Jessalyn shook her head. “It’s my fault. If I didn’t keep things so messy, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Isaac looked between Thomas and Jessalyn. Could he tell he’d interrupted something, even if it had been a terse conversation? “Want me to take your girls to the bakery for you? Give you a chance to clean it up?”
“That’d be great. Thanks,” Thomas quipped before his wife could respond.
Jessalyn glared at him but didn’t offer another answer.
“See you after a bit.” The door shut behind Isaac with a soft click.
“That was unnecessary.” She plopped herself on the floor, where she piled her stack of papers in her lap before picking up more. “I was going to suggest you take the girls while I cleaned.”
“I’d rather talk to you.”
“About women’s couture? I doubt it.”
“About what’s important to you, what you’ve spent your time doing while I’ve been gone.” He jutted his chin toward where the sketch of the bridesmaids’ dress sat on her sewing machine.
She looked at the floor, completely engrossed in the papers she picked up and not seeming to mind the silence filling the air between them.
“I asked if you were making that dress for a wedding in Chicago.” He gestured to the sewing machine draped with green fabric.
“Yes.” She continued to pick up papers without so much as a glance in his direction.
“Are you making the wedding dress too?”
She frowned. “I’m supposed to, but I can’t get the design right. I just had the sketch, now where’d I put it?” She rummaged through the papers in her arm, mumbling under her breath.
Thomas stretched his sore shoulder, then leaned over and picked up several of the papers near him.
“Is this for another bridal party?” He held up a drawing of a dress with buttons sewn down the line of the bodice. “I like it, even if it’s not as fancy as the other.”
She glanced absently in his direction. “No, that’s for the factory.”
“The factory?” He picked up another paper, found another dress that he couldn’t quite call highfalutin, but that had a polished look to it, like most of the clothes his wife wore. “Is this for the factory too?”
She didn’t look his way as she stretched to collect more of her papers.
“And this?” He picked up half a dozen sketches that his wife stayed silent about before he came to a printed picture of a large machine. Definitely the type of thing that would go in a factory. “You can’t try telling me this is for a seamstress shop.”
She looked up, then waved him off once more. “That’s textile machinery. I told Gilbert I had no need of it, but he suggestedI keep a file on textile production since any changes there will affect the fabric I get.”
He picked up the paper that had been lying beneath the one with the textile machine and found himself staring at a drawing with two long rows of sewing machines inside a narrow building.
“This one is of the factory.” He spoke more to himself than her. If she refused to talk to him, then he’d let the sketches and prints tell the story.
But she snatched the paper away. “If J.D. Designs gets that large, yes. I’ll be starting with a smaller shop this summer.”
“But employing more than just yourself, and mass-producing dresses.” He hadn’t even begun to guess. And why would he? How many women with an absent husband planned to start factories?
“Gilbert says I won’t be mass-producing dresses at that point. Still, I can have my workers make numerous versions of the same dress and put them into Chicago stores, while I’m personally creating individual dresses for high-paying customers.” The words tumbled from her mouth in a rush. “I should be able to purchase a factory like the one in the sketch in five years’ time, possibly four, if things go as well as I hope. Then I can employ as many as thirty women.”
She stopped to suck in a breath of air, then swiped a strand of hair away from her face. “Gilbert knows of several who’ve had husbands injured on the docks and are in need of work. And he says we can go to shelters and see about hiring women from there too. I’ll look for women with children to care for. If I can give them jobs, then they can provide for their families and possibly even purchase a home like I’ve done here. Or start their own businesses. The possibilities are endless.”
He rubbed his head, which was starting to pound with the new information swimming inside it. “Who’s Gilbert?”
“Gilbert Sinclair.” Jessalyn tucked another strand of golden-blonde hair behind her ear and picked up another paper. “I suppose he was away at school for most of the time you lived here, but surely you remember Byron Sinclair’s second son.”
“A Sinclair has been helping you?” He sat back. “Be careful, Jessalyn, that family isn’t the type to do things out of the generosity of their hearts.”
