Into the Whirlwind (28 page)

“It all depends on if the weather holds,” Dr. Buchanan said. “Colonel Lowe wants the building finished by Thanksgiving, but certain things can’t be done when it gets below freezing. Of course, I think Colonel Lowe will be happy to become a
permanent fixture in Chicago if it means he can stay around Mollie. I’ve never seen a man so awestruck.”

His head shot up. “Has he been pestering Mollie?” Zack demanded.

Dr. Buchanan had just shoveled a huge bite of makowiec loaf into his mouth, and Zack’s blood began pounding through his system. Why had he been so blind to overlook what would happen when eighteen able-bodied men showed up on Mollie’s doorstep? He’d been letting Mollie lick her wounds in private, but what kind of idiot abandoned her when there were plenty of strapping young men there to take her mind off things?

Dr. Buchanan finished eating and wiped his mouth. “I don’t think
pester
is the right word, although not an hour goes by that he isn’t paying her compliments. Yesterday, Colonel Lowe brought her a basket of oranges, although where he got oranges at this time of year is anyone’s guess.”

Zack narrowed his eyes. “Why would Mollie be interested in some old man?”

“Colonel Lowe isn’t an old man. I’d guess he’s about your age. Thirty-four, maybe thirty-six. And he’s a handsome fellow, no doubt about that. Miss Mollie seems quite taken by him.”

The memory of a blond man sitting beside Mollie in her workshop with drafting paper before them smacked Zack in the face. He shot to his feet. “I’m going over there.”

His mother tried to talk sense into him. “Zachariasz, it is cold outside. Sleet! You will catch your death.”

He had lived through worse, and he wasn’t about to sit home eating makowiec loaf while the woman he loved was falling prey to some predator out to seduce her. As if diamond powder would impress her when Colonel Lowe was building her a whole new factory!

He yanked his coat from the rack in the hall, still wet from
his trip home. He’d put up with a lot from Mollie in the past few weeks, but this was the limit. While he was selling his soul to cut a deal for diamond powder this afternoon, she had been eating oranges with Colonel Lowe.

“Zack, that girl lives in the women’s barracks,” his father said. “They aren’t going to let you in.”

His hand paused. Mollie was going to be skittish, and he needed to handle this carefully. He removed his jacket, hanging it up silently before turning around to look at Dr. Buchanan standing in the corner of the parlor. He rejoined the group.

“Tell me everything you know,” he said. If he was going into battle with a colonel, Zack was going to launch his campaign fully prepared.

It was late in the afternoon the next day when Zack approached the brewery. Old Gunner was standing outside, shivering in the chilly air to smoke a cigar, and was happy to tell Zack that Mollie had gone down to Lake Park.

It took him thirty minutes to walk to Lake Park. It was a strange place for Mollie to go, as the park had been destroyed by the fire. What had once been a grassy shoreline was now a blackened wasteland that served as the dumpsite for rubble from the burned district. There were rows of horse-drawn wagons leading up to the lake, all overflowing with debris ready to dump into the lake. Already, two new acres had been added to the city, and it was estimated the park would gain an additional five to ten acres of land after all the rubble was dumped and covered over with top soil.

Mollie sat on one of the workbenches that lined the shore of the lake, and as Zack walked closer, he saw a hopeful expression on her face. Mollie loved this city for the same reason he did.
There was a buzz of invention and industry that never stopped. Even here, in the plot of land that epitomized the devastation of what they had endured, the signs of rebirth were everywhere. They were actually
making
new land out of this devastation. Someday this promontory would be a beautiful addition to the city.

Mollie hugged the edges of her cloak tighter around her throat as a chill wind rolled off the lake. He knew to the bottom of his soul that this was the woman he wanted walking by his side as he went through the decades of his life, but it wouldn’t happen if Colonel Lowe was invading her heart. He needed to put a stop to it. Mollie was the woman he had been gazing at like a lovesick fool for the better part of three years, and admiring her from afar was no way to win her.

At least she wasn’t wearing rags any longer. She once again looked like the woman who had visited Hartman’s . . . prim, ladylike, but with the heart and soul of an idealist throbbing beneath an exterior like a carefully wrapped package. She didn’t notice him until he was standing a few feet behind her.

“You look beautiful, Mollie.”

She whirled around, so startled she shot to her feet and held up her hands. “Zack! You scared the daylights out of me.” She adjusted her cloak and glanced nervously around. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“In a public park? Granted, it looks a little worse for wear, but it is a park, Mollie. Even jumped-up longshoremen sometimes go to a park.”

Color stained her cheeks, and she dropped her gaze. “I never should have said that. I’m sorry.” She plopped back down on the bench, the wistful expression that had lit her face just moments ago gone. Now she just looked sad and tired.

Was she really feeling that guilty over what she had said on
the street outside the bank? He moved closer and propped a booted foot on the bench so he could lean down to her. The only way to clear the air was to lay it all out. Mollie usually fled from this kind of confrontation, but he would help her see that two people could lock horns and still wake up to a new day. “I suppose I am, you know. Jumped-up.”

She swallowed a little nervously and looked even more heartsick. “I still should not have said it. Most people want to improve their station in life, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You were just better at making it happen.”

He waved his hand impatiently. “Forget about that,” he said. “You were snapping mad and had a right to be. I was glad to see you blowing off a little steam, for once in your life, instead of keeping it bottled up inside. Here. I’ve brought you something.”

He tossed the leather bag of diamond powder onto her lap. It was no bigger than an egg, but still curiously heavy, and Mollie weighed it in her hand. But she didn’t open it, she just handed it back to him.

“Zack, I don’t want anything from you.”

“I expect you will change your mind once you know what it is.” He kept his arms folded across his chest, refusing to take the sack back.

She sighed and dropped the bag into her lap, still unopened. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’ve been feeling bad about that day at the bank, and I wanted to apologize. I know you weren’t at liberty to disclose anything about the deed to me, but I was angry at the world that day, and you happened to be the easiest target.” Her brow furrowed, and it seemed for a moment as if she was about to cry. “I keep fearing I might die. I know it sounds strange, but I keep worrying that if I die, the last words you will have heard from me would be something so hateful. So
I am glad I saw you today and can tell you that I didn’t mean those things I said.”

The wind tugged at her hair, and her face was sculpted with sorrow. She seemed to have aged so much in these past few months. Holding his breath, he lowered himself to the bench beside her, relieved she made no move to flee.

“Why do you keep thinking you are going to die?” he asked softly.

“It is pathetic,” she said dismissively. “I’ll get over it.” But her gaze was troubled as she looked out at the lake, tracking the slow progress of a trawler on the horizon.

He took her hand. She was wearing new kid leather gloves, but he could feel her slim hand trembling within. “Mollie, tell me. You don’t have to carry this by yourself.”

She squeezed his hand. “I have nightmares,” she said in a shattered whisper. “I don’t remember the details, just that I am in a fire and there is no way to get out. I keep trying to find Frank, but he is somewhere in the flames and I can’t get to him.” She turned to face him, and in her eyes he could see the shadows of fear lurking. “Do you ever have that kind of dream?”

He stiffened. He wasn’t tormented by nightmares, but he understood what she was going through. “It isn’t nightmares so much as the sound of bells that gets to me.” The first time it had happened, Zack had been writing contracts to raise the foundation for the store on Columbus Street. The church on the corner had concluded a memorial service, and the pealing of bells ricocheted through the streets for over a minute. By the time it was over, a sheen of perspiration had covered his body, and he’d had a headache so bad he could hardly see straight. It must have been his imagination, but it had seemed he could smell smoke and feel pinpricks of cinders landing on his skin. The echo of those bells had hammered in his brain for over an
hour, destroying his concentration. He shook off the memory. “The ringing of church bells catches me unawares sometimes,” he said. “They set my nerves on edge.”

Mollie nodded. “I thought we had all made it through the fire, and I was just starting to feel like things were returning to normal again, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel entirely safe. Not without Frank. How can it be that one moment we are happily rebuilding our lives, and the next moment he lies beaten to death on the floor of a church? And whoever did that to him is still out there.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “Frank Spencer was a second father to me. I think about him every day, and my heart breaks to think that some . . . some ignorant brutes took his life in exchange for a little bit of gold.”

“Do you think it would help your nightmares go away if those men were caught?”

“I don’t know.” Then she tipped her head up to look at him with curiosity brimming in those clear blue eyes. “Why did the two of you fight so much?”

“We fought plenty, but I always respected him.”

“But why all the arguing? The nitpicking? It always seemed strange to me.”

It would. He smiled and turned his face to the sky. For all her practical, level-headed business sense, Mollie didn’t understand much about men. “Sometimes men just like to argue,” he said simply. “We like the competition. We sniff out the opposition, measure it up, challenge it. Frank never backed down. Even though he was blind, Frank was still a man, and when I came on the scene, I think he immediately sensed my interest in you. Long before
you
ever did.”

A flush deepened on her cheeks. It looked like she didn’t know if she wanted to fling herself into his arms or get up and bolt. It was time to start circling in.

“I like seeing you in decent clothes again,” he said. “You look like the Mollie Knox who used to scurry across the floor at Hartman’s. The only thing that would make you look more perfect would be getting rid of those braids.”

She smoothed back a strand of hair that had broken free and was blowing in the wind. “My hair gets in my face when I wear it down,” she said in a weary voice.

“When you wear your hair down, you look like a medieval princess in one of those pre-Raphaelite portraits that are all the rage in Europe.”

She withdrew her hands. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but an invisible barrier had just been erected. “Zack, I really hate wearing my hair down, all right? For a few insane, delirious weeks in October, I thought I was in love with you, and I wore my hair down to please you. But I am not one of those portraits in the museum, and I’m not the girl in the garden in the painting on your dining room wall.”

She twisted on the bench so she could face him better, taking his hand between her soft leather gloves. His chest expanded with hope blazing inside, and he opened his arms, waiting for her to move into them, but he froze when she pressed the little sack of diamond powder against his chest.

“Zack, I will be forever grateful for what you did for me the night of the fire. You were like a hero out of the storybooks.” She grabbed one of his hands and curled his fingers around the leather sack, but was unable to look him in the eyes. She couldn’t reject him, not now.

“I’m not sure why you care for me, but I don’t think we are a good match. I like a safe and orderly world, while you want to ride the whirlwind. I’m not the girl in your painting—the girl in the garden—and you can’t change me into her. I tried to be that carefree girl, wear my hair down and stroll under the
sun. It isn’t who I am. I want to go back to my orderly business charts and make my watches.”

He couldn’t believe his ears. She was rambling on about nonsense, and he needed to put a stop to it. “I don’t want to
change
you—”

She cut him off. “From the day you came to the workshop, you told me I should sell the company and go to the south of France to celebrate. That I should wear my hair down and quit being a howling mass of anxiety. Zack, I don’t want to go to the south of France. I want to turn the clock back and reconstruct my life exactly as it was before the fire. I want my workshop back. I want to make watches and know what is on the schedule for the next day, next month, next year. I need order and stability.”