Chapter Thirty-One
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1871
The temperature hovered a few degrees above freezing, with no rain in sight, which was a blessed relief. Mrs. Palmer’s Spirit of Chicago Art Show fundraiser was scheduled for the evening of Sunday, December 17, ten weeks to the day after the Great Fire. Days like today made the stress at home fade into the background as Meg willingly lost herself in her work.
Sunbeams broke through the clouds, a symbolic background of hope for a banker surveying the skeleton of his old building, which laborers were bringing down today. He’d worn a black suit, a top hat, and leaned on a cane, making him a stark figure. This time, she painted the subject from behind and placed him to one side so she could see what he saw. His posture in the presence of destruction captured the quality she was aiming for. He was unbowed, unbroken, even as construction crews knocked down the scorched arches and columns of his former bank.
They’d had to stay a safe distance away from the site, which was just as well, because Meg wanted to include as much of the scene on the canvas as possible. The banker stood a few yards in front of her, leaning on his cane. She could hear him reciting Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life.”
“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”
His voice warbled at first, but grew strong by the end. Victorious, even. It was beautiful. A smile spread over Meg’s face as she painted in tones of ivory black, burnt umber, and burnt sienna the piece she would call A Heart for Any Fate.
The humidity coming off the lake deepened the cold in her fingers. She blew on them and kept working until it was time to pack up her supplies and fold her easel. Dusk was falling on the city ever earlier as they moved closer to winter solstice. But in less than three blocks, she would be home.
After pausing to tie her muffler more firmly about her neck, Meg adjusted her grip on the easel, canvas, and case that held her paint tubes, brushes, and palette. Twice last week, Louis Garibaldi had come with her when she painted, carrying her supplies even though she could manage on her own. The relic business was winding down, and she didn’t mind tipping him for his help. She also gave him a copy of The Adventures of Robin Hood, and he gave her a melted blue marble in return.
With every step she took, her thoughts narrowed to her family. So much had changed since the fire. Some things hadn’t.
In the week since Stephen had come home from the asylum, Meg felt a growing tension between her father and her sister, and at the heart of it was Jasper Davenport. Stephen had fixated upon him the way he had once fixated on patrolling the roof, watching for Rebel spies. He cast about outlandish theories to explain who Jasper was and how he had weaseled his way into Hiram’s estate. Sylvie maintained Jasper was exactly who he said he was. She hadn’t contacted him, but Meg could tell each passing day without him wore Sylvie a little thinner.
Stephen’s traits of suspicion and paranoia were in full force, but he was trying to protect his daughters. After years of emotional detachment, and especially after what felt like his abandonment the night of the fire, Meg could appreciate his need to redeem himself in this area. But Sylvie—poor Sylvie. Meg thought at times she could hear her sister’s heart breaking. Not only had their father forbidden her to see Jasper, but Jasper had done nothing to indicate he wanted to see her.
All Meg wanted was for her family to be together again, truly together. But here was a rift ever widening, and she balanced on a tightrope between them. “What do I do?” she had asked Nate the last time she’d seen him. “I need to fix this. I don’t know how.”
Nate had given her that rare sad smile of his. “You can’t please them both. Please God instead,” he’d told her. “If you don’t know how, just ask Him.”
He had made it sound so easy. Just ask. She had. She did. But so far, the Almighty hadn’t responded in a way that she could hear, and she could see no clear path forward. When she was home—which wasn’t much, with all the painting she was doing outside—she tried to diffuse the charged atmosphere that had filled the shanty. But between her well-intentioned words and the occasional fumbling of an object with her hands, she only succeeded in irritating one family member or the other.
Her cheeks were numb with cold by the time she returned to the shanty. Wiping her feet on the rug, she set down her things, removed her boots, and hung up her cloak and hat.
At the table, Sylvie curled over a ledger. Stephen sat opposite, plying a needle to repair a book binding. A jar of glue sat on the table near a pair of scissors and a spool of thread. It was good to see her father working again, especially at something he’d once excelled at. Perhaps he could excel at it again.
“Good day?” Meg asked.
Sylvie’s pencil hovered above the page. “Why do you always phrase it like that? It’s like you’re leading the witness. Why can’t you just ask how my day was and brace yourself for the answer?”
A legal metaphor. She must be missing Jasper again. “So, not a good day.” Meg moved her painting supplies to the back room and leaned the canvas against the wall before coming out again. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Sylvie gave her a look that said she didn’t.
“She won’t listen to me.” Stephen pulled the thread taut and dipped the needle back into the binding. “I’ve been explaining to her all day why she shouldn’t trust Jasper, and she still isn’t convinced.”
“Surely not when customers have been here,” Meg said.
“What customers?” Sylvie didn’t look up from her accounting book.
The shanty was too small to contain the emotion exuded by both of them.
“Sylvie, I’ll stay here in case anyone decides to come before closing time. Why don’t you call on Anna Hoffman? She’d love to see you. Bring back something delicious, won’t you?”
No sooner had Meg suggested it than Sylvie was closing her book and throwing her cloak around her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, and left.
Stephen shook his head. “She won’t listen.”
Meg put a kettle on to boil. “Maybe let the matter rest for a while, Father. She obviously doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. In fact, it would be good for you to think about something else too. What’s this book you’re working on?”
“Pilgrim’s Progress. A customer brought it in yesterday for repair. This edition is more than a hundred years old.”
“That shows a lot of faith in you, that they would entrust such a volume to your care. I know you’ll be an excellent steward of it until you return it to its owner.”
His gaze met hers. He set the needle in the gutter of the book. “That’s it. That’s exactly how I feel about you and your sister. You don’t belong to me, you belong to the One who created you. But I’m your steward, and it’s my job to care for you and to repair whatever is broken. I’ve done miserably at it, and I’m trying to make up for lost time. If I come across too strong, it’s only because I’m your father. I mean, I’m trying to be your father.”
Meg wanted to cover his hand with hers but stopped herself in time. “You are. We’ll never stop being your daughters.”
Hope kindled and burst to full flame, warming her to the tips of her fingers and toes. He was getting better. He lacked finesse with his techniques, but his motivation and goals were there. Finally, he was coming home.
A short knock on the door preceded its budging open. “Hallo?” Karl Hoffman blustered inside, cheeks pink from cold. “Still open until five o’clock, ja?”
Meg assured him they were.
“Gut. My Anna and your Sylvie are visiting at our place. I’m in the way there. What do you say, Stephen, may I sit with you and read the paper? I’ll not interrupt your work.”
Stephen lifted his head, obviously surprised that Karl was seeking his company. “Sit!” He wiped a hand over his chin in an old habit that betrayed his discomfort.
Smiling, Meg caught her father’s gaze and tilted her head toward Karl until Stephen blinked and said, “How are you, Karl? How is your wife?”
Nodding her approval, Meg took the kettle off the heat and poured the water into the coffeepot. The rich aroma of soaking ground beans immediately filled the room. Karl’s amiable voice and rustling newspaper brought a refreshing cheer as he spoke of their bakery and customers.
“Now, Stephen,” Karl continued, “there is nothing in this paper that interests me today. Full of advertisements and letters and not much else. I know I said I wouldn’t interrupt you, but let me see what you’ve got there. Pilgrim’s Progress? Never read it. Think I should?”
As the conversation unfolded, gratitude filled Meg. She didn’t think Karl actually had an interest in Pilgrim’s Progress so much as he had an interest in talking to Stephen about whatever interested him. It was an invitation to companionship, a declaration that Stephen’s past was no obstacle. Coming from an immigrant who had often been shunned himself, the gesture was even more meaningful.
When both agreed, she carefully moved the old book out of the way before bringing the men their hot drinks.
That task complete, she poured a cup for herself and took it to the back room, where she sat on the mattress she and Sylvie shared. It had been no trouble to secure a second one for Stephen once she’d explained to the Relief and Aid Society that they needed it. They’d grown used to dragging them into the front room at night to be near the fire, and then back again in the morning. “I’ve endured far worse conditions,” Stephen had reminded them. A small reference to the asylum or Andersonville, or to any army camp, she supposed. But for him to bring it up, even in passing, felt like progress, and she celebrated it.
What was the rest of that Longfellow poem the banker had recited today? “Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.” She had waited years for the kind of hope she felt for her father now. No matter what tomorrow held, she was thankful for today.
Setting her mug on the floor, she reached for the photograph of her father in his army uniform and studied it. He looked determined and perhaps a little afraid. Thirty-five when he’d enlisted, he had none of the eagerness displayed by the much younger recruits who had no wives or children. He hadn’t gone to chase adventure or glory. He’d wrapped his meek personality in a uniform and done what he thought was right.
She took a sip of coffee and thought of Jasper’s photograph. He’d been nineteen when it was taken. And yet he had no eagerness in his expression either, unless she misremembered. Curious now, she picked up Sylvie’s copy of Villette and withdrew the photograph, laying it next to Stephen’s. It was odd, she mused, how devoid of emotion the young man’s face was. She shifted her gaze to her father’s image again.
The backdrops used in the studios were exactly the same. Exactly.
Meg picked up her father’s card and read the text printed vertically in the ivory border on the right side of the image: Daniel F. Brandon, Photographer, Camp Douglas Studio.
She picked up Jasper’s card. The edges had been trimmed away so the lower half of the words had been cut off, making it impossible to read. But when she lined it up on top of Stephen’s image, it was a perfect match.
Jasper had told Sylvie this year was his first visit to Chicago. But he’d had his photograph taken in Camp Douglas in 1865.
Why didn’t he want them to know?
And why had Hiram never mentioned that his nephew had been there while he was serving there too?
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1871
A cry pierced the night, jolting Stephen from an already worthless slumber.
Sylvie.
“The bridge is burning,” she gasped in her sleep. “We can’t cross it—”
He rolled off his mattress and knelt next to hers, hand on her shoulder to wake her. “Sylvie,” he said quietly, then again, a little louder.
Meg roused at the noise. “Another nightmare?”
“Go back to sleep, Meg. I’ve got her.”
She regarded him for a moment before rolling onto her side, facing the opposite wall, where the table and benches had been pushed to make room for them to sleep by the stove.
“Sylvie, wake up, darlin’,” he tried again. “It’s a dream. You’re all right, I’ve got you.”
Her nightmare was not reality, but it had been once. She was trapped in terror she’d known before. He wanted nothing more than to rescue her from it.
His own heart thundering, he slipped his arm beneath her shoulders and raised her up to sit. “It’s all right, it’s over.” He gave her a little shake and felt by the jerk in her limbs that she’d finally awakened. He focused on calming his breathing, now that the crisis had passed.
“Father?” Two slender arms wrapped around him. Sylvie tucked her head beneath his chin. She was crying, silently sobbing against him. “It’s been such a long time,” she whispered, “since we did this.”
Stephen frowned, trying to recall the last time he’d hugged her. He couldn’t. “Do you miss it?”
She nodded, her hair catching in the stubble on his jaw. “So does Meg. A lot. She was the one who claimed your lap most often. She’s always felt loved through touch.”
A lump grew sharp in his throat as he recalled reading to Meg while Sylvie curled up with a book alone. Holding Meg’s hand and waving to Sylvie as she headed to school without her sister. He swallowed. “And you? How do you feel loved?”
“Time.”
He’d given more of that to his firstborn too. “Well, I’m all yours right now, if you’ll still have me.”
He was only half joking. Mindful not to bother Meg, he guided Sylvie to sit beside him on his own mattress and smoothed the hair back from her brow.
“I’ll have you,” she said quietly. It was a wonder.
Then, with a pang, Stephen thought of another man who had somehow claimed her heart. “You also want Jasper. Don’t you?”
How could he make her see what he saw? She seemed blind to any misgiving. It was a reckless affection, a dangerous infatuation—he refused to call it love. For her own good, he needed to put a stop to it. He didn’t trust that fake farther than he could throw him.
She sighed. “Let’s not talk about him right now.”
“Fair enough.” Oliver climbed onto Stephen’s lap and curled into a ball, purring. He stroked the battered animal’s fur, weaving his fingers between its bald spots. “I’m sorry about the nightmares.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “They don’t feel like dreams. When I’m having them, I think they’re real.”
“I know,” he said, and hoped she understood all that lay behind those two words. He knew what it was to be terrified, even when the threat was only in his mind. He knew what it was like to both dread sleep and long for it because insomnia was such a cruel master. Waking up in a sweat with a heartbeat that drilled right through his chest? Yes, he knew that too.
“I know you do,” she whispered. “I wish you didn’t. I wish neither of us did.” She sat up straighter. Oliver climbed over her legs and wandered away.
They sat beside each other in the quiet, listening to Meg’s breathing grow deep and steady. Outside, the wind moaned and reached its cold fingers through a crack in the wall. Stephen grabbed his army blanket off the floor and draped it over his daughter’s back.
She spread it behind him to cover his too. “Did I wake you?”
“Not really.”
“Oh no.” Sylvie turned to face him. “Have you been sleeping poorly since you got back?”
He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Sleep and I haven’t been on the best of terms lately. What little I get is about as fitful as yours.” He hated that it was worse now than when he’d been taking the whiskey tincture at the asylum.
“I’m so sorry.” She yawned. “Did Frank have anything helpful to say to you on Thanksgiving?”
“He recommended I see Dr. Gilbert. I won’t do it.”
A few moments passed, and he hoped her delayed response meant she was growing drowsy. At length, she said, “I would go with you, if you wanted me to.”
“I’ve had enough doctors, daughter. I told Frank, and I’ll tell you. I’m through with the lot of them.”
“All right. I suppose if you don’t need a doctor, that means neither do I. We’ll get better together, won’t we?” With a pat to his knee, she said good night and crawled back into bed with Meg.
But long after she succumbed to slumber, Stephen still lay awake.
Energy coursing through his veins, Nate waltzed into the temporary Tribune building on Canal Street, his satchel heavy with paper. Eleven hundred pages, to be exact. At last, the court proceedings of the investigation into the cause of the fire had been released to the press. Nate had been first in line at the police headquarters to receive his copy. Now he was the first in the copy room.
The race was on. Whichever paper printed the news first would not only get the sales and bolster the paper’s reputation, but it would establish public opinion on the topic of who to blame. Nate wanted to be first, but even more than that, he wanted to be accurate. To present the information in a way the people would understand.
Which meant that first, he needed to understand it himself.
He dropped the satchel on his desk with a thunk and followed the smell of coffee into the small room down the hall, grateful one of the secretaries had already brewed a pot. Taking a mug from the shelf, he poured the first of what would likely be many, many cups. Eleven hundred pages to analyze and synthesize would take all the focus he could muster. He could do this.
Burning his tongue, Nate gulped his coffee so he could walk without spilling it, then hurried back to his desk.
And there was Meg, her face bright from the early morning cold. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she breathed.
“I’m here, and I won’t be going anywhere for quite some time.” Nate set his cup on the desk and rolled up his sleeves. “The notes from the Catherine O’Leary trial are here.”
Her gaze widened and fell on the satchel. “All of that?”
“All of that.”
Her brow crimped. “Then I won’t keep you. It’s just that I found something I don’t know what to do with. I didn’t want to show Sylvie or Father, because I don’t know what conclusions they’d draw. I don’t know what to think, myself.”
“Show me.”
Unclasping her reticule, she withdrew two cartes de visite and laid them on his desk side by side. Jasper Davenport and Stephen Townsend. “Look at the backgrounds,” she said.
They were identical.
“Now watch this.” She overlaid Jasper’s card on Stephen’s and pointed to the printed edge. Daniel F. Brandon, Photographer, Camp Douglas Studio.
Nate took off his glasses. He picked up the cards, studying the words on both, sliding Jasper’s card to the left, then back into position on top of Stephen’s. “It’s a match. It’s plain to see he was at Camp Douglas.”
She leaned across the desk toward him, and her rosewater scent lifted from her skin and hair. “He told Sylvie he’d never been to Chicago before this fall.”
Unease trickled through Nate as he replaced the spectacles on his nose. “So what else is he lying about?”
“Exactly.” There was a little too much curiosity and not enough fear behind that word.
He circled the desk to reach her, his hand enclosing her shoulder. The wool cloak was still cool from the outside air. “Listen. Your father was right when he told you and Sylvie to steer clear of Jasper. Whatever mystery this is, I don’t want you mixed up in it.” His attention drifted toward his bulging satchel. “I’ll look into it as soon as I can. But I need to work on this article right now. Promise me you won’t do anything about this while you wait. Don’t say anything to anyone.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “I won’t. You’re the only one I trust.”
Nate released her, digesting the weight of that responsibility. “Leave the cards with me. Then carry on with your day as planned.”
Sun slanted through the blinds, striping her cloak, her face, the hair spiraling down her back. “I will. You have a long day ahead of you, so I won’t take more of your time.” She snapped her reticule closed.
“I want you to have more of my time. I want to hear how your father is getting along, how the paintings are progressing, how business is going for the bookshop. I want to hear how you are.”
She tilted her head, raising an eyebrow. “Perhaps over a slice of blackberry pie?”
Smiling, he took a step back from her. “I’d like that very much.”
“Then we have something to look forward to, after all of that.” She pointed to the work awaiting him.
His pulse quickened with the urgency. “I’d best get to it. Don’t worry, I’ll keep these safe.” He squeezed her hand, and she slipped away.
The outline of her receding figure still in his mind, he tucked the photographs from Camp Douglas into the inside pocket of his satchel. Daniel F. Brandon, Photographer. The name was familiar. Nate had probably read it in the directory of burned-out businesses that had moved to new locations. If he could visit Brandon—
A different day. Right now, he had to focus. He pulled out the massive report on the O’Leary trial, covering nine days of questioning and fifty witnesses, and got to work.
An hour later, Nate leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, rocking his head from one shoulder to the other, stretching his tightening muscles. After reading answers from so many witnesses, questions formed in the back of his mind for Otto Schneider.
“People will say just about anything for money,” he’d said, referring to the false witnesses who blamed Stephen Townsend for the murder. But every instinct Nate had told him Otto had been paid off—at least, his family had been—to confess to Hiram’s murder. “I did what I had to do. For my family. Golden opportunity.”
It made sense. But he had no proof. This morning at the police station, he’d read Schneider’s file one more time but gained no fresh insights. When he left with a copy of the O’Leary trial transcript, he’d also carried the nagging suspicion that Schneider had been set up to take the blame for Hiram’s murder, just as Stephen had been. The difference was that Schneider was a willing participant in the scheme.
Part of him wanted to tell Meg. But until he could also tell her who Hiram’s real murderer was, he saw no need to upset her. Between her father, Jasper, and the upcoming art show, she had enough to manage as it was. No, he decided. He wouldn’t trouble her with this. At the moment, he ought not be distracted by the matter himself.
“Pierce.”
Nate looked up to find Mr. Hollingbrook, his interim editor until a permanent replacement could be found. His clothes were rumpled, and Nate wondered if he’d slept here last night—if he’d slept at all. He’d taken on the city editor role in addition to remaining the editor over the national news.
“Good morning.” Nate squinted at the sun that poured in behind his boss.
“Glad to see you’ve got an early start on this. I want the Tribune to be first to report these findings. Can you make that happen?” He straightened his suspenders over his shoulders.
“I’ll waste no time, sir. But neither will I compromise quality for speed.” Nate couldn’t speak for what other papers would do, or how fast.
Hollingbrook nodded. “Your writing is clean and tight, and you don’t bury the lead. All good things. But I also heard you tend to get ‘bogged down,’ I think was the phrase, with facts.” A curious smile tugged the corner of his mouth.
Nate dropped his pencil and folded his arms. “I’m thorough. I ask a lot of questions. I double-check facts before I file my stories.”
Mr. Hollingbrook appraised him, eyebrows drawn as if in thought. “Some would say that’s the editor’s job.”
“Then I’m happy to lighten my editor’s load.” And Hollingbrook ought to be glad of it, with his increased responsibilities.
Chuckling, the editor thumped his fingers on the O’Leary transcript. “Then you best get back to it.”
Nate couldn’t agree more.