The idea of working in a library had drawn her back to Chicago as much as Cal had. Shewantedthe job Cal had said he could get her.
Pulse thudding in her ears, Fern dialed the operator and asked to be connected to the Central Library.
“Central Library, can I help you?” a woman answered.
“Yes, I’m calling to inquire if there are any open positions at your branch?”
Pause. “Did you see an ad in the newspaper?”
“No, but I…” Fern took a breath, uncertain what more to say.
“Well, if there isn’t an ad…”
“I have experience with book cataloguing.” She bit her lip, thinking back to thelibraryat Young Acres. It didn’t really count as work experience, but she was desperate.
“Do you?” the woman said. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to schedule you in for an interview. Let’s see, could you come in to meet the head librarian at noon tomorrow? He has a lunch at twelve thirty.”
Fern stared at the wood grain of the shelf, stunned. “That sounds perfect.”
The woman asked for her name and then hung up. Fern’s arm shook as she disengaged the line. An interview! Her stomach rolled when she realized both this woman and the head librarian would be taken aback by her face. They might recognize her name from the police bulletin about her abduction. She might not get theposition just because of those things. But she certainly wouldn’t get it if she didn’t show up.
Fern practically skipped back to Helen’s, hoping Cal would be there so she could tell him. But the house was still empty, the boarders working uptown at their jobs.
“He hasn’t been by,” Helen told her. “But you look like you’ve had a bit of good news.”
She set her handbag on the table and collapsed into a chair. “I’ve got an interview tomorrow.”
Helen took out two small cordial glasses and then a small bottle of liquor from way back on a cupboard shelf. “In celebration,” she said, pouring them each a dainty sip’s worth. The clear liquid could have been anything. “Don’t worry, it’s not rotgut. This is the good stuff,” she remarked with a smile.
The gin tasted smooth and crisp, and though it burned as it slid down her throat, Fern laughed. It had been so long since she’d felt the urge to do that.
Helen tucked the bottle away again and started preparing supper. Fern helped however she could, which wasn’t much, but the hours slipped down the clock and then up again, supper coming and going, and Cal still hadn’t arrived.
The previous night, after a rush of Helen’s boarders had popped into the bathroom and then headed off to their rooms, Fern locked herself in and drew a bath. After two days traveling in a car and running through cornfields in the middle of the night, it had felt glorious to sink into hot water and lather up with her bar of milled soap. She’d washed her hair and set it in rollers too. This evening, she only took a quick bath, but while Fernsoaked in the small tub, she thought of Cal and worried about him. Why hadn’t he come? What if he’d been arrested? Or worse.
She closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of the jasmine soap, and tried to silence her thoughts. Still, Helen saw the worry etched between her brows when she emerged from the bathroom.
“If only the more you thought about a man, the faster he’d show up. But my nephew’s good for his word,” Helen assured her as she made them each a cup of tea before turning in for the night. “Never has been one to concern himself with a woman before, though.” She peered at Fern over the cup’s silver-painted rim. “Not like the way I saw him with you last night. You two have an understanding?”
An understanding could mean anything, but Fern thought she knew what Helen was asking. If only she had an answer.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “There are…certain obstacles.”
“Rod,” Helen guessed immediately. At Fern’s nod, she sighed. “Cal’s tried so hard with that boy. We both have. Nothing to be done about him at this point, though. Damage is already done, as they say.”
Fern held her cup, the porcelain warming her hands. Helen seemed open to talking about her nephews for the moment, so Fern asked what she wanted to know. “Why are they so different?”
Helen pursed her lips. “Well, I have my thoughts on that, but it’s a story for Cal to tell you, if he’s so inclined.Though he isn’t usually. I think he’d like to forget it entirely.”
Fern masked her frown by taking a sip of tea. Something must have happened between him and Rod, something personal enough for Helen to feel it wasn’t her place to share it with her.
Helen said goodnight and shuffled off to her room, which was a proper bedroom, next to the front sitting room. Fern finished her tea and then turned out the kitchen light before closing herself in her storage closet-turned-guest room. The cot had a metal-framed, trifold design, with a thin mattress supported by wire springs atop it; it looked to be army issue, and only the floral-patterned sheets and colorful quilt made it remotely welcoming. She stared at the tin ceiling, a streetlight somewhere filtering in through a small window above the top shelf, which held rows of canned vegetables. It was no use pretending she wasn’t disappointed that Cal hadn’t come. He’d left her with a blinding kiss the night before, but it was possible he’d returned to the Lion’s Den, Rod, and his life in Lincoln Park, and she’d faded in his mind.
If it were her parents or Buchanan, or any of the other limited people she’d had the chance to meet in her lifetime, Fern would have more easily believed that she could be so quickly forgotten. How relieved her family had been when she’d finally gone away to Young Acres. And speaking to her mother today on the telephone, her concern over Fern’s disappearance hadn’t been for her daughter, but for how it would affect the judge’s reputation. Hearing that had been the final stonefalling through her, landing on top of the pile that had been forming in the pit of her stomach for so long.
Her family didn’t want her back. And now that Fern had been out of her turret, she didn’t want to go back. From this point on, she’d be moving forward, as frightening and uncertain as the future might be.
Her mind raced, and sleep wouldn’t come. The sounds of the house settling—shuffling feet upstairs, a creaking board, the low murmur of male voices—seemed amplified in the quiet darkness. A light rapping on glass took her mind a moment to comprehend that it was coming from the kitchen.
