The Davenports(7)

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll come back to visit my father. And for your grand opening.”

She laughed around the lump in her throat and pulled away. She tried to imagine Freeport—Chicago—without him. Already, the world around her seemed less bright. As if he knew what she was thinking, he brushed a finger against her cheek, catching a tear before it fell. He said, “Everyone has to leave home sometime.”





CHAPTER 4


    Ruby



Ruby Tremaine loved her best friend, truly she did, but nothing highlighted the change in her circumstances more than lying on Olivia’s four-poster, silk-canopied bed after a long day of shopping for items Olivia cared so little about.

Ruby’s own life had been reduced to budgets and polite smiles, as Margaret, the maid she and her mother now shared, tore up her old dresses and attempted to make them look different and daring enough to pass as new purchases. Luckily, the latest trend of narrow, shorter skirts meant there was enough fabric to work with.

Ruby had tried to ignore the signs of her father’s tightening grip on her purse strings, especially when the city’s influential lawmakers continued to appear at dinner each week, or when her family enjoyed the view from their private box at the racetrack. But then last spring, Henry Tremaine sat his wife and daughter down in the study and told them he was running for office. “We will all have to do our part,” he said.

Our part.

Our part felt more and more like their decisions and her consequences. Ruby still tried to focus on the positive outcome of when her father succeeded in his bid for mayor. She was in much better circumstances than her cousins in Georgia, who, with her father’s help, recently secured ownership of the land where her uncle was a tenant farmer. The cotton they harvested supplied the raw materials for the textiles produced at the Tremaine mill and boardinghouse. But failing crops down south coupled with the financial stress of the campaign were taking their toll.

At first it was fun. New, handsome politicians to flirt with, even if she had to suffer through endless debates about wages and the overcrowding in factories.

Less than a year later, though, Ruby wasn’t sure if her father was any closer to becoming Chicago’s first Black mayor, much as she hated that stab of doubt. She did know that a summer holiday in Paris was drifting farther and farther from reach.

Of course, Ruby had intended to confide all this to her best friend several times before today, but the words always got stuck somewhere in her chest. Every purchase Olivia ordered seared a hole in Ruby’s pride and forced her to bite back the poison bitterness rising in her. She’d disappear between the displays of the department store and admire the wares, telling herself the lack of pressure to purchase was a relief. At least it allowed her to sulk in private, which she seldom did around her friend.

Olivia entered from the drawing room she shared with Helen. “What have you heard of this Jacob Lawrence?” she asked. Her eyes glowed as she stared out her bedroom window.

Ruby shrugged. “You?”

Olivia shook her head. “He is something, isn’t he? I’d like to know more about him, but I’m afraid showing too much interest will have Mama hovering closer than ever.” She smiled. “Do you think there’s a secret catalog where parents find suitable husbands?”

“If there is, I’d like a subscription.” Ruby sighed, her chest tightening at the thought of John.

Olivia’s delicate brows wrinkled. She must have sensed Ruby’s anxiety, because she said, “We are to be true sisters soon. Once John is over the stress of impressing Daddy, I’m sure he’ll make you a grand proposal.”

Ruby reached instinctively to twirl the pendant at her neck, remembering too late it wasn’t there. She clutched the decorative pillow in her lap instead, holding on to her friend’s encouragement just as tightly. “I hope so.”

Being near John made Ruby’s throat dry and stomach twirl; she had loved him for as long as she could remember. Yet despite little flirtations and stolen kisses, and the clear encouragement of their families, John had yet to propose.

It worried her.

Like Olivia, Ruby was now of age. It was time to settle down and get married. And, with her family’s situation growing more dire, the pressure was on to find a good match, one that would secure Ruby’s wealth and position in society. John would do that, but more importantly, she had never wanted anyone but him.

Ruby looked down and realized she had unraveled the pillow’s braided fringe. She tossed it aside and her hand flew up to her neck again, where her namesake gemstone once sat in the hollow of her throat. She was suddenly filled with an urgency to see John. To remind him of why they belonged together. “Let’s head downstairs,” she suggested. “We were so late this afternoon, maybe we can make up for it by being early for dinner?”

Ruby led the way, Freeport as familiar to her as her own home, not too far from here. They descended the grand staircase and followed the voices in the hall to the living room, where the rest of the family was indeed already gathered. This space, decorated in deep reds and rich golds, was where the Davenports did most of their entertaining. The person Ruby most wanted to see stood apart from the others. John positioned himself in front of the fireplace, a glass of amber liquid cradled in his hand.

This is my chance, Ruby thought. She walked up to the fire, her skin already prickling from the sight of him. She fixed a soft smile to her face and touched his shoulder.