When We Caught Fire

by Anna Godbersen

  “He is planning to leave Chicago, but I convinced him to stay one more night. He slept in the greenhouse. But you’re right, he has to go.” She paused, took in a deep breath, and searched Fiona’s eyes for approval. Fiona didn’t want to return that look but there was nowhere for her to hide. “And if I love him, I have to go, too.”

  Fiona wasn’t angry anymore. The floor beneath her feet felt unreliable, and she imagined falling through all the floors of the department store, through the basement with its gasworks, beneath the earth’s surface, down and down until she reached someplace too dark for dreams. “You can’t do that” were the only words she could summon.

  “No. Of course not. Not right away. We’ll need a plan, and money, of course. But if I can only make him stay another day . . . I think I can raise enough money for us to go to New York.”

  “But what will I—?”

  “What will you say to Father?” Emmeline nodded and frowned. She turned, took several paces away from Fiona, then came back with even greater urgency. Her eyes had brightened, and she spoke in a hurry, as though she were forming the plan and speaking it at the same time. “Here’s what. I will write Father a letter explaining everything. How you tried to stop me and I wouldn’t listen. I’ll tell him he must keep you on here. If he doesn’t, I will write the newspapers myself to tell them that I’ve run off with a lowlife boxer. He’d just hate that. But he does like you, you know. You’re the only member of the staff he truly trusts. He only ever had one objection to you, which was that he was afraid it would be obvious we were friends, and that would make us seem common. But he always says we’re lucky to have you, because you’re the only one who really understands what all these fancy people want.”

  “Oh.” Fiona’s voice had shrunk to almost nothing. Her chin quivered when she said, “He’ll find you, you know.”

  “Yes. Eventually. But by then Anders and I will be married, and he’ll have no choice but to set Anders up in business. Stop crying. I’ll miss you, too.” Emmeline wrapped her arms around Fiona’s middle and held her close. The notion of Emmeline and Anders married, after all Fiona had dared to want, was too painful to even think of, and she tried to make herself numb, tried to have no thoughts, just so she could stand the next few seconds. “But we’ll all be together again soon, and you can run our household. You can hire your brothers and sister, too. Thank you, Fiona, thank you so much. We’d never be able to elope without you.”

  Afternoon had ripened, and in the wide front rooms of the Carters’ home, the furniture was being rearranged. New pieces had been brought in and less fashionable objects removed. Another party was coming, and time was short, and every member of the household was busy with some task or another. Servants passed through the kitchen at such a rapid clip that no one stopped to question Fiona, preparing a plate of pork beans and fried eggs. When the food was ready, she carried it and a jug of water down the back steps as though this were quite normal. She found it easy to pretend. Her heart was empty, her head clear. Let them try to question her.

  Yesterday, the idea of stealing across the backyard carrying a plate of food for a fugitive would have made her sick and anxious. The notion of Anders Magnuson close by would have set off many happy sensations. But the morning had crashed down, changing what she expected from her life. She had given up almost everything. She should probably never have hoped for so much. The next weeks would be hard, but after that she would be able to take care of her family better than she could now, for Emmeline had promised to give her an even better position, and to bring on Kate and Brian, too. That prospect steadied her hands.

  The sight of Anders lying under his coat on a wooden bench, his arms folded beneath his head for a pillow, did somewhat test her resolve. He had been staring at the clouds passing over the glass ceiling, but his gaze swung to Fiona when she entered the greenhouse. His feet dropped to the floor and he rose to his full height. The promise she had made to Emmeline was still fresh, but even so Fiona had to glance away and remind herself this was all for the best. No one had ever known how she felt about Anders, anyway. There was some comfort in the thought that she’d always been such a loyal friend to Emmeline; it was one of the things that made her Fiona.

  “I thought you forgot me,” he said.

  “We wouldn’t.”

  “Course. I know that. It’s only that you were gone a long time, so I had a lot of hours to think how I had better be going. I kept thinking, ‘If I leave now, I’ll make the next train.’”

  Fiona felt him staring, and raised her eyes to meet his. If he had gone, she wondered, would it mean he didn’t want Emmeline at all? “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said after a pause, and she did not press him.

  “You must be starving.” She placed the plate and the water at the foot of the bed.

  “Thank you.” He picked up the plate, but seemed unsure what to do with it.

  “I have a message. From Emmeline.”

  “Oh?”

  Her breath surged at his indifferent reply, but she bullied that hopeful part of herself, which would only make it harder to do what had to be done. “She says that she is going to leave Chicago with you. She has a plan, but it may take a few days. She knows how to get some money, and you’ll need money to get away. In the meantime, she says to wait here. You’ll be safe—who would think to look for you on the North Side? I’ll bring you food when I can. And whatever else you need. She’ll find a way to visit soon, but it’ll be harder for her than it is for me. She’s having tea with her father now, and attending a party at her fi—at Mr. Tree’s home this evening.”

  “What about the wedding?”

  “She won’t go through with it. She says she can’t. She says . . .” Fiona’s brows crushed together, trying to say for Emmeline the thing she’d always wanted to say herself. If only she had said it last night, if only she had said it in the days when she and Anders went on long walks, just the two of them. The words came easily, sweet and thick on her tongue: “‘I love you.’”

  “Oh.” Anders sank back down to the bed, resting the plate of food on his knees. “Then why is she seeing him tonight?”

  “She says that everything must seem perfectly normal until the exact moment when you leave.”

  Anders nodded, but his face was troubled.

  “Rest. Eat. You must be half dead.”

  He lifted a forkful of beans to his mouth, and a few moments later, the plate was clean. He wiped it with the hunk of bread, and swallowed that, too. He laughed, and said, “I’m like a big beast to you, huh?”

  “No.” Fiona couldn’t quite laugh, although the corners of her mouth darted seeing how fast he ate. It pleased her, to feed him in any way. “I won’t be so long again.”

  “Thank you.”

  She took the plate from his hands. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  His eyes searched hers. He opened his mouth, but did not speak. He reached for her hand, and when she did not offer it, he took it in his anyway. “I’m scared,” he said.

  With his hand touching hers, she felt dizzy again, warm and confused, and she had to remind herself what she had promised to do. Every time she remembered she was not to have him—that he was Emmeline’s, that he always had been—she felt a sharp pain, like the twist of a knife in her side. She figured this would lessen, in time, and eventually go away entirely. Later, after the fire, she saw people who were too shocked by what had happened to know their own emotions, and she realized that she had been a little like that—a stranger to herself—on the day she promised to help Emmeline and Anders leave Chicago. “I’m scared too,” she said. “But you’re Anders Mag. They should be afraid of you.”

  “That’s all talk,” he said.

  “No.” She let go of his hand and stepped away. “It’s not.”

  A shudder seemed to pass through his body when she began to retreat, but she probably imagined it. She was probably just hoping. She had almost reached the doorway before he ca
lled, “Come back soon?”

  Fiona paused on the threshold, yearning for a final glance from him. A delivery of red roses had just arrived—Malcolm and Jeremy, who ran the stables, were carrying them up the back steps in steel buckets. The sun was low, reflected like a great blaze in all the windows of the west wall of the house. The grass in the neighbor’s yard was brown, blanketed with fallen leaves from the parched trees, some of which had been raked together like big heaps of gold. A few fluttered upward on the warm wind. She ought to have returned already, to help Emmeline dress for her evening. If Mr. Carter noticed her absence, he would guess she was up to something. Anders was waiting for her to reassure him that he was doing the right thing—she could sense him waiting for a sign—but she knew that looking at him would be too much. If she did, her resolve would fail. So she made of her heart a mean little cinder, and willed away another flood of tears.

  Nine

  Please join the Tree family

  for an evening

  that we may better introduce

  Miss Emmeline Carter

  to all our friends

  Tree Residence, Rush Street

  October 6, 1871

  By nightfall Emmeline was half crazed with stratagems and rather impressed with her own artful duplicity. She dressed with even greater care than if she really were going to a function with Chicago’s best people—in a dress of midnight blue that slipped off her pale shoulders—thinking all the while how it was Anders who would admire the abundant silken skirt, the Chantilly lace at the neckline, the narrow of her corseted waist. Earlier, over tea with Father in the second-floor parlor, she had dropped hints, eating almost nothing and complaining of faintness. Which was even almost a little bit true. She had no appetite, and had been light-headed all day. But that was on account of Anders, and what she now planned to do.

  “The pearls, or the garnets?” Fiona asked, approaching with a necklace hanging from each of her outstretched palms.

  In the course of the past two years, Emmeline had grown so accustomed to jewels that she could be fairly accused of carelessness. But this finery no longer seemed her reward for molding herself into a lady of fashion, but a crucial part of the plan she was forming in her mind. They would sell it, thus ensuring her and Anders’s safe and comfortable passage to New York. Now she knew that each piece of jewelry had a price, that each represented another week away with Anders, and she felt ashamed of the absentminded way she had sometimes taken off a bracelet or an earring, leaving them on tea trays and windowsills for the housekeepers to put away, or maybe pocket. Emmeline drew her fingers across the naked line of her clavicle and shook her head. “Neither. The dress is plenty ornamented as it is. Simplicity is best, don’t you think? And anyway, it’s not as though I’m really going out.”

  “No, of course not.” Fiona tilted her head in graceful subservience, and went to the oak armoire where the jewelry box was kept. “I only thought it would be more convincing, if you dressed as you usually do.”

  When Fiona turned back, there was a shine on her forehead and her eyes were shadowy. She’d mentioned sleeping poorly the night before, and her face looked unrested. Emmeline felt the twinge of an old irritation. When they were children, and about to do something new and adventurous, Fiona would always think of all the reasons that they ought not to, and Emmeline and Anders would have to answer her many questions, and consider the various outcomes, before they went ahead and did the thing anyway. In the end, Emmeline knew Fiona would come around, but she wished that for once her friend would not be so precise and careful about the details, and would instead relish the very romantic turn life had just taken.

  Emmeline’s gaze swung back on her own reflection, on the loose arrangement of pale hair atop her forehead, the inky blackness of her lashes. “We ought to go down now,” she said, drawing the skirt away from her feet as she rose.

  Fiona nodded, and folded Emmeline’s camel hair wrap over her forearm. At the door, Emmeline reminded herself what she must do—as soon as she saw Father, she would collapse against the wall and slide down the remaining stairs. She didn’t think she would have to do more, but just in case, Fiona was ready to suggest that, if Emmeline wasn’t feeling well, the wisest course was for her to rest up, so that she’d be in perfect health by Sunday. Once Father had gone off to the Trees’ to beg her excuses, she would slip down to see Anders. Fiona would make sure nobody saw her going to the greenhouse, and then she would leave Emmeline alone with Anders so they could . . .

  Emmeline’s eyelids got heavy, imagining finally being alone with him again, and her upper teeth sank into her bottom lip.

  This was her expression when she pulled back the door and encountered her father, hand raised and ready to knock. The elaborate plan of the previous moment evaporated from her thoughts, and her spine went stiff.

  “Oh,” she said, and closed her mouth.

  Father’s big fist hovered a moment, before he put it with his other hand, behind his back. A canny light shone in his eyes, same as in the old days, on the nights he played cards, making her wonder if he’d heard what she said about not really going out. Did he know about the secret she had hidden in the greenhouse?

  But he made no accusations. He only asked, “Are you ready, my dear?”

  “I’m not feeling well,” Emmeline replied not very convincingly.

  His put his palm on her forehead. “You don’t seem sick.”

  “I don’t think I ought to go to the party,” she said without managing to meet his eye.

  “But you have to go to the party,” he replied blithely. “The party is in your honor. Here, I have something that will make you feel better.”

  His hidden hand emerged from behind his back, and from it dangled a clutch of liquid gold strands. Before she could get a word out, he had secured the clasp behind her neck. The gleaming yellow metal fell, heavy and smooth, against her chest. She glanced down, gasping at its bright beauty, marveling at its heft. She had never touched anything like it; surely it was worth more than all her other jewelry combined.

  “It’s . . .” Her fingers rested against the strands, feeling excited and confused to have something so exquisite and rare hanging from her neck.

  “. . . hardly as precious as you, my Emmeline. But it does complete your ensemble nicely. Come, everyone will want to see you, see how beautiful you are. And the carriage is waiting.”

  “I’ll be down in a little,” Emmeline said.

  “We are already late.”

  Her eyes darted as she tried to think. “I forgot something.”

  “Fiona.” Father assumed his commanding tone. “Make sure she doesn’t dally.”

  “Yes, Mr. Carter.”

  Once Father had disappeared below the second-floor landing, Emmeline faced Fiona. Father had made her nervous, and feel she should do as he said—and the thought that the people of Chicago would see her for the last time wearing heaps of gold seemed like some reward for abstaining from Anders one more night. As she draped the wrap over her shoulders, she said, “Will you go to Anders and keep him company? Tell him I’m sorry. Make sure he isn’t lonely, and tell him he is in my heart. Can you do that?”

  Fiona nodded, gently arranging the wrap so that Father’s gift was most on view.

  Emmeline gave the necklace a guilty glance, and met Fiona’s eyes. “Don’t tell him why, but you understand I have to go now, don’t you?” She meant that Father might take the necklace away if she didn’t go to the party, and they wouldn’t have it to sell—although she wasn’t sure if Fiona believed this, or if she did herself.

  After a pause, Fiona said that she understood, and Emmeline went down through the house to the waiting carriage.

  Two footmen stood stoically at the entrance to the Tree residence, each holding a torch. The wind-licked flames illuminated a great spread of lawn, kept green even in the dry season, upon which stood several large topiaries shaped like brides and grooms. It was as though ladies and gentlemen made of bushes were taking an
evening stroll around the property. Emmeline had never seen anything of the kind, and wanted to go examine them up close, but she knew such curiosity would make her seem gauche. She felt slight amid the grandeur and solemnity of the scene, and gulped, remembering her role on this occasion.

  Emmeline leaned heavily upon her father for support as they ascended the stairs, wondering if her lie hadn’t become a little bit true. She was not, in fact, feeling her best. Her breath was weak, her belly aflutter, her bones felt light as birds’. The skin of her face was hot, but her hands and feet were cold.

  At the top they were taken in by a British butler, who announced their names in his fancy-sounding accent. A string ensemble was playing a lively waltz somewhere, and the sound of dress shoes against parquet, laughter and chitchat, resounded throughout the house. For a moment—standing beside her father in the empty marble entryway—Emmeline feared the announcement of their arrival would go unheard. That had happened often in the beginning of their social career, and for a long time she always feared that she would be announced and no one would notice. Not since her engagement had her confidence dipped in this way, but she now imagined that the butler’s blank expression masked a private judgment of the Carters. That he knew they did not truly belong.

  But then Mr. and Mrs. Hastings Tree appeared from the ballroom, arm in arm. Like Freddy, they were impressive-looking: he tall and shiny in tails; she bright-eyed and richly attired in tiered velvet.

  “My dear,” Freddy’s mother said as she placed a warm kiss on Emmeline’s cheek.

  “How lovely she is,” observed Freddy’s father. Then he gripped her father’s hand, welcoming him.

  “Ada has been eagerly anticipating your arrival,” said Freddy’s mother.

  “Mr. Carter,” said Freddy’s father, “would you join me in my library? There are some gentlemen you ought to know.”

  Emmeline found herself reluctant to release her father’s arm. “Go on, Emmeline, have fun,” he urged before following Mr. Tree up the carved oak stairs.