Chapter 36
Brendan stared at her blankly, his hand slack in hers. “What’s happened…?” he repeated, and Maggie shook her head impatiently.
“What I mean is, is something wrong? You look… Is Danny all right?” She looked around for her brother, but saw him nowhere in the crowds.
Brendan withdrew his hand from hers. “Danny’s fine,” he said flatly. “He was let go from the Exposition a few weeks ago, they’re only keeping on the craftsmen now, to finish the work. He’s… he’s been doing odd jobs for Dr. Holmes.”
“Oh, I… I see,” Maggie replied, although she didn’t see, at all. Why did Brendan look so dreadful, if nothing was wrong? “Have you been ill?” she asked, and he let out a hollow laugh.
“No, not ill.” He paused before continuing, “But tell me about you. Your business is doing well? I saw the advertisements in the newspaper.”
Maggie stared at him for a long moment. There was so much to say, to explain, and she no longer had any desire to stand on her pride, as she once had, and pretend she was succeeding when she wasn’t. “My business isn’t doing well at all,” she told him. “In fact, it’s finished.”
Brendan frowned, his eyes narrowing. “What happened—?”
“It’s a long story, or perhaps just a depressingly short and familiar one.
I’ve fallen out of favor, and I’ve had to close it all up.
I’ve lost everything.” Saying the words aloud was, in its own way, strangely liberating.
“But tell me about you,” she urged. He really did look ill, even if he had said he wasn’t.
He’d lost weight, so his clothes seemed to hang off him, and his skin seemed sallow and sagging. “Brendan… you don’t look well.”
“I’m not well,” he admitted in a low voice as he rubbed his jaw, his gaze on the ground. “But that’s neither here nor there.” He looked up at her in concern. “How will you manage, without your business? Will you go back to Field’s?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Maggie admitted.
“I don’t think Field’s will hire me, in any case, and the truth is…
well, I’ve made a mess of absolutely everything.
” She let out a rueful laugh, surprised at how saying as much didn’t hurt as it once had.
The pride she’d clung to so defiantly was well and truly a thing of the past, she reflected, and perhaps that was no bad thing.
“I’ve even thought of leaving this city,” she told Brendan, “but I don’t know where I’d go. ”
Brendan suddenly grabbed her hands, surprising her.
“Maggie, I’ve made a mess of everything,” he told her, his tone turning urgent.
“More… more than you could possibly know. If I could leave Chicago this moment, I would. And Danny, too. He received a letter from your old landlady back in New York, you know. She’d forwarded a note on from your father. He isn’t in Chicago at all.”
“He isn’t?” Maggie exclaimed, shocked. “But then, where is he?”
“San Francisco. He left nearly a year ago. He’s put an address this time. Danny’s thought about going to him. So have I…” His jaw worked, the look in his eye so terribly bleak. “The truth is, I’d run away from here as fast as I could and never, never look back.”
“What…” Maggie stared at him, her heart leaping with both hope and fear.
He sounded so desperate, so despairing. And if her father had left Chicago a year ago…
then Dr. Holmes had been lying all along, about seeing him in the street.
Why? “Brendan,” she urged, “please tell me what’s happened, because it’s plain as day that something has.
Is it something with work? With Dr. Holmes… ?”
Reluctantly but resolutely, he released her hands. “I… I can’t.”
“Can’t? Why not?”
“Don’t ask me, Maggie, please.” He tried for a smile, although the expression in his eyes was anguished. “Have you seen this place? There’s some sort of statue made of chocolate, and a wheel of cheese that’s twenty-two thousand pounds! What do you say we have a look around?”
It was, Maggie thought, just about the last thing she wanted to do—to stroll around and take in any number of vapid amusements, and yet, when she saw the desperation in Brendan’s eyes, she thought perhaps it was what he needed…
an escape from whatever dreadful reality he was facing.
And she could not possibly leave him like this, without knowing what had gone so dreadfully wrong.
“All right,” she agreed after a moment. “Let’s look around.”
They strolled down the Midway Plaisance, past the Turkish Village, the Java Lunch Room, and Hagenback’s Animal Show with four trained lions trained to roar their displeasure.
“There’s everything here,” she remarked. Everything, she thought, except her hat. For some reason, this made her laugh, and Brendan looked at her in confusion and concern.
“What is it?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“I don’t even know. I just…” Her laughter lapsed on a sigh as she looked around at the fair’s many offerings. “I thought I was part of this—the energy, the innovation, the success. And I never was, not truly. I’ve made a fool of myself,” she admitted frankly. “But perhaps you already know that.”
Brendan frowned. “Why would I know that?”
“I don’t suppose you read the women’s pages?” she mused wryly. “It doesn’t matter anyway. How is life in Englewood? And Dr. Holmes?” She couldn’t shake the suspicion that he had something to do with Brendan’s obvious distress.
“He’s turned his building into the World’s Fair Hotel,” he told her with a twist of his lips. “He’s hoping to fill all the empty rooms with visitors to the Exposition, although that… that remains to be seen.” He glanced away. “But let’s not talk about all that.”
“All right,” Maggie agreed after a moment.
She wondered if Dr. Holmes was at the heart of Brendan’s distress—but why would he be?
The man had made her uneasy, it was true, but Brendan had believed him to be a harmless charmer.
Insisted upon it, even. There was so much, she reflected anxiously, that she didn’t understand.
“Is Danny here today?” she asked. “I’ve missed him.
Both of you. I know I should have visited—”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Brendan interjected, and Maggie stared at him in surprise, unable to hide her hurt at this unexpectedly brusque admission.
“Oh—”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly.
“It’s just… it’s better that you didn’t.
Danny’s here somewhere, with his friends.
I don’t know if…” For a second, it seemed as if he’d say something more, something important, but then he shook his head resolutely and reached for her hand, smiling in a way that didn’t reach his eyes, and strangely made him seem sadder than ever.
“What do you say we take in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show? ”
“All right,” Maggie replied, because once again she sensed that this was what Brendan needed, an escape from whatever reality he was facing, and in truth, she wouldn’t mind an escape, either.
They headed out to the huge wooden pavilion where the show was being performed, built just outside the park, and Brendan bought tickets before ushering her inside.
Despite the longing for an escape, Maggie’s mind whirled with all Brendan hadn’t said, so she was barely aware of the performance in front of her—a re-enactment of an attack on a Deadwood stagecoach, a stampede of buffalo, tricks performed by Pony Express riders and Mexican vaqueros, and Annie Oakley herself shooting a basketful of glass bulbs with her notorious rifle.
The whole thing was ridiculous and overblown and would have been enjoyable, but Maggie could barely take any of it in.
As she glanced at Brendan staring at the spectacle, his jaw clenched, his expression bleakly resolute, she realized afresh something was desperately wrong… and she needed to find out what it was.
Leaving the pavilion after the show, Maggie laid a hand on Brendan’s arm. “I wish you’d tell me what’s troubling you,” she said quietly.
“I’ll be all right,” he answered with another smile that didn’t remotely reach his eyes. “You have enough to worry about, Maggie. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I’ll come to Englewood,” Maggie persisted. “And see you and Danny. I’d like to see him, it’s been so long—”
“No, don’t,” Brendan said quickly. “Please don’t.”
Maggie stopped right there in the street to stare at him. “Brendan, whyever not?”
“I just…” He raked a hand through his hair, clearly agitated. “I just don’t want you to.”
“But…” She trailed off as she took in his near-agonized expression. “All right,” she said quietly. “I won’t.”
The naked relief on his face made her even more anxious. She might have agreed not to visit, but the first opportunity she had, she was going to discover what was making Brendan seem like a shadow of the man he’d been before.