Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  Meg hoisted the bust above her head and brought it cracking down on Jasper’s.

  He collapsed, insensible, and she dropped her weapon beside him. Flames strutted across the floor, glowing orange in the vacant eyes of the poet Hiram loved.

  Sylvie looked from Jasper to Meg, her expression twisted with relief and sorrow. Then, shaking her head as though to clear it, she stuffed the gun into her pocket and said, “Let’s go.”

  The fire blocked the hall. While Sylvie pulled Jasper toward the window, Meg went to her father and helped him stand. He coughed the smoke from his lungs as she supported him.

  “This will hurt,” she told him.

  His face was flint, his mouth a seam.

  Sylvie went out the window first, waiting to help guide Stephen’s dangling legs to the stone urn below. He stumbled, Sylvie broke his fall, and Meg came tumbling out after them. Together, they took Stephen across the road.

  Before Meg and Sylvie could turn to go back for Jasper, horses thundered up the street, pulling a fire engine. It stopped in front of the house, and two firemen bounded out of it.

  “Is anyone else in the house?” one of them shouted.

  “Yes, one man!” Sylvie replied, handing Stephen to the care of a third fireman. “First room on the left, but you need to go through the window.” Her voice thinned as she pointed the way.

  “Meg!”

  She spun toward the familiar voice just as Nate swept her into his arms, holding her so close that she felt his heartbeat against hers. He buried his hands in her hair, his face in her neck, before leaning back to look at her. “You weren’t at the gallery or at home, so I knew something must be wrong. Are you hurt?”

  Overcome, she could only shake her head. Behind him, the firemen emerged, carrying Jasper like a sack of flour over their shoulders.

  Nate kissed the top of Meg’s head, then her forehead, her nose, her freckled cheeks. Then he lifted her chin and kissed her lips, so lightly she barely felt it. It was soft and undemanding, an affirmation more than anything else. You are here, you are safe, it seemed to say to her. The kiss that followed said, You are mine.

  Her response told him she agreed.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1871

  Outside the small window of the shanty, dawn warmed the sky from grey to pink, then to winter’s washed-out blue. Meg added more kindling to the stove and poured a second cup of coffee for Sylvie and for herself. Stephen slept on the mattress on the floor, his wound having been treated last night.

  Meg sat beside her sister at the table. Their calm was only surface deep, a thin shell over what lay beneath it, the way ice covered a lake. With a word, they would both fall through it to the memories gathered below.

  Curls of fragrant steam rose from her coffee, misting Meg’s face. “You couldn’t have known,” she murmured. “You were so brave. I’m so proud of you.” She still marveled that her sister had pointed a revolver at the man she loved.

  Tears rolled down Sylvie’s cheek. “I still can’t believe it. I don’t think I can ever trust my heart again, Meg. If he had asked me yesterday morning to marry him, I would have said yes.”

  Meg disguised a shudder. “But you would have waited until Father granted his blessing. You wouldn’t have eloped.” Her tone lifted at the end, turning the statement into a question she was almost afraid to ask.

  The fire’s crackling filled the room when Sylvie didn’t respond. Instead, she merely closed her eyes and drank. Her hands cupped the mug as she set it down. “What a horrible life for George Skinner. I don’t justify the murder, but everything that happened to him, the things he saw and suffered . . . I wish I didn’t feel sympathy for him, but I do.”

  Meg wrapped her arm around Sylvie’s shoulders. “So do I, in a way. But his consequences aren’t ours to decide.”

  “Do you believe a person can change?” Sylvie’s whisper was tenuous, a gossamer thread stretching between hope and dread.

  “I do. Of course I do.” Meg angled to glance at Stephen, then bent and pulled a blanket over his shoulders. “We can change for the worse and we can change for the better with God’s help. Even trying to change is an improvement. Father is a living example of this.”

  “Because we didn’t give up on him.” Sylvie rubbed the bridge of her nose. “George wanted to be a better man. He told me so. Perhaps . . .” The conviction in her voice gave way as her sentence went unfinished.

  “Sylvie, you have to let him go.” Meg gentled her voice but knew there was no gentling the sentiment. “You loved the idea of him, the idea of love. You couldn’t have loved George Skinner because you didn’t know him.”

  Sniffing, Sylvie stared into her coffee. “I loved a phantom, then. And my heart still breaks for someone I never actually had.” She drew in a sharp breath and shook her head. “I will never do that again.”

  “You’ll never love what isn’t real, you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Never love a man I cannot trust. And I don’t know how I can possibly trust a man—”

  A knock prevented her from finishing. With a flick of her wrist, Sylvie dismissed what she was about to say, though Meg could guess it easily enough. It was a conversation that needed time and space to unfurl.

  With a squeeze to Sylvie’s shoulder, Meg whispered, “To be continued.” Then she smoothed her hair before opening the door.

  “I came as soon as I could.” Dr. Gilbert stood outside the shanty with his medical bag, cheeks rosy above his mustache. “May I see the patient?”

  Gratitude washed over Meg as she closed the door behind the doctor and hung his cloak and hat. Stephen stirred at the cold air and noise, squinting toward the light. He sat up in slow, stiff movements.

  His joints creaking, Dr. Gilbert lowered himself to the floor beside the mattress. “Good morning, my good man.” He reintroduced himself, since the last time they’d met was moments before Stephen’s arrest in the church. “I hear you had an eventful night.”

  Stephen told him he had.

  “I’m here to see after your continued care, if that’s all right with you.”

  “You come here for that? I don’t have to come see you?”

  Dr. Gilbert smiled. “Though the ball missed arteries and bone, I still don’t suppose you’re in much of a condition to travel, do you?”

  A sigh heaved Stephen’s shoulders. “No, I don’t suppose I am.” He shoved his fingers through hair that had grown back more grey than brown. “You know I have soldier’s heart, I take it?”

  Meg receded to the table and held her breath. Oliver ambled out from the back bedroom, sniffed the doctor’s trouser cuffs, and hopped onto Sylvie’s lap.

  “I’m aware.” Dr. Gilbert nodded slowly. “I’m also aware of the overdoses of medicine they gave you at the asylum. Did you know, Mr. Townsend, that one of the powders they use in the whiskey tincture can cause hallucinations in some patients? Cannabis. It can be helpful for some, but not for others, and it all depends on dosage.”

  Stephen’s eyes rounded. “The medicine made me worse?”

  “It’s possible. But there are some medicines that really do help.”

  “God can help me get better without your drugs. I’ll pray harder. I’ll do better, I know I can.”

  Dr. Gilbert pinched the end of his waxed mustache. “I, too, believe God can help you. I’ve no doubt God played a role in sparing you last night, the way the ball took the least damaging path it could through your leg. But He also helped you by using a surgeon to stitch up your flesh. You didn’t pray that your skin would close over the holes on its own, did you?”

  Stephen frowned, but Meg could tell he was considering the logic.

  “If you were dying of thirst and prayed for life, wouldn’t you take a glass of water offered to you and call it the answer to prayer? I’m offering you a glass of water, Mr. Townsend. In this case, it may not fully heal you, but it very likely will improve your condition. And we’ll still know it’s an answer to pra
yer.”

  Stephen met Meg’s gaze, then Sylvie’s.

  “Please, Father,” Meg whispered. “Please try it.”

  “Water, you say?” he asked the doctor. “Because I won’t take whiskey.”

  When Dr. Gilbert nodded to Meg, she poured water into a tumbler and set it on the bench near him. He opened his bag and withdrew two vials. “I’ll add some of this one right now, to help calm your racing heart and steady your nerves. Take it daily, in the morning. At night, take this one to help you sleep. Your body needs solid sleep more than you’d imagine.” He named the dosages for each as he tapped powder into the glass. “Will you do it?”

  Stephen agreed, and drank the dose with a grimace.

  “Good. Then I’ll come check on you in a week.” Closing his leather bag, Dr. Gilbert sat on the bench. “There’s one more thing I’d prescribe for you, Mr. Townsend. Friendship with another veteran, someone who can relate to where you’ve been and how far you’ve come.”

  “Asa Jones remembers you,” Meg reminded him. “He’d love to see you again, I’m sure.”

  “Asa?” Stephen rubbed his whiskered chin. “Asa Jones. I recollect him.”

  “Go see him, Mr. Townsend, as soon as you’re comfortably able. Doctor’s orders.” Dr. Gilbert bade them all good-bye and left.

  Meg turned to Sylvie, tears in her eyes. “You were right,” she whispered. “I should have taken him to a doctor years ago. I thought with time and love he would get better on his own. I thought I could take care of him.”

  “You didn’t know Dr. Gilbert years ago,” Sylvie offered. “All you knew were doctors like Dr. Franklin. And Father isn’t cured yet.”

  But there was a glimmer of hope, real and within reach, and Meg grasped at it.

  She sank to the floor beside Stephen. “Forgive me, Father. I didn’t know how to help you. We lost so much time.”

  Stephen shook his head. “Nothing you could have said would have compelled me to see a doctor on my own. Look what it took for me to see one now.”

  “You will do as Dr. Gilbert instructs, won’t you?” Sylvie asked, hand motionless on Oliver’s back. “You’ll take these medicines and give them a fair trial? The powders and the friendship of other veterans?”

  Their father closed his eyes. The hollows around them looked bruised and sunken from his chronic lack of sleep. But when he opened them, he didn’t blink as he said, “I promise to try.”

  “Thank you.” Meg kissed his cheek, resolving not to make unreasonable demands of him. Almost as quickly, she realized her touch might not have been welcome. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did that bother you?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I’ll try to get used to it.”

  Another knock on the door drew Sylvie to answer it.

  “Special delivery.” Nate strode into the room, unshaven. Meg stood, her spirit lifting with his presence. He dropped the Tribune on the table before taking off his hat and cloak. Splashed across the front page was the headline: Local Man Frames Two for Murder He Committed.

  Sylvie looked away, then quietly refocused on her coffee.

  “Let me see that, son.” Stephen reached for it, and Nate promptly supplied the paper.

  “Does it say—did you find out—how George managed to involve the Schneiders?” Meg asked.

  “Will you never read my articles for yourself?” Nate winked and touched her back, then settled his hand in the hollow of her waist. A look passed between them that was so small, Meg doubted anyone else noticed. But to her, it was confirmation that last night had really happened. All of it. Even after the smoke had cleared, the crisis past, Nate still wanted her, and she wanted nothing more than to belong to him.

  “Actually, not every detail is in the story,” he confessed. “For instance, I didn’t name Louis and Lorenzo, or say that George’s interest in Otto Schneider began with Hiram’s stories. When you and I kept hunting for clues to the murder, he decided to deflect attention and wrote the threatening note to Hiram we found.”

  “I wondered how George hadn’t already found that himself,” Meg said.

  “Right. It turns out that he had done his own research and learned Otto Schneider was one of the prisoners released from jail the night of the fire. He figured that we needed a little nudge to look into Otto as a suspect again.”

  “It was perfect.” Meg slipped her arm around Nate’s solid waist and waited for Stephen to object. He didn’t. “George knew the police would already be looking for Otto.”

  Stephen grunted his assent. “I’ll bet he staged the break-in at Hiram’s house, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” Nate confirmed. “As soon as the police had Otto Schneider in custody, George went straight to the jail and made him a deal he couldn’t refuse. In return for his false confession, George promised to take care of his family financially. Hiram’s wealth certainly made it possible.”

  Meg glanced at her sister. “If Sylvie hadn’t found George’s photograph, he would have gotten away with everything.”

  “No,” Sylvie said, looking up for the first time. “George’s story didn’t begin to unravel until you took the photo to Mr. Brandon. What happened to the real Jasper Davenport?”

  Nate hooked his thumb into his trouser pocket. “I suspect that what his grandmother said in the letter was true. I wrote a letter to the department of the army, asking for military records of Jasper Davenport’s service and death. It will take weeks to hear back, but I expect we’ll get our confirmation. I also suspect the will is a fake. It will take a few days to verify that, but either way, assuming there is no living Jasper Davenport, the house will go to public auction.” He looked at Stephen. “I’m sorry, Mr. Townsend. If the original will had been found, I know it likely would have named you the beneficiary.”

  Meg’s father looked up. “I wouldn’t want it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be rich because my friend was murdered. I’ll take my own lot, come what may.”

  “Is that all?” Sylvie asked Nate, nodding toward the paper. “Can we set this behind us now? Please?” Her voice sounded as if it had been scraped from the bottom of a well.

  Meg moved away from Nate, closing the gap between her and her sister. “Yes,” she told her. “Absolutely, we can.”

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1871

  Sylvie couldn’t imagine feeling any more alone than she felt right now.

  Which was ironic, since she shared the Novaks’ cozy home with Meg, their father, Nate, Frank, and Edith. After the evening church service, Edith fed them all dinner, then tucked Henry and Tommy into bed before coming back to the parlor, which was crowded with a spruce tree strung with popcorn and dried cranberries.

  Everyone was paired off. Tommy and Henry in their bedroom. Frank and Edith on one sofa, Meg and Nate on the other. Sylvie and Stephen sat in armchairs that flanked a tea table. This was how it would be now, she supposed. She’d always considered Meg and Stephen a pair, but now that Meg was becoming part of Nate’s family, Sylvie had assumed the role of the caregiving daughter. She loved her father more than ever. But this was a sharp swerve from the path she’d dreamed of.

  Sipping a cup of mulled cider, Edith nestled against Frank. “Harriet so wanted to be here. She especially wanted to meet you, Meg—and you too, Sylvie—but teaching doesn’t leave much room in the budget for travel.”

  Nate stretched his arm possessively behind Meg as she asked how Harriet was getting on in Iowa.

  “I suppose there’s no word from Andrew,” Nate said in a break in their conversation. When Edith sighed, he nodded. “I figured you’d have told me if you’d heard anything. Not every story wraps up the way I want it to.”

  “Ah, but the story isn’t over yet.” Meg looked from Nate to Sylvie. “We never know what the next chapter holds. God is working and things are happening even when it’s not written on the page right in front of us.”

  Sylvie knew what Meg was trying to do. For the past week, her sister had dropped gentle yet persistent remarks in the same hopeful v
ein. “You won’t always feel the way you feel right now. Tomorrow will be better. You will find someone else, someone worthy of you.” But that last line rang a bit hollow, coming from a woman who had already found a man who cherished her.

  Sylvie made herself drink her cider, though she couldn’t taste a thing. She didn’t want this seed of bitterness to take root in her heart. It was not Meg’s fault that Jasper—George—

  Even thinking about him brought a pang to her chest. Sylvie quickly shut the door on his image in her mind. Instead, she swiveled toward her father, checking to see if he was silently tapping his leg in agitation. He wasn’t. Even so, two small nicks on his jaw betrayed that he’d cut himself shaving with an unsteady hand before church.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. His bandaged wound was healing well, but the strain of traveling here—his first time out of the shanty since last Sunday—might have taxed him more than he admitted. “Are you tired?”

  His grey eyes appraised hers, flashing in the candlelight from the Advent wreath on the table between them. “Are you?”

  She was exhausted. A few days ago she had secured two extra blankets from the ladies at the First Congregational Church and secretly taken them to the jail for George. Fickle organ, the human heart. She despised what he had done and made no excuse for murder. Yet knowing what he had suffered as a prisoner in Chicago, she couldn’t bear the thought of him being cold. She wanted to deliver the blankets herself, to see him one last time. She didn’t want their last moment together to be when she’d held a gun on him, fire lapping toward them.

  He wouldn’t see her. Sylvie had left the blankets with the guards and returned home.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said at last and prayed it would be true. Larger miracles had happened, after all. She had survived the Great Fire of Chicago. Her father was seeing a doctor.