Young Love in Old Chicago Read online



  Young Love in Old Chicago

  Written by April Marcom

  Copyright © 2013 April Marcom

  All rights reserved worldwide.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity this story holds to outside persons or events

  are purely coincidental.

  Also by April Marcom

  The Three Stones of Bethany

  (Chapter One at the end of this book)

  Wisteria and the Pirate Werewolf

  Dawn and the Pirate Assassin

  Good vs. Evil High

  (Sample Chapter at the end of this book)

  Bind Our Loving Souls

  (Excerpt at the end of this book)

  Lord of Ice, FROZEN anthology

  From Upscale to Hay Bales

  Arabella and the Forbidden Prince

  Shattered

  Alisha All Alone

  Dedication:

  For all the Ballards, Marcoms, and Kellers that

  fill my life with joy and love!

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  I felt something nudge the arm I had resting on my old, two-person desk and looked over at Emmaline’s slate to see window shopping written in the corner. I smiled and nodded, already looking forward to walking down Chicago’s busy streets with her and seeing all the new things each shop would have on display. It was something we hadn’t done in a while.

  “Miss Emmaline and Miss Alexandra, would you please pay attention!” Mr. Web suddenly boomed from the front of our gloomy classroom, causing us both to jump. I knocked my slate off the table. The rest of the class jumped as it banged against the cold floor, and Emmaline began wiping the chalk feverishly off her slate before Mr. Web could read it.

  “Yes, sir,” I said as I leaned over to pick mine up.

  “Sorry, Mr. Web,” Emmaline added.

  Just then the bell rang, causing chairs to scrape noisily against the floor as every tenth and eleventh grader in the room stood up. Emmaline and I were two of the first ones out, since our desk was so close to the door.

  And the school’s two main doors weren’t far from our room. I reached out for one of the shiny handles when someone pushed me to the side and threw herself out the doors.

  “Sorry, Alexandra,” a familiar voice called back. I caught sight of my sister’s long, dark blond curls before she was gone.

  “Katy sure is in a hurry,” Emmaline said.

  We walked outside and took the sidewalk to the right.

  “Well, she does despise school almost as much as you do,” I answered. “She’s probably in a hurry to get to the park and see if the boy’s will let her in one of their baseball games, though.”

  I couldn’t help but admire the white blond curls that seemed to wrap themselves perfectly around Emmaline’s head. Sometimes I felt like I stuck out horribly against her, the plainer of the two. Why she chose me—shy, socially awkward Alexandra—to be her best friend when she moved to the city a year and a half ago, I’ll never know, but I’ll always be grateful. In spite of how outspoken and sure of herself she always seems, we fit together perfectly.

  Although I’d lived in Chicago my whole life, I never really fit in with anyone before she came along, well, except for Hayden. Since our parents are best friends, they practically forced us together growing up. And it’s not the same thing as having a best girl friend to do everything with.

  Speaking of which… “Alexandra,” I heard his voice calling from behind me. Emmaline and I stopped and turned around to see Hayden jogging towards us. He looked a little silly running in his pressed brown suit. “I was going to ask if I could walk you home. Are you going to Emmaline’s?” His reddish-brown eyes seemed to darken under the cloudy, gray sky.

  “No, window shopping,” I answered. “We’ll just drop our books off at Emmaline’s on the way. I would invite you, but I doubt you would enjoy it very much.”

  “Probably not. Are you sure that’s a good idea, though? It’s going to start raining any second.”

  “We’ll see what we can until it does.”

  “At least take my umbrella, won’t you?” Hayden held his long, black umbrella out to me.

  “No, thanks. I love the rain,” I said with a smile.

  He let his arm drop. “All right. See you tomorrow then.”

  Emmaline and I began walking back down the sidewalk away from him. “He likes you, you know,” she leaned closer to whisper.

  “Of course he does,” I replied. “We’ve known each other since we were born.”

  “I mean he fancies you.”

  “What?” I stopped walking to stare at her.

  “He fancies you, Alexandra. I can tell.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  We turned right and began walking down Emmaline’s street. Mrs. Marshall waved at us from her front porch, where she was busy sweeping.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” I added. “He’s too serious for me. He just feels like my brother or something.”

  Emmaline let out a sigh. “I wish he would ask to walk me home sometime.”

  “So just ask him to.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. You’ve never been afraid to tell or ask anyone anything.”

  “Yeah, well this is different.”

  I felt a splash of cold water on my hand. Then another.

  “Oh no, it’s raining. Guess we’ll have to put off shopping till tomorrow,” Emmaline said before she started to run. We were nearly to her house at the end of the street.

  “It’s only sprinkling. We can still go,” I said as I ran along beside her. The slender, two story houses lining both sides of the street moved steadily behind us.

  “Yeah, but the clouds are so dark. That sprinkle will be a storm soon. I didn’t realize how bad it looked when we were still inside.” Emmaline turned and ran to her front porch. She didn’t notice I’d stayed on the sidewalk until she reached it. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I think I’ll go home and get started on that reading for English.” If it was going to storm, I wanted to be in my own bed, right under the window. That way I could really enjoy it. “Maybe I could leave my stuff here and get it on the way to school in the morning, though.” Luckily, my English book was at home.

  “Sure. Bring them here.”

  I ran up to her house and handed her my slate and books.

  “At least let me get you an umbrella,” Emmaline said, opening the door to go inside.

  “That’s okay. I’m right around the corner.”

  Emmaline disappeared into her house and I walked on to the corner. My house was only half a block to the right. If I went left, however, a quarter of a mile would take me to Michigan Avenue and I could still peer into a few of my favorite shops before it began to pour.

  A streak of lightning lit up the sky. I looked at the clouds for a second while I considered which way to go. As thunder followed, I turned to my left and ran across the street before I took up a quick pace toward Michigan Avenue.

  Leaning my head back, I opened my mouth and let a few raindrops fall into it. Then it began to come down harder. I walked
faster.

  Just as the first little shop came into view, the clouds seemed to break open and pour thick sheets of rain over me all at once. I can’t go in there looking like this, I thought, glancing down. Anne’s Bakery was only a few yards away, but the brown hair that usually fell nearly to my shoulders and curled under was now plastered against my neck, and my clothes looked like wet rags wrapped around my body. I began to wish I’d taken Hayden’s umbrella.

  Nothing I can do about it now. I raced to the empty alleyway that ran between the bakery and a row of houses to hide under the shop’s awning until the rain let up.

  Watching the distorted world through the falling rain and having the awning protecting me from it was comforting. Even though I could feel the first cold shiver pass over me, I was enjoying the moment.

  Something dark was suddenly running toward me. I couldn’t make out what it was through the constant flow of water until it was close. A man ran right through the waterfall in front of me before noticing that someone had already taken shelter there.

  “Hello,” he said. He wasn’t a man at all. Not an old one, anyway. He looked like he couldn’t have been much older than me, nineteen or twenty maybe.

  “H, hello,” I stuttered. He was gorgeous. His stony gray eyes and the way his jaw jutted forward slightly made him look intimidating, but his smile was warm. He stood about a head taller than me.

  “That really came out of nowhere, didn’t it?” he asked me as he shook his dark, soaking wet hair out of his face.

  I only nodded, since standing beside him, and alone with him, was making me incredibly nervous. Why did he have to find me looking so terrible?

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before, but then again, I haven’t lived here for very long. I’m Mason.” He had an unusually deep voice that only made him more attractive. He reached his hand out to shake mine.

  “I’m Alexandra,” I said, reaching out to take it. I hoped my hand wasn’t shaking, because my heart was hammering and my nerves were going crazy.

  When I looked down, I realized his hand was filthy. Dark water dripped away from his fingers. That’s when I noticed his clothes. Before that, I hadn’t been able to take my eyes away from his face. His once white shirt had grease stains all over it and his sleeves were rolled up. The top few buttons were undone, so the collar hung open. Everything was dirty and wrinkled. He was more of a mess than I was, which made me feel a little better.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, jerking his hand away just before I could touch it. “You don’t want oil all over you. Just—distracted, I guess.”

  “I don’t mind.” It felt like nothing he did could have bothered me in the least.

  “I’m always covered in oil. I work for Benny at Swatches Auto Repair down the street.”

  “I know where that is,” I forced myself to say. “My father takes his car there when it has problems. But I’ve never seen you there before.”

  “Yeah. I just moved to Chicago.”

  “Right, you said that. So what brought you here?”

  He watched me thoughtfully for a minute, making me go over everything I’d just said in my head to try and figure out what I said wrong.

  “Would you like to get out of this rain?” Mason finally said.

  “Yes, but—I can’t go anywhere looking like this.” I looked down at my soggy stockings and boots.

  “Don’t worry. No one will see you.”

  I looked up at him. “Where is it?”

  “I asked you a question first,” he said with a grin.

  I knew I would probably never get the same offer from a guy like him again, but what would passersby think when they saw me entering a place alone with this handsome stranger? And what would my father think when they told him, which they undoubtedly would? Not to mention the fact that he might not actually be the nice, harmless guy he portrayed so well. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, considering we only just met.”

  “Are you sure? It’s warm…”

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t think so.”

  “Well then, maybe you’ll let me stay here and watch the rain with you.”

  “All right.” There was nothing I wanted more at that moment.

  “My father and I used to sit by the window on rainy days and he’d come up with the funniest stories about men in the clouds making it rain. Would you like to hear one?”

  “Yes.” Anything to keep him talking instead of me, because I honestly didn’t trust myself to speak.

  “So one of the cloud guys goes to take a shower, but he realizes his pipe’s leaking behind the wall. When he goes to turn the water off, he accidentally turns it up, and then everyone’s house on the street is spraying water all over the place…”

  I listened and laughed and had a grand time, completely wrapped up in his story, until the door to Anne’s Bakery slammed shut around front, causing water to gush down from the awning right beside me. The unexpected sound and the icy blast of rain suddenly spraying me startled me enough to make me lose my footing on the slippery sidewalk. I let out a scream as I fell to the side.

  Mason reached out, but caught my arm too late. “Are you all right?”

  I laid on the ground, half in the pouring rain and half under the awning, utterly humiliated. “I, I’m fine,” I said, trying not to cry over how bad my knee and my pride were hurting.

  Mason helped me stand up and looked me over. “That looks bad,” he said, his eyes stopping where it hurt. I looked down at the blood pouring over my leg. “I could take care of it—if you’ll come with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But you can’t just stand here bleeding like this.”

  “I know, but…” I bit my lip, unsure of what to do.

  “It’ll just be for a minute, I promise.”

  I looked down at my leg again, my stocking and boot turning red, and realized I didn’t have a choice. If anyone somehow saw me through their rain-washed windows, they would understand when they found out I was injured. “All right.”

  “Come on.” Mason put an arm around my waist and helped me into the rain. He raised his voice over the sound of water beating against ground. “I wish I had my coat now to keep this stuff off of you.”

  All I could think about was the solid arm surrounding me. It almost felt like a dream, too perfect to be real.

  We hurried through the alleyway until it opened up to a busy road. Then we ran across that and into another alleyway.

  “We’ll go up that ladder there,” Mason turned his head to say. He pointed to an old zigzagging ladder on the side of a building to our right. It didn’t take long to reach, even with my wounded leg. Mason patiently helped me up the stairs, freezing rain hammering painfully away at us as we went up to the right and then the left over and over again. The rusty staircase rattled dangerously under my feet.

  When we reached the top, Mason let go of me to pull a bent-up bobby pin out of his pocket and begin poking it around inside the doorknob.

  “You’re breaking in?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. It’s abandoned.”

  “Oh.” That didn’t sound good. In fact, the shadowy inside of the old building I saw when Mason pushed the door open didn’t look too good, either.

  “Maybe I should—” I tried to take a step back and flinched with the pain, nearly falling down the stairs. I grabbed a bar at the same time Mason grabbed my other arm and pulled me back up.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I—” I couldn’t tell him I was trying to leave, and it seemed I was unable to leave on my own, anyway. Besides, if he really wanted to hurt me, he could have easily thrown me into the darkness right then, but he simply held onto my arm and waited for a response. “It’s just slippery up here is all.”

  “It always gets like that when it rains. Come inside where it’s safe.”

  Reluctantly, I did what I was told. Mason put a hand on my back and gently pushed me in first. The door shut behind us—and then we we
re surrounded by darkness. If I was nervous before, it was nothing compared to what I felt now. “Um, w, where are we?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” his voice said from right in front of me. He must have moved around without making a sound.

  I heard a scratching noise and then a match lit up the darkness. Mason reached out for a candle holder on a small table and lit the five tall candles it held. “This way,” he said before he put his arm back around me and began walking us toward the back of the long hallway.

  The strange empty corridor, lined on both sides by doors, made me a little nervous. Mason smiled over at me, though, which somehow put me at ease.

  At the end of the hall, he stopped in front of a door that was bigger than the rest and reached out to open it. There was a loud creak, and then the hallway was flooded with bright light and warmth. I had to squint at first. A stairway led up on the other side of the door.

  “Just up here,” Mason said before we began to climb.

  Stupid stairs. They were not helping my leg. But soon the heat of the upstairs room made me forget this, as it lured me in. I was so wet and cold. A few steps up, I could see a glass ceiling over the room. The violent rain beat harmlessly against it and ran down over the glass. It was beautiful. At the top of the stairs a glass room surrounded us. Long wooden flower boxes lined the floor in rows, but nothing was growing in them anymore.

  “This looks like a greenhouse,” I said.

  “It was built to serve as one,” Mason answered. “The top three floors of this building haven’t been used in years.” He helped me over to a box so I could sit down on the edge of it before he went to a small sink in one corner and began washing his hands.

  I looked up through the clear glass. “This place is amazing, but are you sure it’s okay that we’re here?”

  “I’ll go get some antiseptic and bandages,” he said as he turned to leave the room. Clearly, he didn’t want to answer my question.

  As I waited, I pulled off my tattered stocking and held it against my bleeding knee. Then I listened to the soothing sounds all around me and tried not to think about the dodgy place I felt I’d been forced into.

  “Here you are,” he said when he walked back into the room. “You’d be surprised at some of the things you find in here.” He handed me a glass bottle, a roll of bandages, and some medical tape as he sat on the edge of the box across from mine. I was grateful to know he was gentleman enough not to try and dress the gash across my knee himself.

  After pouring the antiseptic over it, wiping away the dirt and blood, and washing it with antiseptic again, I wrapped the bandage around my knee several times before I taped it, hoping the now slow bleeding would stop under the thick coating.

  “Thank you.” I handed back the supplies.

  He nodded and looked up through the glass.

  What to say, what to say… “Sooo, you’re working at the repair shop? Is your father a repairman?” I asked.

  “Nope. It’s something I picked up where I used to live.”

  “Did your family move here with you?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “So you moved here alone? If you don’t mind me asking, why did you decide to come to Chicago by yourself?”

  “That’s…complicated…”

  “Complicated how?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully again, like he was hesitating, torn in how to answer my question. “Well…have you heard of Sydney Algoth?”

  “Yes.” Who hadn’t? He was one of the newest and most well-known gangsters in New York City. He was probably so well-known because not long ago he was such an upstanding citizen, a beloved and trustworthy mayor of a small town in Illinois, born and raised right here in the USA. I think his joining the mob was kind of a shock for everyone. Usually mobsters came here on boats, off the streets, or were born into it. So after Sydney, people began to take a closer look at each other.

  “He’s my old man.”

  “What?!” I sat up straight. Was I really sitting there all alone in an abandoned building with a mobster’s son? Where no one could hear me scream? “Your father’s a gangster? Does that make you one too? That’s why you came here. Loads of gangsters are coming to Chicago. Why did you—”

  “Calm down,” Mason said seriously. “I’m not part of the mob and neither is my dad.”

  “You can’t be serious. Everyone knows your father is.”

  “Just—stay here for a second, okay? I’m going to get something.” Mason stood up and walked over to the staircase before he descended out of sight.

  I’ve got to get out of here. But my knee hurt so badly; I knew it would be pointless to try and make a run for it. So I sat there trying to calm myself down. Why would he lie about not being a gangster? Men in the mob aren’t afraid of anything. He certainly wouldn’t be afraid of me. So he has no reason to lie… I was still terrified.

  A couple of minutes passed by before I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs open and Mason’s heavy footsteps coming up. I watched the stairway anxiously, almost expecting to see machine guns in both of his hands when he reached the top. But all he was holding was a crinkled old newspaper.

  “Read this first, then you can think whatever you want,” he said as he held out the paper to me. It was opened to page three and folded so that I was looking at the bottom half of the page. My eyes were instantly drawn to the picture I’d seen so many times in newspapers before, the picture of Sydney Algoth. For the first time I noticed the resemblance between him and Mason.

  Mason took his seat across from me again as I began to read.

  Mayor from Illinois Gone Missing

  Sydney Algoth, mayor of Shilling, IL, came to visit our fine city over the Thanksgiving holiday and has now been reported missing. After our own mayor received a call from the town’s secretary that Mr. Algoth had not yet returned and that they had not heard from him, police officers began to investigate. No one at the train station was said to have seen him on the day that he should have departed, and it has been confirmed that he never boarded a train to leave.

  I stopped reading and looked up at Mason. “Your father’s missing?”

  “Sort of. When that was printed, everyone in New York heard about him and saw his picture one way or another. And then sightings of him began to be reported from around the city. They were all of him with the mob, though. So of course everyone assumed he was a member, and it was released to the press eventually. But I know my dad. He’s not in the mob,” Mason said.

  I flipped the paper over and looked at the date on the top. December 8, 1931. “This paper’s a year old. Haven’t you even heard from him?” I asked. He shook his head. “What about your mother?”

  “Died five years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I looked down at the paper as I turned it back to the picture of his father. What he said made sense, but I’d heard stories at school and home about the crimes his father was involved in. Selling alcohol illegally and paying off cops to keep it quiet. There was even talk about him being involved in the murder of a young woman during a bank robbery. “I just don’t understand how this could turn into what people are saying,” I said, looking back up at Mason.

  “I don’t either, but my dad’s not a gangster.” I could see in his eyes that he meant it.

  Maybe I was still just overcome by his gorgeous face and the fact that he was talking to me. Maybe it was how the rain I loved so much was surrounding me in a way that it had never done before that did it to me, but I believed him, and the unnecessary fear I was feeling seemed to drain away.

  “Here you are.” I handed the paper back to him. I didn’t need to read anymore.

  “Do you believe me?” He seemed to hold in his breath as he watched me.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Good, just don’t tell anyone my secret, okay? That’s why I came here. Everyone in Shilling thinks I’m involved with the mob. People’ve known me my whole life and suddenly I’m not welcome in the groc
ery store or the repair station I’ve worked at for nearly four years. No one knows me here, though, except for you.”

  I was honored. “So…why did you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. But I can see something different in you. I feel like I can trust you.” His jaw moved forward as he chewed at his lip.

  It was odd to sit there, watching him smile at me. I wondered how he knew he could trust me, how I was lucky enough to be there with him when there was a whole city full of beautiful girls surrounding us. I began to wish the day would never end.

  “Where are you staying, then?” I asked. He looked a little embarrassed as his eyes drifted around the room and then to the stairs. “Here?” I asked in realization. He nodded his head and wiped the drop of rain that was falling from his hair on his shirt, smearing both his cheek and shoulder with grease. “Well, this place is beautiful. It must be nice to have so much space all to yourself for free.” I wanted him to know that I could care less about where he lived.

  “Thanks.”

  We both watched the rain for a few minutes. It still wasn’t letting up. I wondered if I should try to leave, since my leg was beginning to feel better.

  “Do you like playing cards?” he asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve got a deck right here.” He began pulling a deck of cards out of his pocket. They were surprisingly clean.

  We sat down on the floor and played different card games together as the rain continued to fall all around us. Gin rummy was his favorite, slapjack was mine.

  When the sun started to go down, I knew I needed to get home. But I didn’t want to leave. I would probably never see Mason again, unless my father needed his car fixed. And I knew I would never receive so much attention from a boy half as handsome as he was. He was so carefree and so much fun. “I guess I should go home,” I finally said when I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer.

  “Yeah.” Mason scooped up his cards and shoved the mess into his pocket. “I could walk with you. You said it’s not far from here and you’ll probably need help with that leg.”

  I stood up and practiced putting pressure on my knee. It was sore, but bearable. “I’ll be all right.” We both stood up and began walking toward the stairs. I didn’t think he really wanted to walk all the way to my house and then back. It was still sprinkling outside.

  “Then you should take a coat to keep over you. I don’t have any umbrellas or I’d give you one.”

  “How will I get it back to you?” I asked hopefully.

  “You can keep it. There’s a lot of old coats in this place.”

  “Okay.” My spirits fell.

  Mason reached the bottom of the staircase and opened the door for me. He picked up the candles he’d left sitting beside it and lit them again. Then he opened the first door in the hallway to the left. An open window lit a room full of dusty chairs and an old desk with papers all over it. Mason walked over to a closet and retrieved a giant black coat that he handed to me.

  “Are those skates?” I asked when I saw a pair hanging by their shoelaces on one of the chairs.

  “Yeah. Have you ever skated before?” Mason asked me.

  “No. It looks like a lot of fun, though. Are those yours?” They didn’t look like they were as dusty as everything else in the room.

  “They’re one of the few things I brought here with me. I would let you try them on, but they would be way too big for you. I wear a size thirteen. What are you, a six?”

  “Seven.”

  “Right…Well, here’s a coat. Try to keep dry.”

  I thanked him as we walked down the hallway. And then I was outside, turning back to take a last look at the door I knew he was right on the other side of. I would probably never be that close to him again. But I was freezing and the rain was hitting me. So I put the coat over my head and held it up with one hand, while I used the other to cling to the handrail at my side with as I struggled to get down the slick steps. I couldn’t wait to get home and call Emmaline so I could tell her what had happened after I left her house.

  At home my father wanted to know whose coat I had with me, so I told them a little about Mason, leaving out his father and the breaking and entering. After taking a good look at my leg, my mother, who’s the biggest gossip I know, wanted to know everything. So I had to keep changing the subject.

  We sat around our oversized kitchen table that night, eating spaghetti and meatballs, as my mother kept trying to pry whatever she could out of me. I just kept shifting the conversation over to Katy and the baseball game she’d played in and won with the winning home run the day before. She was happy with this. My father was always irritated with how ‘unladylike’ she was, but I could see a bit of pride for his daughter in his eyes as well.

  It was a relief when I finally got to go upstairs to bed so I could call Emmaline on our candlestick phone. It sat in the hallway, so I would have to be quick and quiet since I wasn’t supposed to be on the phone after eight. It was eight twenty. She answered on the second ring. “Emmaline, I’m glad I got you. There’s something I have to tell you,” I said as quietly as I could.

  “What is it?”

  I set the coat Mason had given me beside the phone and noticed a small strip of paper sticking out of one of the pockets. Pulling it out, I saw thank you written on it. Was it a note from Mason?

  “Alexandra, what’s wrong?” Emmaline asked.

  “Nothing.” I put the piece of paper back in the pocket, deciding it must have been there before Mason gave it to me. He couldn’t have written it and slipped it in there in the little time it took him to get the coat for me. “I called you because when I left to go home today, I decided to go downtown for just a few minutes, but I got caught in the rain. And then this guy came out of nowhere…”