October 1891 Chicago, Illinois

“Mary Agnes!” Helen Laffey rushes toward her cousin on the crowded train platform at Chicago’s ornate Grand Central Station. Helen clasps Mary Agnes tight. “You poor thing. Look at you,” she says. “Brown as a gypsy. And what is that you are wearing? We will have to get to the dressmaker today.”

Still the same Helen, Mary Agnes thinks.

Helen takes Mary Agnes’s satchel from her and leads her through the cavernous station to the street outside. There is deep chill in the air, with a shrill wind coming off Lake Michigan.

Mary Agnes is glad she has a cloak this time as she arrives in Chicago, not like the first time, five years ago, when she arrived in The Windy City in a blizzard with little to her name. “Everything looks so—”

“Crowded,” Helen interrupts. “Father says the city has exploded. Industries, streetcars, buildings. But it’s also brought disease. Cholera, typhoid. And people, more than a million now.”

“A million?” Mary Agnes thinks of the wide-open skies of Colorado, the way the sky bruised purple at the end of a day, so much her heart would ache. And no matter where she looked, east or west, south or north, there was never anyone in sight. The whole expanse of it: the Front Range, the air, the grasses, the sky, the creek bottoms. Dutch.

“When I got your letter, the one about Tom . . .” Helen trails off and hails a rig. When they are settled in, she takes Mary Agnes’s hand. “But it’s time to talk of other things now.”

Like Dutch? With every mile behind her, Mary Agnes questioned herself. Did I do the right thing? Or just the expected thing? And then the devil taunts her and she thinks her thoughts obscene. What was I thinking? It might as well be her hymn to herself, to her life; she repeats the question over and over again. But she can’t shake him, or thoughts of him. Every blond head she sees, she catches her breath. Dutch.

Mary Agnes moves in with Helen in a boardinghouse that caters to young, single Irish women on Halsted Street not far from Jane Addams’ Hull House. Helen goes off to her position as a bookkeeper and Mary Agnes secures a position at The Tremont House, one of Chicago’s most prominent downtown hotels. As she walks past the University of Chicago, she looks wistfully at the new buildings being constructed. Classes will begin within a year. To think I thought I would go to university . . . but no. Again she chides herself. What was I thinking?

Mary Agnes throws herself into work. Similar to big houses, she pays attention to detail in all her tasks: crisp linen sheets mitered at the corners, coverlets tucked neatly at the foot of the large beds, and pillows plumped; sumptuous towels stacked in tiled baths; fresh flowers on every entry table. And not a mote of dust, this she checks daily, floorboards, ledges, drapery rods. The clientele at the Tremont expects nothing less. Her rooms are not lacking.

Unlike big houses, where she was privy to family whims and secrets, she sees new patrons every day, although several male guests frequent the hotel, some with multiple “wives.” She overhears lover’s arguments. Sees men fondling each other in dim halls. Sweeps aways beribboned condoms under beds. Finds drained bottles of laudanum. All of this is overlooked; maids are only to go to management for brazenly illegal or suspicious activity.

Mary Agnes finishes making the large four-poster bed in the President Suite and begins her daily routine: Clear drawers and cabinets of items left behind, dust, sweep, mop on hands and knees. When she opens the top drawer of the bedstand, she gasps. A revolver. She looks behind to see if anyone is watching. No one is. With shaking hands, she lifts the revolver and wraps it in a towel. Is it loaded? This will have to be brought to the hotel manager’s attention. When she finishes the room—and right tidy it is—she places the towel in a small basket and takes the back stairs to the ground floor.

“Sir?” Mary Agnes approaches the manager’s secretary, a young man in his twenties in a dark suit.

“And you would be?”

“Miss Halligan, sir.” She has taken to calling herself Miss Halligan instead of Mrs. Halligan. A widow would never be hired for a job like this. And she’s only eighteen, nineteen next month, so she easily passes as unmarried. Tom’s ring is hidden in her satchel at the boarding house, tied and wrapped in a handkerchief. Her finger feels bare; she often finds herself touching the spot to twirl the ring, but there is no ring to twirl.

“From what floor?” the young man asks.

“Eighth. I’d like to talk to Mr. Winters, if he is available.”

“And why do you think Mr. Winters has time for you?”

“It’s something I found, sir, in the President Suite.”

The young man rises from his desk and comes around to the front of the desk. He looks at the basket. “In here?”

She nods and unwraps the towel and he peers inside.

“You found this where?”

“In the bedstand drawer, sir.”

“One moment.” He takes the revolver and disappears into Mr. Winters’ office. Within minutes, the secretary ushers Mary Agnes into the manager’s palatial office. Mahogany desk, leather chair, spittoon. Large red leather armchairs facing the desk and a full bar on the side wall. And the paintings! But what did she expect from one of Chicago’s premier hotels?

She has only seen Mr. Winters from afar. In person, he is much more imposing: Tall, robust, balding, with a large, pointed nose. He wears an expensive dark suit with a small navy and white handkerchief in his chest pocket and a watch fob. A pince-nez sits low on his nose. His shoes are so polished, Mary Agnes thinks you could see your reflection in them.

He motions for Mary Agnes to sit. She doesn’t know if she should curtsy. Or wait to be spoken to. But before she can form any thoughts or words, he thunders.

“And why, may I ask, did you remove this item from the President Suite?”

She freezes. “I thought . . .”

“What you thought? How dare you.”

“But . . .”

His face reddens. “Mr. Price is one of our most valued guests.”

Yes, he’s here three nights every week. Or four. How many wives can one man have?

“We strive to put the guest first. Period. And to protect their privacy. I will be relieving you of your duties on the eighth floor, effective immediately.”

Am I being dismissed? For following orders? To report suspicious activity to management?

“You can report to the second floor from now on.” He puts the revolver on his desk. “That will be all.”

It is with some relief that she hasn’t been sacked, although the second floor is a blatant demotion. She swallows her bruised pride and reports to the second floor. When she hears through the hotel gossip chain that Mr. Price’s bullet-riddled body was whisked out of the President Suite late at night the next week, Mary Agnes does not flinch. That things like this happen at the hotel are veiled in secrecy.

Now when she cleans rooms—many times after a rendezvous that looks more like a bacchanal than a hotel stay—she performs her duties without judgement and never goes to management again. Unlike other maids, so far she has not been propositioned or put in a compromised situation. She doesn’t begrudge her luck. And she certainly doesn’t want to endure Mr. Winters’ wrath again.

Today, as she checks if fresh flowers have yet arrived in the largest suite on the second floor, she encounters another maid—one not long for employ, she thinks—engaged with a gentleman guest up against the polished closet door. She quickly exits the room and hurries to the women’s changing room to dump her uniform into the hamper and change to her street clothes. No, she won’t say a word.

Her education is growing in ways she would never learn at university, adultery and crime and sinfulness veiled in lavish surroundings. Her bank account is growing, too, as she’s now on a salary, a full six dollars a week, and her pockets filled with extravagant tips.

She squirrels away enough for new eyeglasses and two new dresses, now that it’s been a year since Tom died and she doesn’t have to wear black. Helen goads her to the theatre, to shop, to buy magazines. Mary Agnes splurges on Thomas Hardy’s long-awaited Tess of the d’Urbervilles after finishing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Mary Agnes stops sending wages back to Ireland. Never did she receive even a curt thank you from her mother. Now she could afford a dinner out once per week, although women don’t dine out alone. She wonders what it would be like to go to the hotel dining room and order off the extensive menu, littleneck clams on the half-shell, lamb with mint sauce, mashed turnips and squash, and steamed apple dumpling with hard sauce. But she cannot complain, suppers at the boardinghouse are adequate, if not excessive. Boiled lake trout. Leg of chicken. Smoked beef tongue. Tonight, it smells like Irish Stew, one of her favorites. She always has enough to eat.

“Miss Halligan, is it?” A tall, striking woman Mary Agnes has not seen before approaches her at supper. “Eilene Osborne,” the young woman says. She uses her given name and offers her hand like a man. Mary Agnes shakes it. “Mrs. O’Rourke says you’re from Galway. I am, as well. Tuam.”

“A pleasure,” Mary Agnes says. “How long have you been in Chicago, Miss—?”

“Eilene, please. I just arrived. And you?”

“A few months, this time.”

“And by that, you mean?”

Mary Agnes doesn’t know how much to divulge. The boardinghouse is strictly for single women. But she feels a kindredness to this frank, forthcoming woman. “I was away in the West for a few years.”

“Ah, the West. Now you intrigue me.”

Mary Agnes tells Eilene about Colorado Springs and the ranch. She doesn’t mention Tom—she cannot risk being found a widow—or Dutch, although she thinks of him every day, especially when she passes tall, blond Dutchmen or Scandinavians on Chicago’s ever-crowded streets.

What does Dutch eat for breakfast now? Where does he work? How does he spend his time in that mysterious town he says he loves? Where has he made his home? What she never contemplates is another woman in his life. It might be selfish, but she cannot imagine him looking at another woman like he looked at her that last night at the ranch.

It’s harmless thinking of him this way, more than a thousand miles away, isn’t it?