her mouth with one hand, Sylvie waited until she could speak without falling to pieces. Then, while Meg’s paint dried on the canvas and stiffened the bristles of her brushes, she told her sister everything.
Meg gripped both of Sylvie’s hands. “Oh, my dear. What you must be going through. But I don’t believe Beth’s version of this tale. Remember what Dorothy said? That up until this morning, Jozefa had come to the Woman’s Building daily. That means yesterday she was still in town. But when did she check out of the Palmer?”
“Last Friday.” The pressure in her head mounting, Sylvie brought to mind everything she’d learned from Tom and Jenny. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what they said.”
Eyebrows lifted, Meg paused as though waiting for Sylvie to catch up. “So why would she have left the Palmer any sooner than the day she planned to leave town?”
“Perhaps she was running out of money and needed cheaper lodging. Maybe the ticket home was more expensive than she’d anticipated and this was a way to compensate.”
Meg pumped her hands. “Or it could be that they checked out of the Palmer and intended to leave town but couldn’t get a ticket that fast. The trains were full, possibly, with all the traffic for the Fair. And that’s not all. Think of Rose. She sent you a note telling you not to worry. Would she truly leave the country without at least sending another to say good-bye?”
Shadows of the White City Page 24