Jillian tucked her chin against her neck to hide her smile. Clark would never dock Jo’s pay. But he was more frustrated than she’d ever seen him. She squelched the temptation to offer him Tisha in exchange for Joanna.
“I’d better help Patsy move things along.” Clark strode away to work the counter.
“He thinks Patsy is on the sluggish side,” Nia said.
“He just likes all evidence of the morning rush cleared up before the lunch breaks start,” Jillian said.
“It’s nine thirty.”
Jillian shrugged. She had more to think about than when people on Main Street would start dropping into the Cage for sandwiches.
Dave Rossi stood and gathered dishes to self-bus his table on the way out. “Bookstore opens at ten. Stephanos asked me to set up a new sales rack. Nice to meet you both.”
“Likewise,” Nia said.
“I’m sure I’ll see you,” Jillian said. “Motherlode Books is a favorite place.”
Dave nodded and paced away.
“Jo’s attitude about Tisha is what’s trouble,” Nia said. “Joanna doesn’t even know her—not well anyway. You and I know the Crowders just enough to recognize they can all be a little rough around the edges at times, and that still doesn’t entitle us to be judgmental about what we don’t know.”
Jillian swallowed the eggs in her mouth. “Are you talking about me right now or Joanna?”
Nia fiddled with her braid. “All of us.”
“So what do I do?”
“Go one step at a time.”
“But what’s the next step?”
“I really believe you’ll know it.”
Jillian stabbed her fork into a melon ball. “Nia, come on.”
“Joanna’s not wrong about how Tisha manipulated the whole situation when you asked her to sit with us. But why did she learn to do that so well? That’s an important question.”
“Answering it will not get the papers cleared off my dining room table in an orderly manner.”
“Maybe not today, but the answer is a piece of the puzzle that is Tisha Crowder.”
“I suppose you’re going to say that’s more important.”
“I doubt I have to.”
Jillian had parked her car on the side of the street pointed toward home. With no traffic lights and only one stop sign, the short drive home allowed little time to devise any more profound strategy than to try to recognize the next step when it came—which Jillian found thoroughly unsatisfying.
She turned into the driveway, and there was Tisha, sitting on the top porch step. Fifteen.
Jillian had lost her mother when she was fourteen. She barely remembered the daily details of being fifteen, which were adrift in the morass of grief. They’d had a lot of burned suppers while her father learned how to put a meal on the table. Jillian remembered that much, because she missed the comforting smell of the food her mother used to make. She still did. Her father had turned into a remarkable cook and enjoyed it far more than he ever imagined. But the dishes he chose to prepare never carried the same aromas of her mother’s meals. Those were gone for good, reduced to wisps wafting through Jillian’s olfactory memory at unexpected moments.
Fifteen. Defiant. Stubborn. Arrogant. Self-protective.
Fifteen. Angry. And lost.
Jillian had been fifteen and angry at what she lost when tragedy kicked her moorings out from under her.
This teenager on the steps with the pink hair and the incessant bubble gum—underneath it all, she was a lost child.
As she parked her car, Jillian waved a couple of fingers and tried out an anemic smile in recognition of what she might have become half a lifetime ago.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Denver, Colorado
Tuesday, July 18, 1893
They gaped at the orderly banded piles snug up against each other in irregular heights in a single row, Clifford from behind his desk and Georgina on the other side. Finally, he raised his eyes to hers.
“I thought it might be more,” Georgina said.
“Some of it is large bills.” Cliff picked up a stack. “It’s a mishmash. I couldn’t specify what bills I preferred. I had to take what the bank had left after all the withdrawals.”
He hadn’t made it in time before closing the day before. Even though he left the house very early this morning, he still found a line at the bank by the time he arrived well before it opened. The Union National was facing a run. They would be shuttered before the day was over, probably by midday, their cash reserves exhausted. And he would have contributed to the demise.
Yet if he had not, he would not only be unemployed and a deed-holder of three worthless silver mines, but also penniless in his own home.
“How much is it?” Georgina asked.
“It’s everything. They didn’t short me.” Clifford avoided specifying the amount. While Georgina had no reference point for what it might have been had silver prices not begun dropping as long ago as January, it also was not as robust a sum as she likely imagined. In the old days, when they counted their dimes, they both knew the precise value of their joint net worth. But in the years after he began working for Horace Tabor, and they moved into this house and invested in their own mines, that changed. Clifford earned money and Georgina assumed it would be there when she asked for some or charged accounts around town.
“What now?” It was Georgina’s turn to pick up a stack of bills and feel the heft of them.
Cliff inclined his head toward the safe in the corner. On the day Mr. Tabor announced operations at the office would cease, he’d brought it home to safeguard a few essential documents against the day they could open again. Now he did not believe that day would come for Horace Tabor. His audacious business ventures had made him famously rich—and too overextended to recover from the bankruptcy that collapsed like an iron anvil on his web of investments. With the banks failing and the repeal of the Sherman Purchase Act looming, there was no one to shore up Tabor.
“It’s a good thing you brought the safe home, then,” Georgina said, “but filling it with cash and leaving it in plain view hardly makes sense.”
“I’ll find someone to help me carry it upstairs.” Although its cast-iron construction made it heavy, the safe wasn’t large. In the grid of family bedrooms and wardrobes, Clifford could find a place for it that would not readily announce its presence.
“You did the right thing,” Georgina said.
“Did I?”
“Yes, Clifford. You had no choice. You said yourself that people were clamoring to withdraw their savings like a mob. Our money was not going to keep the Union National Bank open. We would only have lost everything. You must remember that when your conscience gets the best of you.”
He nodded.
The front door banged open, and Corah and Lity tumbled in.
“Papa.” Decorah’s eyes widened. “How rich are we?”
“Hush,” Georgina said. “Don’t be so impolite. Clifford, you’d better take care of this immediately.”
“They’re old enough to understand,” Cliff said. “After all, the whole city is suffering.”
“It’s the banks, isn’t it?” Fidelity said. “We just came from Kittie and Cecilia’s house after the shops. Their father had to go back to the newspaper office to write the story.”
“And what story is that?” Georgina asked.
“All the closings, of course,” Corah said. “He’s writing an editorial about the panic for the evening edition.”
“Surely he is overstating things,” Georgina said.
Clifford fastened his gaze on hers. What point was there in trying to water down what their daughters could see and hear for themselves? They weren’t children. They were nineteen and sixteen, and if pressed by circumstances, they could run a household. Whether together or independently, they navigated Denver with ease, and for all her aspirations for their future marriage matches, Georgina wanted them to be capable in all these ways. She was the one who made them cap
able, despite her nervous spells. There was no reason to protect them.
“I’m sure he will write wisely and truthfully,” Clifford said.
“The miners are everywhere, Papa,” Corah said. “We could hardly get into any of the shops without them looking at us.”
“What do you mean, looking at you?” Georgina barked.
“Not like that, Mama,” Lity said. “I really would like some new canvasses and a few tubes of paint, but I didn’t want to buy anything with all those men around. It didn’t feel right to put anything so frivolous on our accounts when they looked so … I don’t know … hungry.”
“You’ve got your father’s conscience,” Georgina muttered.
“What did you say, Mama?” Lity asked. “I didn’t hear.”
Clifford heard.
Georgina waved a hand. “Go. Clean up. Please don’t track street dust all through the house.”
Clifford came out from behind his desk and spun the dial on the safe. “I’ll put this away for now until I can arrange help to move the safe. I’m going to take a walk.”
“Where in the world are you going this time?”
“Please, Georgina.”
“You don’t need to be out there. Who knows what might happen?”
“I need to make a plan to take care of us, where there might still be an opportunity for business. I’ve never been much good at thinking while I sit still.”
“Be home on time for dinner.” She eyed him with suspicion. “Don’t leave me worrying that you fell into a ditch or something.” She huffed and pivoted out of the room.
Clifford missed the old Georgie.
He transferred most of the bills to the safe, folded a few dollars into his money clip, and dropped some coins into his pocket. At the last minute, he shirked off his suit coat before quietly leaving the house. Georgina would disapprove, but this was no time to draw attention to finery.
Besides, it was the middle of July and the day was warm.
The tenor in the streets was not much different than when he came home a couple of hours earlier with two bags bulging with his financial liquidity. He’d taken two of the largest saddlebags. Delivering payroll to the mountain mines he oversaw for Mr. Tabor gave him some idea of what amount of cash might take up what amount of space, depending on the bills the bank disbursed. But he also hoped that it looked like he was carrying nothing particularly important when he strapped them to his horse and trotted home. He hadn’t dared walk far with that much money. Even the streetcar made him nervous.
Now Clifford crossed a grassy area, nodding and tapping his hat at each man who had not been there yesterday or the day before. They clustered in the shade of trees or in the open sunshine, or they sprawled, solitary, on their backs in the grass.
Sweat found the groove down the center of his back. Whether it was from the heat of the day or the heat in his soul, he did not know. What did it matter?
By the time he got downtown again, passive desperation had given way to panic. Shop doors were slamming closed even though business hours were far from finished. Shades came down in the faces of customers knocking on the windows to be allowed in.
Customers without cash, no doubt.
Shopkeepers who could no longer sustain lines of credit.
Because they no longer had a bank to do business with.
It didn’t take more than thirty minutes for Clifford to verify that Union National, National Bank of Commerce, Commercial National, North Denver, the Mercantile, and Capital had all suspended transactions—in addition to yesterday’s closures. Mentally he ticked off the banks that might still be open. They were very few, and only the largest ones with national backing. At this point money would have to be coming from New York. Boston, perhaps. But why would anyone take a risk on Colorado’s collapsing economy?
Clifford rubbed the tight spot in his chest. It seemed nothing he did eased it these days.
“Mr. Brandt.”
He turned toward his name. “Wesley! I thought you might have gone home to Kansas.”
“I don’t have the train fare, Mr. Brandt. My Betsy doesn’t even know about any of this, except if she reads the papers. I can’t even send her a telegram.”
“Surely I can help you with that.” Clifford took some coins from his pocket. “Are you managing something to eat?”
Wesley shrugged. “If I get to the soup kitchen early enough.”
Clifford hesitated and asked, “How much is train fare home?”
“They say the railroads might accept six dollars.”
Cliff hadn’t tucked that many bills in his money clip. “Would you like to go home?”
“I want to work, Mr. Brandt, and earn my way. It’s been weeks now. I know it’s hard times all around, but we need to be men. To work. To make our own way.”
“I’m sorry again about what happened with the last payroll.” The image of the stacks of bills in the safe at home stung Clifford’s mind. If he had paid fifteen men a month’s wages while he himself had no wages for months and all three mines were running at a loss during that time—Georgie would have his head. Yet did not Wesley at least deserve train fare home to his sweetheart? The spot in his chest tightened even more.
“Minin’ is speculatin’,” Wesley said. “We all know that.”
“Have you been to the People’s Tabernacle?” Clifford asked. “Loren Wade has been there. I saw him just yesterday.”
“Loren?”
Cliff nodded. “I’m sure he would be glad to see you. And I had the sense he is finding his way around the city as well as any man, considering the circumstances.”
“I’ll ask around for him. Thank you, sir.”
Don’t thank me. Please don’t thank me. I have done this to you, and now I offer no true balm.
Clifford patted the young man’s arm. Perhaps if he saw him again he would have train fare. In the meantime, he suspected now that Loren and Missouri had found each other at the People’s Tabernacle, they would not lose one another again. Wesley would have a good chance of finding Loren there.
He was home in time for dinner, and Missouri arrived on his heels and scooted into the kitchen to help her mother complete preparations with sufficient competency and resolution to avoid chastisement or interrogation as to her whereabouts during the afternoon. At the table Georgina shut down any conversation about the dismal state of things outside the family home, which left little to talk about since miners, bank closures, and social charities were the main topics of the city these days. After dessert—where had Georgina come up with ingredients for a chocolate cake, and at what price?—Missouri offered to do all the dishes, and her sisters disappeared upstairs before she could change her mind. Georgina predictably declared her intention to retire early within twenty minutes, and Clifford reached for his journal and pen.
July 18, 1893. A word here and there will solve nothing. Or perhaps I need only find the right words and the right place to speak them. Yet is there hope I can soothe anything with the resources I have left? They can stretch one direction or another, but not two and not three.
And not far enough for long enough.
I cannot even soothe my own wife, my own household. My men, when they stumble upon me, no doubt think me rich, and I suppose I am, for I still have my home—for now. I doubt it is worth as much as the mortgage is in these times. When I rearranged finances the last time to improve cash flow for the mines, I should have been more specific with Georgina about what I was doing, for now she has no inkling that the new bank, which is still open, will expect a rather large payment by the end of next month. If I don’t satisfy them, they will take the house and every dollar in that safe across the room.
And then what? I may as well give it all to the People’s Tabernacle, because it is not enough to save us.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jillian closed the door behind Tisha’s departure. The three and a half hours had been the longest she’d endured since last fall, when an insurance client required her to
sit through a mind-numbing workshop to keep up to date on regulations related to rightful heirs for life insurance and estate settlement. The good news was that her breakfast and caffeine infusion at the Cage that morning tided her over well into the early afternoon despite starting work with Tisha at ten o’clock rather than nine. Further good news was that Tisha hadn’t brought a soda into the house to slurp, only looked at her phone twice during the entire time, and though silent and sullen in expression, had remained better focused than any day earlier in the week. The dining room table was well organized under offset blue divider sheets, including space for the piles previously on chairs and the floor, and they’d even made a bit of progress with labeling folders again. After all the false starts, the end of organizing was in sight.
The bad news was—well, there wasn’t much to complain about. Jillian had stayed in the room with Tisha the whole time, flicking her eyelids up often enough to monitor what the girl was doing. Whether Tisha was making an honest effort or proving some unarticulated point left over from the morning’s encounter, Jillian was unsure. Jillian had reached over a few times to gently rearrange Tisha’s efforts or point out that she’d separated piles with blue sheets without labeling them. Tisha’s eyes rolled, but she repaired the errors and didn’t throw her marker down in a huff a single time.
Before Tisha left, Jillian insisted they double-check everything together.
“You want me to stay extra?” Tisha was flabbergasted.
“It happens sometimes when you have a job,” Jillian said. “It will save me time if we check everything together. Don’t worry, it counts toward your hours.”
The proof check, as Jillian thought of it, had taken thirty minutes, but it yielded another three errors in Tisha’s work—and none in Jillian’s.
“It pays to be careful,” Jillian said.
“Nothing satisfies you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, I said it.”
“You did a lot better today, Tisha. Let’s go with that.”
What You Said to Me Page 9
