Chapter 9 - The Anatomy of a Winter
The winter of that year was the coldest Chicago had recorded since the blizzard of 1979.
By January, the lake had frozen six miles out from the shoreline, forming massive, jagged ridges of blue-white pressure ice that groaned against the concrete revetments of the boulevard like dying whales. The city had gone quiet, huddled beneath four feet of dry, powdery snow that the wind whipped into eight-foot drifts across the freight yards.
In the carriage house behind the mansion on Prairie Avenue, the second-floor loft had been cleared of its old hay-baling machinery.
Three large skylights, angled toward the north, had been installed during the first two weeks of December by four Italian carpenters who spoke no English and took their orders directly from Rosa. The floor had been scraped down to the yellow pine, oiled with linseed, and covered in two thick wool runners that kept the cold from rising through the ceiling of the stables below.
In the center of the room stood an etching press.
It was an antique—an 1890 Charles Brand with a forty-inch steel bed and a star-wheel that weighed three hundred pounds, cast from iron that had come out of the foundries in Pittsburgh before the turn of the century.
Emily Carter stood by the inking table, wearing a dark blue denim apron over a heavy wool sweater, her sleeves rolled to the elbows.
Her wrists were bare.
The purple hematoma had faded two months ago, leaving only a faint, thin line of paler skin where Derek’s thumbnail had cut through the dermis—a mark no more noticeable than a white thread against cream linen.
On the zinc plate before her was an etching she had spent three weeks working with a steel needle: the outline of the city seen from the south, not from the top of the towers where Derek’s partners had their dining clubs, but from the level of the river—the water dark and thick with ice, the bridge trusses rising like the rib cages of great prehistoric beasts against a sky the color of zinc.
A heavy, measured step sounded on the wooden stairs.
Alexander didn't knock; he paused on the top landing, carrying an armload of dry birch logs for the cast-iron stove that heated the corner of the studio.
He wore a dark blue wool henley, his sleeves pushed up, the ink on his arms dark against his pale skin. He dropped the wood into the iron cradle beside the hearth with a loud, clattering thud, dusted his hands against his trousers, and walked over to the table.
He didn't lean over her work. He stood two paces back, his hands tucked into his pockets, looking at the plate.
"The bridge at 18th Street," he said.
"Yes," Emily said, not looking up from her roller. "They’re replacing the gears this spring. The city council voted the funds last week."
"The city council voted the funds because the union told them the old teeth were slipping," Alexander murmured, a faint trace of that crooked, private smile touching the corner of his mouth. "Three of the teeth were missing since November."
Emily looked up at him through her loose hair.
"Did you take them?"
"Gianni has them in his garage," Alexander said simply. "They make very good doorstops."
She laughed—a clear, musical sound that had no hesitation in it, no backward glance toward a door, no sudden checking of her posture. The sound seemed to bounce off the high pine rafters of the loft, clean and bright like the winter light coming through the glass above them.
Alexander watched her.
His expression had changed over the three months; the hard, predatory vigilance had not left his eyes—it would never leave him, not in this city, not with the name he carried—but when he was in the loft, the line of his shoulders dropped two inches. He looked less like an executioner and more like a master builder who had finally found a wall that didn't require an armed guard to keep it standing.
"Arthur Vance resigned from the hospital board yesterday," Alexander said, his voice dropping into that quiet, conversational baritone that had become the background music of her evenings.
Emily set the roller down on the marble slab.
"Did he?"
"His doctor found something in his liver," Alexander said. "He’s going to Arizona for the sun. Derek is moving to the New York office. Commercial real estate in White Plains. He bought a house with an acre of lawn and an eight-foot hedge."
Emily looked down at the zinc plate.
Three months ago, the mention of Derek’s name would have brought the taste of copper into her mouth; it would have made her left hand fly unconsciously to her wrist to protect the bone.
Now, it felt like reading an old shipping manifest from a port she had never visited.
"White Plains is very quiet," she said.
"Very quiet," Alexander agreed. "No lakes. No bridges. Nothing but grass and commuters who take the train at seven in the morning."
He stepped closer to the table.
His boots made no sound on the pine boards. He stopped six inches from her side, his arm brushing against the sleeve of her sweater.
He reached out and picked up a scrap of proofing paper from the corner of the blotter. On it was a small print she had pulled yesterday afternoon—not of the city, not of the bridges, but of the Triton in the courtyard, its broken stone horn covered in three inches of clean, untracked snow, with a single black sparrow perched upon the rim of the basin.
"This one is mine," Alexander said.
It was not a question.
Emily looked up into his face—at the small, white scar on his second knuckle, at the clear, swamp-water light of his eyes, at the mouth that had said she decides to three armed men in a locked room.
"It’s fifty dollars, Mr. Moretti," she said, her voice dropping into a teasing, rhythmic register that made his eyebrows lift half an inch.
"Fifty dollars?" he asked. "The frame is five dollars at the hardware store on 22nd Street."
"The paper is French," she told him, her fingers lightly touching the edge of the sheet in his hand. "And the artist has a very high opinion of her work."
May you like
Alexander looked down at the small print, then slowly, with that massive, patient deliberation that had outlasted three families and sixty years of city hall politics, he folded the scrap of paper twice, slid it into the breast pocket of his henley directly over his heart, and looked down into her eyes.
"Put it on my tab, Mrs. Carter," he said softly.
