Chapter 26
Rain pelted the window next to her bed. Fern blinked slowly after opening her eyes, and it took a minute or two to make sense of her surroundings.
She was in a hospital room, and outside, the sky was a flat gray.
Whether it was morning or afternoon, she didn’t know.
The chair next to her bed was empty, though next to it on the white-tiled floor was a familiar, oiled leather suitcase with a brass latch and brass-plated corners. It belonged to Fern’s mother.
She shifted on the bed, the starchy sheets and blanket rustling like paper. A dull ache throbbed through her left arm; it was set in a sling across her chest, and a hard plaster of Paris cast enclosed her forearm. Her head seared with pain, and there was a constant low ringing in her ears.
A stab of nausea peeled back the fog and released a deluge of memories.
Cal, tied to a chair; Rod, holding the flame of his butane lighter to her face; Vinny, flailing as flames spread over his back and shoulders; faceless men dragging her away from a motionless Cal as fire spread through the distilling room.
Chaos and confusion, and then…a heart-stopping blast.
A low-pitched, tinny bell chimed. Voices beyond the drawn curtains enclosing her bed sounded distant and muffled. Her eardrums must have ruptured in the explosion at the Lion’s Den. Fern’s heart picked up speed as cold panic spread through her.
The curtain around her hospital bed opened, and Margie walked in. Her black skirt and white shirtwaist were paired with a long, black jacket and a strand of pearls that twisted fashionably into a knot. Her bespectacled eyes popped behind her wire frames.
“Miss Fern, you’re awake!” She nearly dropped a ceramic mug of coffee as she hurried toward the bedside. “How are you feeling?”
She set the mug down and snatched up Fern’s right hand, closing her own around it. Her palms were hot; or maybe Fern was freezing.
“Where is…” The two words drained her energy.
“They’ll be here. Mr. and Mrs. Adair are so worried. Your mother wanted me to call her as soon as you woke. She’ll come at once.”
Her mother wasn’t here? She’d sent Margie to keep vigil. She might have felt a prick of injury if she cared about anything other than Cal right then. Fern’s tongue, dry as a wad of cotton, stuck to the roof of her mouth. “I mean where’s Cal?”
Confusion flashed in Margie’s eyes as her lips parted. “Cal? You mean…Clean Calvin?”
Working for her mother, Margie had to know he’d come to Young Acres and that Fern had left with him.
“There was a fire,” Fern went on. “I saw him, but he was on the floor…” She closed her eyes, exhausted. Anxious. He’d been unconscious, still bound to the metal chair.
Margie pulled back, releasing Fern’s hand. She dragged the chair over and sat, smoothing down her skirt and then clasping her pearls, fingers fiddling with the knot.
“You remember the fire?”
“And an explosion,” she rasped.
Margie nodded, her penciled brows furrowing as she frowned.
“Miss Fern, I…well, the whole club was leveled. They found you under a few people who’d been…
killed.” Fern dragged in a breath, and her heart began to slow.
Her hearing became muffled again. “They’re saying a storage room full of gin exploded.
It ignited a gas line and…well, it brought down the houses on top of the whole club. ”
Fern had no memory after the blast that had knocked her unconscious. But if what Margie was saying was true…Cal had been in the storage room.
“Where is he?” Fern whispered. She knew before Margie even answered, her face twisted in preparation for the delivery of the news.
“The papers are writing that Red Rodney and Clean Calvin are dead.”
The tinny chiming in Fern’s ears pitched higher, and higher, and then muted entirely. Her chest caved in. No air. No sound. Margie’s lips moved, but she couldn’t hear her. No. It wasn’t true. She was wrong; the papers were wrong.
Fern closed her eyes, wanting to sink out of sight, out of the world entirely. She wanted the blackness that had consumed her right after the explosion to swallow her again, this time for good.
They’d been together only yesterday. He’d been pressed up against her in that ridiculously narrow cot, holding her, loving her. Cal was too strong, too stubborn, too alive to be dead.
Tears wet her cheeks, leaking through her sealed lashes, and Fern struggled on gasps of air.
A painful knot in her throat threatened to choke her completely.
She let it grow, let it take over. She didn’t know how long she lay there like that, but slowly, the intuitive feeling that she was alone pressed against her.
Fern opened her eyes to find Margie had left.
The sounds of hard-soled shoes on the tile floors, of murmuring voices and the occasional moan of pain, filtered through her muffled hearing.
She’d sent Cal back to the Lion’s Den. She’d been trying to protect her family.
And her mother had sent Margie to sit with her.
Fern’s hot, dry eyes slid to the suitcase.
No doubt her mother had instructed Margie to pack her something to wear.
Basic toiletries. A pair of shoes, perhaps.
She’d come into the hospital wearing a man’s suit, after all.
Fern thought she’d been doing the right thing, sacrificing her reputation by releasing the photographs.
Ensuring the fete was cancelled so Rod and his boys wouldn’t have a party to crash.
But Fern should have protected Cal. They should have gone to see Hannah Levy together, then left Chicago right away.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
By a small miracle, Margie had left her purse slung over the chair when she went to phone Fern’s mother.
Though she felt a twinge of guilt for it, Fern took the amount of cash she’d need for a streetcar ride to the Levy home from Margie’s pocketbook.
Dressing herself had been a test of patience and an endurance of pain.
Her broken arm ached from being shifted around so much as she finagled herself into a pale yellow shirtwaist, followed by a long, dove-gray rayon skirt, hosiery, and finally, a seersucker jacket that she wore over her shoulders to conceal as much of her cast and sling as possible.
There was nothing to be done about her hair, which she had to leave down under a cream-colored pillbox hat Margie had paired with the ensemble.
With her uninjured arm, she’d picked up the suitcase, held her chin high, and waltzed out of the hospital without a single attendant, doctor, or nurse inquiring as to where she thought she was going.
In my world, confidence is like air, Cal had once said to her. You either breathe it, or you end up in the ground.
Her chin wobbled as she took his advice to heart and made her way to the Levy residence. Maybe Margie had been wrong. Maybe Hannah would know something more.
But when she knocked on the front door to the brick bungalow, and Mrs. Levy answered, the pinched space between the woman’s brows sent another hollowing spike of despair through Fern.
“Oh. You were Cal’s friend,” she said, letting Fern inside.
Were.
The front hallway smelled of lemon polish, and it made Fern’s stomach churn. She blinked back more tears as Mrs. Levy spied her arm in the sling, half-hidden by the jacket.
“Have you come for treatment, dear?”
“No, I…I wondered if I could see Hannah?”
She appeared on the carpeted steps, her hand sliding down the gleaming wood banister. “Fern?” Her wide eyes took in her casted arm in the sling.
“I came from the hospital,” Fern said before Hannah could ask.
“I’ll put the kettle on.” Mrs. Levy disappeared into the kitchen at the end of the hallway.
Hannah bit her bottom lip, crossing her arms. “I read what happened. My parents, they’re…they’re pretty torn up about Cal.” She inhaled. “I am too. Are you…are you okay? Were you there?”
They were upset about Cal, not Rod. Fern didn’t have to question why.
She hadn’t given Cal’s brother a sliver of space in her head since waking up in the hospital.
He didn’t deserve it. Hannah’s mother brought a tea tray into the front sitting room, and as Fern haltingly relived the explosion, explaining as much as she could to them, Dr. Levy joined them. His eyes were solemn, his lips grim.
“Hannah said he was just here yesterday morning,” Dr. Levy said from where he stood in the entrance to the sitting room, leaning against the doorjamb. “Something about new papers?”
Hannah nodded, then smiled slightly as she met Fern’s eyes. “There are no secrets in this family,” she said. “Thankfully, my illicit skills help with the bills around here.”
Mrs. Levy rolled her eyes and shook her head but didn’t argue her daughter’s point.
“It’s why I’ve come,” Fern admitted, feeling a little guilty after having accepted their hospitality and their commiseration over the loss of Cal. She felt hollowed out, and by their glum expressions, so did they.
Hannah stood up and left the room, the carpeted steps on the staircase squeaking under her weight.
“She’s an artist in her own right,” Dr. Levy said, adding, “We were always happy to help Cal.” His mouth twisted with grief, and he ducked out of the room before he could show any more emotion.
Hannah returned with a manila envelope. Mindful of Fern’s one functioning arm, Hannah opened the string-tied flap for her and pulled out some papers.
She placed them in Fern’s lap. Two birth certificates and one marriage certificate.
Her chest swelled and then shattered when she read the small, black, typed words on the marriage certificate: George Calvin Black and Fern Belle Black, neé Turret.
The paper turned blurry, and the tip of her nose started to tingle and run. Hannah quickly passed Fern a handkerchief. “He said you two were going to go east for a while.”
She closed her eyes until the burning stopped.
Belle. Beautiful. Cal was no silver-tongued charmer, but he said what he meant, what he felt. And her maiden name of Turret…it would have made her laugh if she wasn’t in so much agony.
“We were,” Fern whispered. But Chicago had devoured him.
“And now?” Hannah sat forward on the sofa adjacent to her. “I mean, with him gone, will you go back to your family?”
That answer hadn’t changed. “No.”
Mrs. Levy stood up and collected the tea tray, then left them alone in the sitting room.
“Take them,” Hannah said after a few moments of the clock ticking loudly in the silent room.
With a shaking hand, Fern placed George Black’s birth certificate and the marriage certificate on the low table in front of her. “I’ll only need my birth certificate. Thank you.” Thinking of something, Fern looked up her. “Did Cal already pay your fee?”
Hannah’s lips formed a crooked smile. “More like overpaid.” She reached into her cardigan pocket. A neatly folded bulge of green filled her palm. “You can’t have much money on you, if any.”
The roll of cash Helen had given her had disappeared from her pocket sometime between the explosion and her waking in the hospital.
Fern had planned to go back to Helen—as painful as it would be to see her and step inside that storeroom again—and ask if she could work for her at the boardinghouse for a small wage.
Fern would save and then be on her way. She told her plan to Hannah, who shook her head.
“I can’t keep this,” she said, thrusting the money toward Fern. “Cal isn’t going to use those papers anymore, and I know how much he wanted the two of you to leave.”
“I can’t.” Fern flinched back, away from the money. “It’s too much.” There had to be at least a few hundred dollars rolled up in there.
“Fern,” Hannah said sternly. “Take the money. Cal would want you to have it.”
She could nearly see him raising a dark eyebrow at her, his expression transforming into one that said, “Shake a leg, already, princess.”
Fern accepted the money and peeled off two ten-dollar bills to give back to Hannah. “This is for my certificate.”
Fern Turret. Her new identity.
Hannah accepted one of the bills, though with an aggrieved sigh to be taking either of them. “Where will you go?” she asked as Fern opened her mother’s suitcase—empty except for a few toiletries—and put the certificate inside.
She clicked the latches shut. “I don’t know. East still, maybe.”
She could go anywhere, she supposed. Well, anywhere her limited funds could afford to take her.
“Will you write once you settle?” Hannah asked. “I want to make sure you’re all right.”
How was it possible that Hannah and the Levys felt more like family to her than the Adairs? They’d only met twice, and yet Fern felt more at home with Hannah, sitting here in this small front room, with its chintz sofa and dated wallpaper, than she ever had in her own home.
Fern nodded, grinning, her eyes puffy. “Yes. I promise, I will.”
Hannah and Mrs. Levy wouldn’t let Fern leave until after she’d had lunch with them, then Hannah tidied up her hair and gave her a change of clothes, a plain skirt and shirtwaist that she swore up and down were too small for her anyway.
It was no use being prideful—the truth was, Fern would need them.
No more Margie to select her gowns and pack her things.
No more endless department store tabs or bottomless bank accounts.
She would have to find a place to live and work and support herself.
Briefly, so briefly it only felt like a gasp of air, Fern had thought she would be doing those things with Cal. No more.
With a tearful hug and another promise to write as soon as she could, Fern left the Levys’ home. The bus station wasn’t far; she set out for it on foot, her suitcase a little bit heavier.
Her heart, too.