Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles] (2 page)

“Just because I didn’t want the dear boy installing one in my private sitting room doesn’t mean I have remained willfully ignorant. Although it obviously doesn’t solve all the problems in the land, now does it. In this case it doesn’t solve a thing. Sterling didn’t answer. We are still left to worry.”

Juliana looked behind her at Aunt Theodora, her profile illuminated by the amber light spilling out of the house. Tall, slim, and somehow managing to look regal even though she must have hurried to dress.

“Lydia went to rouse Alfred,” Theodora said. “He’s hitching up the buggy. I knew you would want to check on Sterling, but you must not go alone. I shall ride with you while Lydia stays here. If anyone calls or brings word while we’re away, she’ll send Alfred with the news.” She motioned for Juliana to come inside. “It is fortunate that you haven’t changed yet this evening.”

Aunt Theodora was a force to be reckoned with. There would be no way to keep her at home. The best Juliana could do was to drive the buggy into town and hope that Sterling would have a good story waiting in the morning. Perhaps he really was at the office. Perhaps he was merely … distracted. The mental image that created made her shiver as she swept through the doorway and went inside.

“Everything will be all right, dear,” Aunt Theodora said. “We’ll probably know it’s another building before we’re halfway there. And Sterling will have called before we get back—or perhaps he’ll be home by then.” She led the way downstairs, all the while muttering against “that Irishman in the office” whose incompetence forced Sterling to work such long hours untangling his mistakes.

When the older woman hurried into the kitchen, Juliana hung back. She didn’t want to go chasing after Sterling. Not tonight. Not with the image of another woman and her child taunting her. She blinked back tears.
God, help me. I don’t know what to do.

A glimmer of strength returned. Aunt Theodora came to the kitchen door and called out that the buggy was waiting. Juliana headed for the kitchen where Aunt Lydia stood, her gray hair tumbling down her back, her hands clasped as she nodded at whatever Aunt Theodora was saying.

“All right, Sister.” There was a slight edge to her voice. “I think I can be trusted to stay awake and send Alfred with word if Sterling—or anyone else—turns up with news. It’s not like you’ve asked me to translate a passage of Greek poetry.”

“You were never good with the Greeks,” Aunt Theodora snapped, then glanced at Juliana. “Ah. Here you are.” She led the way outside.

Aunt Lydia reached for Juliana. Taking both her hands, she gave them a squeeze. “Prayers ascending, my dear.”

Juliana kissed the old woman on the cheek. Once outside, she thanked Alfred for being so quick about hitching up the buggy, then climbed aboard and took up the reins. As Fancy moved seamlessly into a trot and headed up the road toward the warehouse district, Juliana peered at the flickering light in the distance.

What kind of woman saw something like that and almost hoped it was her husband’s business feeding the flames? She couldn’t help it. If the business burned, if they had to start over, maybe Sterling would come back to her. Maybe they could start over as lovers, too.

And if not, maybe she’d strangle him with the gold chain attached to that confounded locket in his dresser drawer.

Awakened by the fire bell, Cass Gregory had been content to throw up the sash and watch as a team of Belgians charged past with the new Silsby engine in tow. The hose team raced after it, half-a-dozen men pulling the two-wheeled cart bearing a giant spool of fire hose. But then Cass heard someone shout, “It’s Goldie’s!”

Tonight, the childhood lessons in fast dressing taught by the painful end of his stepfather’s buggy whip served Cass well. In no time, he was bounding down the stairs of his rooming house. Once outside, he tore off up the street, dodging the merely curious and coming to an abrupt, skidding stop when he rounded the corner and saw that it was, indeed, a fire at Goldie’s lighting up the night sky.

For a moment, it felt like someone had knocked the wind out of him and stopped time itself. The building would be a complete loss. There was no doubt of that. Cass scanned the crowd. He looked up at the flames leaping from the second story toward the back alley. Was Sadie’s room in that part of the place? He didn’t know. Hadn’t wanted to know. Ma’s was just off the kitchen. Had the fire started there?
God in heaven. Please. Not this. Not this.

The hose team went to work attaching the fire hose to the water tank. As the men began to work the pump, a stream of water fought the crackling flames. A shout went up from the crowd as a soot-streaked figure stumbled out the front door.

Cass shoved his way through the crowd, ignoring the curses spewed at him. Before he could get close enough, the girl collapsed into the arms of a fireman. He carried her to a waiting wagon and laid her—none too gently, Cass thought—in the wagon bed. Cass recognized Dr. Gilbert as the doc bent over her.
Blond hair.
It wasn’t Sadie. He turned his attention back to the burning building, his heart hammering in his chest, his fists clenched at his side.

Inhaling the acrid scent of the fire, he coughed. Again, he scanned the crowd. The curious onlookers’ faces shone red and yellow, reflecting the flames. Someone just behind him muttered that the demise of Goldie’s wasn’t exactly a terrible loss for the community. Cass nearly punched the man. In the wake of lives possibly lost in the most horrible way a person could die, he thought a little common grace might be extended. He didn’t say it, though. He just stood watching, his emotions a mixture of panic, rage, and grief.
God in heaven. Please.

He’d just raked the back of his hand across his face to scrub away tears when someone tugged on his shirtsleeve and called his name. One look and he engulfed the older woman in his arms. “Ma! Thank the Lord! I thought—” A sob swallowed the rest of what he was going to say. Without opening his eyes, he whispered Sadie’s name as a question.

“I’m here, silly.”

He opened his eyes. She stood wrapped in a flamboyant blue silk robe, her Titian red hair half pinned up, half tumbling down her back, her vibrant blue eyes as defiant as ever, a smirk uplifting one corner of her mouth.

She held the silk robe closed and nudged him with one shoulder. “You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to die in a fire? I was out before the alarm rang. In fact,” she said, “I’m the one who raised the alarm.” She looked up at the building and shuddered. “I’ve been telling Goldie to forbid smoking upstairs ever since she opened. Would she listen?” She shook her head. “She’ll regret it now.”

“If she lives to regret anything,” Cass muttered.

“Aren’t you the dramatic one?” Sadie nodded toward the saloon across the way.

“Ernie Krapp might be blackhearted, but he took us in when we ran for cover.”

Cass followed her gaze to where Goldie stood in the saloon doorway, smoking a cigarette and watching her building burn. Her stoic expression revealed nothing of what she must be feeling. He turned back to Sadie. “Everyone’s all right then? Everyone got out?”

Sadie shrugged. “I didn’t exactly wait at the front door and check names off a list.”

It wasn’t until Sadie shivered that Cass wished he’d taken time to grab his jacket on his way out the door. Suddenly, he was aware of the men in the crowd leering at Sadie, the outlines of her body all too apparent beneath the thin silk. A male voice sounded from behind them.

“S–Simone? Is that you? Oh, thank God!”

The speaker was at least an inch shorter than Sadie—Cass could not make himself think of his own sister by the name she’d taken for herself. Wiry blond curls framed the stranger’s round face. Dark eyes glimmered behind spectacles. He shrugged out of his coat and draped it across her shoulders. Then he spoke to Cass. “You must be the brother.” He thrust out his hand and introduced himself. “Ludwig Meyer.”

Cass didn’t quite know what to say to that. Sadie talked about family with her clients?

“It’s him, all right,” Sadie said, looping her arm through Meyer’s and looking up at him with a familiarity Cass found embarrassing.

But Meyer’s expression was all devotion as he smiled, first at Sadie, and then at Ma. “You must both come home with me tonight.”

Ma hesitated. She glanced across the way to the saloon. “I’m sure Goldie will have made arrangements.”

“Come with me,” Cass said.

Sadie’s voice sounded disbelief. “Unless you’ve moved, your landlady might have something to say about that.”

Just as Cass opened his mouth to retort, the back wall of the burning building fell in. The crowd gasped and moved away as one as a shower of sparks and a cloud of soot shot into the night sky.

Ludwig Meyer tightened his grasp on Sadie. “Please,
mein Schatz.
Come with me.” He fended Cass’s protest off. “I have a small house. They will be comfortable.” He patted Sadie’s hand. “Have I not been saying as much for weeks?” Then he smiled at Ma again. “Allow me to help you.”

Ma looked to Cass. “You know Sadie’s right about your landlady.” She glanced at Sadie. “If Sadie’s in agreement—”

“I’m in agreement with anything that will get us away from all these holier-than-thou sightseers.”

Cass glanced around them, not knowing whether to feel embarrassed or defensive on Sadie’s behalf about the mutterings and the leering glances.

Sadie nodded toward the saloon. “We’ll have to tell Goldie.” She led the way across the unpaved road.

Cass hesitated before offering Ma his arm and following. Then he cursed himself for being a hypocrite.
They wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t run off and left them to
—A familiar horse and buggy just crossing the street to the north caught his eye. Cass frowned. What was Mrs. Sutton doing down here? And was that the boss’s aunt? Neither woman was the kind to chase a fire out of curiosity.

“What is it?” Ma followed his gaze, but the buggy was already out of sight, headed east.

“I just saw the boss’s wife. And one of his aunts, if I’m not mistaken. Headed east, which means—” His heart sank. It meant the boss wasn’t home. The Suttons had a phone, one of only a few hundred in the entire city of twenty thousand. For Mrs. Sutton to have driven down here … The boss must have told his wife he was working late. They’d probably called to check on him when they heard the fire alarm. And if he hadn’t answered—What that probably meant sent a flash of anger through Cass as he glanced toward the office and the adjoining lumberyard just a few blocks away in the warehouse district.

What was it Jessup had said a while back? Something about seeing the boss’s horse tied up at a farm house over by Yankee Hill. When Cass said the boss was always looking to buy property, Jessup had grinned. “Sure he is. And everybody knows it takes a man several lo–o–ong visits to inspect a place and make a decision. Especially when there’s a pretty girl involved.”

“You want to keep working for Sutton Builders,” Cass had snapped, “you’d best shut your imagination and your mouth. Permanently.”

“Didn’t mean any harm,” Jessup had said, and that had been that.

Ma’s voice brought Cass back to the moment.

“Well,” she said, waving a response to the salute Goldie sent in their direction, “that’s settled.”

“This Meyer fellow—” Cass began.

“A good man, from what I can tell,” Ma said. “He was dragged into Goldie’s by a bunch of wild friends. He paid Sadie to
talk—
and then begged her not to tell his friends that’s how they spent their time. It’s been that way ever since.” She paused. “I think Sadie genuinely likes him.”

When the couple came to where Cass and Ma stood talking, Meyer offered Ma his arm. She took it with a smile at Cass. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be all right.”

“Come to supper tomorrow,” Meyer said, and mentioned an address in the tidy neighborhood called the Russian Bottoms.

Cass promised to come and stood for a few moments, watching the three make their way toward Meyer’s neighborhood. Cass didn’t know Meyer, but Sutton Builders employed plenty of Germans from that neighborhood, every one of them God-fearing and hardworking. At some point in the past they’d emigrated en masse from Germany to Russia. But they’d kept their heritage and their traditional faith alive. They were pacifists, and when the Russians began to force their sons into the army, the Germans were forced to either leave the region or betray their conscience.

Conscience.
The things conscience could demand of a man. Cass thought again of the boss. What caused a man to betray a woman as beautiful and accomplished as Juliana Sutton?
What causes another man to remain silent when he knows it’s going on?

When Cass had finally realized that Jessup’s suspicions were true, he’d told himself it wasn’t any of his business. Maybe it wasn’t, but that wasn’t why he ignored the obvious, and the real reason shamed him. Confronting the boss would almost definitely amount to firing himself. And Cass didn’t want to lose his job.

Coward. You ignore what’s going on right under your nose and let your own mother, your own sister
—He corrected himself. He wasn’t
letting
Sadie or Ma do anything. He’d begged Sadie to leave Goldie’s, but she refused. And as long as Sadie wouldn’t leave, neither would Ma. He was doing the best he could. Working, saving money, and hoping for better things. He’d even started going to church a couple of years ago, not only surprised at how well he remembered the Bible stories Ma had read to him when he was a boy but also comforted by the sermons. Pastor Taylor was a humble man who had a way of scattering hope across his congregation. And hope kept Cass coming back. Hope that God hadn’t abandoned him. Hope that someday he’d be able to make it up to Ma and Sadie for running off. For not being there when they’d needed him most.