The part that never fails to leave behind a sticky mess,Lillie would add.
Grace smiled at the memory.
“You seem to have enchanted Earnest Allred at dinner,” Oliver said slyly to Grace as they strolled down the promenade. “Perhaps we’ll make a permanent St. Louisan out of you yet.”
“Oh! Don’t tease me like that! Wouldn’t that be everything, Grace?” Lillie squealed. “We could see each other every week instead of twice a year!”
Grace shook her head, laughing. “He was merely being agentleman, Oliver, something understandably hard for you to recognize.”
She should tell them now that this week would be the end, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Instead, the image of Theodore’s stormy face flashed across her mind.
Oliver watched the Parker carriage leave with Harriet inside, so trusting of his new friend Theodore. Grace hoped that her cousin’s belief in him wasn’t misplaced. She let Lillie take her by the arm, putting her head on her shoulder.
“Doesn’t this feel like the kind of week that could change our lives forever?” Lillie said.
“Yes,” Grace said quietly. She already knew that it would. Electricity crackled through the air like a coming storm.
New futures would be forged this week in the Ivory City, and beloved childhoods put to bed.
But for now, Grace thought, they were all together, and she knew no greater joy.
CHAPTER THREE
MAY 1, 1904
Two Days Before the Murder
THE NEXT MORNING, they ventured to the Pike. It was a one-mile stretch of amusements that ran from the Plaza of St. Louis to University Way, and by nine o’clock it was already teeming with people. Grace took Lillie’s hand, and they walked beneath Lillie’s parasol past the towering German Tyrolean Alps. The restaurant situated beneath its snow-covered peaks sat twenty-five hundred guests at a time and served over eighty kinds of wine. There were bazaars with merchants shouting, advertisements for gladiators battling in Ancient Rome, a mosque from Constantinople, an Irish village featuring a reconstruction of the Blarney Castle.
They followed a family chatting in Arabic and two men arguing in French and settled on breakfast in Cairo.
The café was set in the morning shadows beneath the balconies and striped awnings of a brick street teeming with fairgoers, camels, and monkeys. Oliver ordered themful medamesand flatbreads calledaish baladi, and they drank black tea with fresh mint leaves, poured out of a teapot with a tall spout and served in clear glasses. Grace sipped her tea, taking note of the flavors so she could recount them to her father later. To her right, someone rode by on a caparisoned camel, holding an umbrella, and it was almost impossible to believe that she was in the heart of St. Louis.
“I had no idea Harriet and Theo were courting,” Frannie said to Lillie, delicately selecting a date from the china. She wore kid gloves, and her hair was pulled up in a pompadour. The brooch at her neck was so overlarge it looked almost as if it were strangling her.
Grace snuck a subtle glance at Oliver. “I think it’s brand-new,” she said warily. “Probably nothing serious.”
“Careful, you’ll start to sound jealous,” Frannie said, smiling with a little too much teeth.
Oliver squeezed Grace’s knee under the table, and she bit back a snort.
Earnest’s blond hair was curling in the morning humidity. His woolen suit probably cost more than a month of meals at her father’s restaurant, Grace thought. He caught her eye and smiled, relaxing back in his chair. “This tea is good enough to make me wonder if something’s in it. Does anyone else almost feel intoxicated?” he mused.
“Speaking of which, Grace, howisyour brother?” Frannie asked under her breath. She dabbed her napkin on her mouth, eyelashes fluttering.
Grace’s hand froze around her glass. Oliver stiffened next to her, but a brass band had begun to play on the street and no one else had heard the slight.
“Frannie, I was looking forward to seeing the lions and tigers later,” Oliver said, throwing his napkin on the table in her direction, “but thanks to you, I’ve already had my fill of cattiness today.”
Frannie made a sound, taken aback by Oliver’s brazenness, and Grace would have laughed if an image of Walt hadn’t flooded into her mind. He’d been gaunt the last time she’d seen him. She felt the way her chest had squeezed, as though she hadn’t been able to catch her breath.
When she was a young girl, Walt had made elaborate slides for her doll Sanders from the baking pans in their father’s kitchen. Once, he had constructed a luge that stretched all the way from the kitchen down to the entrance of the dining room. Sanders had shot across the floor so fast that it had nearly tripped Johnny, the dishwasher, and Walt had rushed to steady the tower of dishes just before they crashed to the floor. Grace and Walt had laughed until they were dizzy. “Walter, I think you’re destined to be an engineer,” their mother had quipped, and Grace remembered the way the sun had caught around her shining face like a halo. Now Grace’s gaze slid to the Ferris wheel in the distance, and she felt a dull surge of anger. Her brother had been meant for so much more.
“How did they make these intricate buildings so quickly?” she asked to get the image out of her mind. She practically had to shout to be heard over the clanging commotion on the street.
“It’s staff,” Earnest said, reaching out to stroke the carved quoin beside his chair. “Plaster and fiber and paste. Like papier-mâché. It will come down as easily as it went up.”
“All style,” Theo said, stroking the tie at his throat. “No substance.”
