Always (7 page)

She didn’t answer but let out a disgusted sigh as she retrieved her sketchbook. She brushed dirt from the open pages and flipped it closed.

“It’s really good,” Ross said.

“What?”

“The rabbit. It’s really good. I don’t understand why you didn’t want me to see it.”

She hugged the book to her chest. “You think it’s... good?”

“Yeah. It’s as good as the illustrations in the books that I’ve seen. You ever read
The Pickwick Papers
?”

“Yes, I love Charles Dickens.”

“Well, it reminds me of the drawings in that book. Not that there are any rabbits in it, but it shows the same exceptional attention to detail.”

When her eyes widened, Ross noticed that they weren’t so dark blue, after all. Once, when he was four, his mother took him to see the ships coming into New York harbor. Whenever he had looked out upon the same harbor after that, the water appeared to him unimpressive, a dank grayish kind of blue, but on that particular summer afternoon, the sky was clear and his outlook was bright.

Sunlight reflected white and silver off gentle ripples of water in the far-off distance. It was the sun, or perhaps his own impressionable four-year-old perspective, that colored the harbor an ever-rich, deep royal blue, a majestic, sparkling, life-giving blue that stole his breath away.

Ross thought Emily’s eyes were the same sparkling blue of New York harbor on that one very special summer day so long ago.

“You really think my drawings are that good?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do.”

They stood there, not saying anything, for what seemed like forever. Finally, Ross cleared his throat. “Well, I gotta go.” He started to turn away.

“You won’t tell my papa, will you? About how I come here some Saturdays?”

Ross looked back at her. “No, I guess not.”

She smiled, and he smiled back. He started to leave again, then stopped. “You know, this is really a nice spot. No one bothers you here, do they?”

“Not until you came along.” Her tone held just a hint of dry sarcasm. She sounded much older than eleven at that moment.

That made Ross smile again. “I was thinking, maybe I could bring one of my journals down here some Saturday. Maybe you could do some illustrations to go along with one of my stories.”

Her face brightened. “You write stories?”

“Well, some.” Suddenly embarrassed, he looked down at the ground. “They’re not that good, but I figure that if I practice long enough and keep up with school and everything, maybe I’ll get better, and—”

“I’d love to hear some of your stories.”

He looked up to see her hugging her sketchbook even tighter. “And it might be fun to do illustrations for them,” she added.

Ross felt a combined rush of apprehension and anticipation at seeing her eager expression. He had never allowed anyone to read his stories before. His family, the Brenners, weren’t very encouraging. Sam and Alma had always been perplexed over his odd habit of scribbling, as they called it, but Emily didn’t seem to think it was odd at all.

He broke into a grin. “Maybe next Saturday morning after I get done with my chores and before I have to go to work.”

“Nine o’clock?” Emily asked.

“Nine o’clock sounds good.”

They stood in awkward silence for another interminable moment before Ross turned away for the last time. “I’ll see you Monday, Emily.”

*

May 1865

Ross stood before the imposing King Street
Herald
office, a four-story red brick structure known as the Davenport Building. He barely remembered walking the last six blocks.
What am I doing here?
he thought. He belonged here. He worked here.

But Ross hadn’t returned home from that bloody war intending to work for Malcolm Davenport’s newspaper. He’d returned to Lancaster for two reasons and two reasons only. To go back to work for the old
Gazette
and to mend fences with Emily. Except the
Gazette
had already gone out of business by the time he arrived, and Emily had started a new life in Baltimore, a life that Karen had made perfectly clear didn’t include him. Things hadn’t worked out at all as he had planned.

But they’d worked out.

He’d always wanted to write for a living, and now he was doing just that. He was also set to marry the girl he’d always dreamed of marrying. Things had worked out fine.

But Ross didn’t feel fine. Nathaniel was dead. The
Penn Gazette
was a thing of the past. And Emily was going back to Baltimore. No, Ross didn’t feel fine at all.

Chapter Five

Two days later, Karen opened the window shutters, allowing a stream of daylight to flood the deserted print shop. “I don’t know why you insisted on coming here, Em.”

It had taken some doing, but Emily had talked her sister into stopping by on their way to market. Now they were confronted with the dispiriting sight of silent job presses, empty desks, and worktables still laden with stacks of paper.

As Emily moved through the shop, her footsteps on the hardwood floor sounded hollow and foreign. She had never known the place to be so quiet. “I just wanted to see it one more time.”

“I suppose I can understand that,” Karen said. “You spent a lot of time here with Papa.”

“This is where he loved to be.”

“Not so much toward the end.”

Emily turned around. “What do you mean? He loved it here.”

“Papa just wasn’t the same after the
Gazette
shut down, not his old fighting self. I can’t help wondering if he could have fought off the pneumonia if—” Karen blinked back sudden tears. “Oh, well. There’s no point in thinking that way.”

“I’m not so sure. The paper was important to him. It gave him a reason to get up in the morning.”

Karen pulled a black-bordered handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her eyes. “He had us, didn’t he? I’d say his family was worth getting up for in the morning.”

“I’m not talking about family. You know what I mean.”

“I suppose only you understood him that way, right?”

Emily was surprised by the undercurrent of jealousy in her sister’s words. “I never said that. I never said that at all.”

Karen closed her eyes and struggled to rein in her emotions. “I’m sorry. But the paper folded. There was no way to avoid the inevitable.”

“Inevitable? I refuse to believe that.”

Karen opened her eyes, all signs of impending tears now vanished. “The paper was losing money. Very soon, we would have been penniless. If it weren’t for Henry’s job at the mill—”

“That’s preposterous. How could he have gone bankrupt? The paper was gaining more support all the time. By the time war broke out, people were eager for the Republican viewpoint. Subscriptions were up. Especially outside the city.”

Karen stuffed her handkerchief back into her handbag. “It wasn’t that. It was the advertising.”

“Advertising!” Emily pointed a triumphant finger at her sister. “You mean the ads were being dropped?”

“Yes.”

“And who do you think was behind that?”

Karen pointed a finger back at her. “Oh, no, you don’t. We already went through this with Papa. Him and his crazy conspiracy theories. To hear him tell it, Malcolm Davenport was solely responsible for everything from the breakup of the Union to last year’s bad tobacco crop.”

“Who else would benefit from pulling advertising from the
Gazette
?”

“No one, but that doesn’t make it so, Em.”

“Fiddlesticks. Davenport’s got his fingers stuck into dozens of pies. Don’t you think that just a word from him would—”

“But he wasn’t worried about the
Gazette
,” Karen argued. “It was just a little paper, certainly no competition for the
Herald
.”

“Not yet, maybe, but down the road it would have been.”

Karen tossed both hands up. “I surrender. Think what you want. You’re impossible to reason with.”

Emily wrinkled her nose and turned her back to run a finger over the empty bed of a job press. “What is Mama planning to do with the equipment?”

“Sell it, of course.”

“Sell it? But—”

“We need the money. Papa didn’t leave her a rich widow.”

Emily hadn’t thought about the financial straits her mother might be in now that her father was gone. “Are there any savings?”

“Some, but not a lot. Especially once the debts are paid. He wasn’t much of a businessman, Em.”

That was true. Nathaniel had always cared more about his principles than his profits. It was one of the traits Emily had always admired most. It was what had set him apart from men like Malcolm Davenport. Now, though, it seemed that Nathaniel’s dedication to principle over the almighty dollar had left his widow with money problems. “I didn’t consider that,” Emily admitted. “How will she get by after the savings are gone?”

“She has the house, and now that Papa’s gone, it probably makes sense for Henry and me to stay on instead of finding a home of our own like we planned. His job at the mill should be enough to support all of us, but the lease on this shop expires at the end of next month. We’ve either got to move the stock and equipment out of here or sell it. There’s no place to store it and no reason to try. What else do you propose we do?”

“Oh, drat.” Emily moved to one of the desks and sank into a chair. “Things are a lot worse than I realized.”

“We’ll get by.”

Emily sat forlornly for a moment before brightening. “Wait a minute.”

No doubt Karen recognized her sister’s tone from past experience. “Oh, no. Don’t even start with one of your—”

Emily jumped to her feet. “What if we pick up where Papa left off? Why, we have everything we need and—”

“No, no, no, no.” Karen shook her head vehemently.

“What’s the matter?”

“What makes you think we could make a profit?”

“Papa always made a profit in the jobbing department. Is Jason Willoughby still around? And Billy O’Leary?”

Before Karen could reply, Emily plowed ahead. “You give me two good men like Jason and Billy, and I guarantee I could get this place up and running again. We’d be making a profit in no time.”

“Oh, Em, it’ll never work.”

“Why?” Emily challenged her, confounded and annoyed that all the rest of the world seemed to see were storm clouds when it was so obvious to her that the sun was close behind.

“For one thing, who’s going to bring their business to a print shop run by a woman?” Karen posed practically.

“But I just know I could run this place!”

“I don’t doubt it, but how would you convince the rest of the business community of that?”

“It might take some time to build the business back up to what it used to be, but…” Despite herself, Emily began to see the logic in Karen’s argument.

“And how would you pay Jason and Billy in the meantime? They have families to support.”

“Well, I’m not sure just yet, but—”

Karen drove home her final point in a gentler tone of voice. “And what happens to the business if you get married and have children?”

Emily turned away and folded her arms tight. That question, although tactfully posed, was like a stake to the heart. “Not much chance of that. Not around here. Who would have me?”

Karen’s reply was soft but firm. “Any man would be lucky to have you.”

“Spoken like the truly good-hearted sister of a fallen woman.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

“People are talking again. I can see it in their faces.”

“I doubt that, and even if they are, it’ll pass.”

“I’m sure it will. As soon as I go back to Baltimore.”

Karen approached from behind and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I know Mama would love for you to stay, and so would I. Dorcas deserves to know her aunt Emily, but…”

“But?”

“If you decide to stay, you know it won’t be easy. Given a choice, people will always believe the worst. It’s human nature.”

“Now you sound like Papa.”

“Thank you.”

Emily forced a deep breath, deliberately composing herself before she turned back to face her sister. She tried to smile. “You’re welcome.”

Karen didn’t smile back. “And then there’s the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“He’s engaged to her, you know.”

Another stake to the heart. Emily knew, of course, to whom her sister was referring.

At the funeral, as she had sat so stoically in that front pew, she’d wanted, more than anything, to be able to turn to the man she knew sat six pews behind her. She wanted to lose herself in Ross Gallagher’s strong, competent arms. She wanted to cry on his shoulder, but that was impossible.

Ross was present in the church, barely ten feet from where she sat, but the emotional distance between them could never be forded. They weren’t children anymore, or even tentative adolescents, and their friendship was a thing of the past. He was a man, and he was sitting next to the woman who would soon be his wife. Johanna.

When Emily finally brought herself to reply to her sister’s statement, she feigned casual disinterest. “Who is engaged to whom?”

Karen gave her a stern look. “Ross is engaged to Johanna Davenport.”

“Johanna Butler, you mean,” Emily corrected. Karen raised a skeptical eyebrow, but Emily turned her back to stroll around the shop. “Anyway, I’m happy for him.”

“Oh, Emily.” Karen’s tone was reproachful.

Emily made a face as she ran a finger over the dusty surface of a worktable. “Well, he always wanted to marry into that stinking rich family of hers. I’m happy he’s finally going to get his wish.”

“What’s that I hear? Jealousy?”

“Certainly not. It’s just that I never quite understood how easy it was for him to trade loyalties.”

“Loyalties? You can’t mean when he left his old job here to go work for the
Herald
? That was years ago.”

“Now that he’s finally gotten himself engaged to Lady Johanna, I suppose he’s right in line to become editor of the
Herald
.”

“I don’t doubt it. After those articles he wrote, he probably deserves it.”