“Eliza, we need to talk.”
“Not now,” she said, opening the door and stepping out into the winter night. “I’m not ready, and neither are you. We both have some deep praying to do. Today our emotions did our thinking. Maybe after we’ve had some food and some sleep and some prayer, we’ll be able to use our brains, too.”
He could only nod.
They didn’t speak again until they came to the steps of the boardinghouse.
“Eliza,” he said, clutching his hands together so they wouldn’t reach out for her, “I meant it.”
She stopped. “Meant what?”
“I meant it when I said I love you.”
And with those words, he turned and walked away.
He knew what he had to do. He had to quit trying to figure it out, trying to justify it, or even trying to make sense of it all—whatever “it” was. Instead he needed to trust in the Lord and let his heart be open to His will.
Love was like the cupboard. He had his plan, his plan didn’t work, and he found out that there was another plan that was even better than his. If it worked with cupboards, why wouldn’t it work with love?
In his tired mind, it made sense.
Ten
He loved her, did he? Could life become any more confused?
Eliza sat down at the table in her room and tried to think it through. If she was going to let herself fall in love with Silas—as if that ship hadn’t already sailed, she added wryly—she was going to have to do something about the situation with Blaine Loring.
She slammed her fist on the table so hard that Tiger woke from her catnap with a start. She reached over and reassured the kitten, which promptly fell back asleep. It wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t have to still be dealing with the leftovers from that horrid situation. She should be done with it.
She was completely blameless, after all. She’d had no idea what he’d been doing with his nefarious plan.
Or had she?
She forced herself to revisit the earlier days of their romance, when he told her about his investment business. If it was a success, he’d be rich. She would have a fine house, lovely clothes, the chance to travel around the world.
Eliza rubbed her forehead with her fingertips as if she could erase those images. She’d been so young then, so innocent, so guileless. She’d been only a pawn in his evil business, drawn in by his alluring promises.
Suddenly she sat up as she realized the truth. She had to have known, but she’d managed to lie to herself, too. She wasn’t stupid. She’d known, even then, that the money couldn’t go in that many directions. The dollars that the nannies and cooks gave her couldn’t make them and Blaine and her wealthy. Promises? No, lies.
She’d told herself she believed them because she wanted to, she had to. If she’d acknowledged the truth, that he was a crook, she would have had to commit to a life of thievery and deceit or give up Blaine Loring.
She had known, and she had continued.
Silas had seen it immediately. The day she poured out her heart to him, confessing her involvement with Blaine’s scheme, he said he had one question for her—why hadn’t she invested, too?
Was she stupid? Ignorant? Or had she purposely looked the other way? On some level, she’d known.
The realization was dreadful.
Her heart ached as she took in the consequences of the choice she’d made. So many lives had been hurt, so many dreams shattered and yet he was going to walk away, with no penalty of any kind. Why would he? she asked herself bitterly. The women had paid the price already.
She took out a sheet of paper and a pencil, and redrew the diagram Silas had made. Problem? And then, Do nothing and Do something.
She stared at what she had drawn. Do nothing. Do something. Did she really have any choice?
She slashed an X through Do nothing and penned a circle around Do something. The choice was made.
The time had come to take back her life, to rid herself of Blaine Loring’s specter forever. She would go back to St. Paul.
There was time to catch the train through Remembrance. She still had some cash with her, though it was running low, and it should be enough to get her to the city again. She’d have to pack quickly, though.
She took her bag from the bottom of the armoire and opened it, getting ready to place into it two or three of her nicer dresses. The ivory wool was probably the best to wear before the police. It was a copy of one she’d made for the wife of a wealthy retailer, and it looked elegantly respectable.
She took the jacket off the hanger and folded it carefully. She wouldn’t have time to steam it out later. As she opened the case wider to put the jacket in, she noticed a piece of paper sticking out from the bottom section of the bag.
She pulled it out, and her fingers trembled as she recognized Blaine’s handwriting. She scanned through it and recognized what it was.
It was the list of investors she’d gone to deliver that fateful night in St. Paul. She’d been so horrified at the sight of him with another woman that she ran back home without giving it to him. Then she packed so quickly that she must have mindlessly put it in the bag.
She sat down and looked at what she held in her hands. It was more than a list of investors. It was a roster of all the women who had invested in his plan, with the amount they’d given him. According to the document, a ship was due to arrive in the Great Lakes with a cargo of fine porcelain, and the women as investors were owners of the contents, which would be sold at a great profit in Duluth.
There was something terribly wrong with that list. She studied it and read through it again and again, trying to decode what the problem was.
The names and numbers swam in front of her eyes until they quit making any sense at all.
14%
19%
17%
21%
15%
8 %
13%
11%
20%
It just didn’t add up. How could that be? Just that single column—and there were more—added up to 138 percent. There couldn’t be 138 percent.
She must have added wrong. She checked her totals again. Still, the numbers added up to 138 percent. But the largest it could be was 100 percent.
There was only one delivery of porcelain that he sold portions to. All the women invested in the same shipment. It was like a bad mathematics problem but this time, she understood. It meant that—
She froze as she realized what he had done. He hadn’t just stolen the money. No, this was more elaborate than that.
Fortunately his ego had been bigger than his brain, and he wrote everything down, probably so he could look at the numbers and enjoy how he outsmarted the women. He was such a small, little man, she realized. So small.
But his beautifully formatted list told the story that the police would want to hear. If they wouldn’t listen to her, maybe they would listen to Blaine Loring himself—or at least his handwritten columns of proof.
She added together all the numbers, and found that in the end, he had promised nearly 350 percent of the profits to his investors. He promised a return that couldn’t happen. He had vastly oversold the shipment—if indeed there ever was one.
He had, with great calculation, set out to take money from those who could spare it the least, and, even worse, he kept meticulous records of all the transactions.
Eliza bolted to her feet, once again startling the cat. “Tiger,” she crowed happily, lifting the kitten to her face, “that’s it! He kept records! He did! And do you know what? I have them! I have them, Tiger! I have them!”
She pulled on her coat and carefully put the piece of paper in her pocket. She’d find a safer place for it later. Right now she had to run over and tell Silas right away.
Her feet barely skimmed the stairs as she sped down out of the boardinghouse. Vaguely she heard Mrs. Adams calling her, but she merely waved over her shoulder.
This was too important.
The lights were on in th
e Collier house, and she could see Silas and Edward inside. She pounded on the door, and when Silas opened it, she hugged him. “I’ve got it!”
From the other side of the room, Edward chuckled. “Well, if you’ve got it, share it!”
“Look!” She took the list out of her purse and waved it in front of Silas’s face. “Look! It’s Blaine’s record of his transactions! I’ve got the proof!”
“Whoa, slow down!” Silas said. “What record? Proof of what?”
There was a knock at the door, and Hyacinth joined them. She was out of breath and quite red. “I am in no shape to go running after you, Eliza, so this had better be important. You scared me to death, running out like that.”
“Oh, it’s important all right,” Eliza said. “Let’s sit and talk.”
The four of them sat at the table in the kitchen, the list in front of them. “I found this in my bag. Blaine left it in my shop, and he told me that he had an important investors meeting that evening, so I took it to his home. Unfortunately—or fortunately, I should say—I found him with another woman, and I raced home, packed my things, and left. This was in the bottom of my bag, and I didn’t see it until tonight.”
“Why did you have your bag out tonight?” Silas asked. “Were you—were you leaving?”
“For a while. I decided to go to St. Paul and at least tell what I knew. Silas, I think I did know, but I just didn’t want to admit it, and I was coming back. Do you want me to?”
Edward shook his head. “Did you just say everything backwards? That made no sense at all.”
Eliza and Silas stared at him. “She was going to give a statement in St. Paul about what she knew concerning Blaine Loring, the fellow that bilked all those young women out of their savings,” Silas said. “She now thinks she knew all along what was going on. She was planning to come back to Remembrance after her statement, and yes, I want her to come back. You didn’t follow all that?”
“You two are definitely meant for each other,” Hyacinth said. “Nobody else could understand you. But go on. Edward and I will try to stay with you.”
“Take a look at these registers,” Eliza said. “If you add up the percentages, instead of coming to 100 percent, they total almost 350 percent. Do you see what he did? You can’t sell 350 percent of anything because there isn’t 350 percent. There can’t be more than 100 percent.”
“Intriguing,” Edward said.
“I see,” Silas said. “But what I don’t understand is why he was so careless with this list at your shop. He undoubtedly considered you to be into the scheme, too.”
Eliza shook her head. “I don’t think so. Blaine must not have thought I could read. After all, most of the household help who’d invested couldn’t read. I’m sure he showed them these lists, and the numbers, and they wouldn’t have understood what they were looking at, just that they were getting back a lot of money—which of course, they were not.”
“But you could read.” Edward beamed happily at her.
“I can read and write and add and subtract and multiply and divide. And do percentages. But of course that wouldn’t have even occurred to Blaine. He was so egotistical he’d never have even considered that someone as lowly as a seamstress could, in fact, read and understand this list.”
“He sounds like quite a piece of work, this fellow does,” Edward commented.
“Oh, he was that and then some. I am well rid of him.”
Silas frowned. “It’s not going to be easy for you. You’ll probably come under a good deal of scrutiny yourself, and you may have to answer to exactly what you knew and when. Are you ready for it?”
“I have to do what I have to do.” Eliza’s stomach twisted as she considered what kinds of questions she might face in St. Paul. “I don’t know that I’m ready for it, or even if I ever would be. But it’s something I must do, and since I have this list, which is about as close to any proof as we’re ever going to get, I’d say I have the responsibility to share it with the authorities.”
“You could be arrested.” Silas’s voice cracked. “Did you think of that?”
“Of course I did. What Blaine did was horrible, and I feel guilty beyond belief for my part in it. I will do whatever I need to do to make things right.”
They were brave words, but inside Eliza was quivering at the thought that her path might end in a cell. The time had come, though, for her to stop running and to put things right, not just for her but for the women he had stolen the money from.
“When do we leave?” Silas asked.
“You’re going with me? You don’t have to. You have things to do here in Remembrance.”
“Eliza, of course I want to go with you. If you don’t want me to go, you just have to say the word.”
“Well, you have the Robbins house to work on, and Edward here, with his precious limb and all. . . .”
“My what?” Edward interjected. “What on earth are you talking about? My precious limb? Could you two go back to English, please?”
“No, Silas, you should stay here. Your uncle needs you. I can go to St. Paul by myself. I used to live there, you know.” As much as she would like his presence, she knew this was something she had to do on her own.
“I’ll go with her,” Hyacinth announced. “You two need to stay here and watch Tiger, and finish up Birdbath House so we can move in. Mrs. Adams is getting nervous. I think she’s convinced herself that we’re coming with her to move in with her precious Ella.”
“You’ll be all right, alone in the city?” Edward asked Hyacinth, grasping her hand and gazing into her eyes.
“Pudding Plum, we’ll be fine.”
“Pudding Plum?” Silas and Eliza mouthed in unison.
“We’ll try to leave tomorrow,” Eliza said. “Will you tell the Robbins family that I’ll be back soon? If you two really want to help, you could sew the buttonholes on Luke’s shirt and finish hemming Analia’s dress.”
“We’ll watch the cat,” Edward said. “I think everyone would be happiest if we left the sewing to you.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Eliza said, chuckling. “But I’d better get back to the boardinghouse and get ready for this trip.”
“I’ll walk you over there,” Silas said. “Uncle Edward, you’ll see Hyacinth home?”
“Of course,” Edward replied. “I think I can hobble over there and back. Eliza, in case I don’t see you before you leave, my prayers are with you.”
“Thanks, Edward. I know I’ll need them.”
As they walked slowly toward the boardinghouse, Eliza took a deep breath. “There, can you smell it? It’s not the January thaw this time. It’s the real thing. Spring is coming. I can already smell the rain and the trees and the grass.”
“I’m ready for winter to end,” Silas said, taking her hand. “I don’t mean just the calendar’s winter either. My own winter has gone on long enough. It’s time for me to find spring.”
“I understand exactly,” Eliza said. “I’ve been living in pain of one sort or the other for too long, and I’ve made mistakes because of it. I really need to know, Silas—can you forgive me?”
He squeezed her hand. “Being a Christian means agreeing to forgive. I’ve really had to work on that, because for me, anyway, it’s the hardest part of following Jesus. I have to forgive. The Bible demands it of me. I fought it and fought it, but no matter how hard I struggled, I came right back to it. I have to do it. It’s a gift that I get, and it’s a gift I can give.”
“I think it’s the closest we can get to grace,” she said softly. “God gives it to us freely, and we need to be able to do it, too. But it’s difficult.”
Silas stopped and faced her. “Eliza, I’ll be honest with you. Your relationship with Blaine Loring frightened me, not just about the fact that he was a criminal, but that he was able to so completely take you over. I’ve never been in a romance before.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t think I could make you love me so much that you’d forget everything for me. I don’t think I’d
want to.”
“God gave me a brain,” she said. “I forgot to use it when I was with Blaine. I was young and I was foolish and I was so very needy. I was the perfect target for him. I don’t want to be a target again.”
“What do you want from the man who loves you?”
“I want him to tell me he loves me. I want him to hold me in his arms. I want him to respect me and love me and trust me and care for me.”
His eyes softened in the moonlight that filtered through the trees, and as they stood together, arms around each other, Eliza knew she was home.
❧
“This has been quite an exciting time,” Uncle Edward said as the train pulled away, bearing Eliza and Hyacinth on their way to St. Paul. “Eliza certainly is brave, going to the capital to give her statement. It would have been so much easier for her if she’d just let the whole thing go, but that’s not our Eliza’s way, is it?”
“I’m so very proud of her. I wish I were going there with her.” He touched his mouth, where just minutes earlier Eliza had placed a going-away kiss. “I want her back here with me, safe and sound.”
They began to walk back to their house. One of the things that Silas loved about this part of the state was that spring bounded in and pushed winter out. That was what was happening. Oh, there would still be skirmishes—there was almost always a spring blizzard or two—but for the moment, the sun was out, the air was warming, and even the birds sounded more chipper than usual.
It would have been a good day to take a walk with his Eliza.
“How do you think she’s coping with all of this?” his uncle asked. His limp was almost gone, and he could now walk without expending most of his energy. Today he wasn’t even using a cane.
“She was used so badly by this scoundrel, and I know she’s having a hard time forgiving herself for her part in the plot. She’s run through an entire laundry list of ifs. What if she hadn’t been so eager to move up in the world? What if she hadn’t taken so readily to his proposal that she solicit these young women for their money?” Silas stopped, but only for a moment. There was more. “What if she hadn’t found him with that other woman? Might she have stayed with him, blinded by what she thought was love, until she was entwined in his corruption?”
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