Chapter 1 - The Ash and the Star
The kettle on the single-coil burner let out a low, shuddering hiss before Hollis could silence it. In the cramped kitchen alcove, the air smelled of boiled chicory, damp wool, and the menthol salve Mrs. Marguerite had rubbed into Wynn’s chest hours earlier.
Wynn remained sitting on the edge of the cot, her fingers wound tightly into the fleece of Posy’s star blanket. Her knuckles were translucent, veined in pale blue. Every inhalation rattled against her ribs like gravel shaken in an empty tin.
“You don’t have to talk,” Hollis said softly, setting a mug of sweetened hot water on the wooden milk crate beside the bed. “You don’t have to explain why you were behind Halloran Tower, and you don’t have to give me a surname. But you need to drink, and you need to keep your feet off the linoleum. The cold comes straight up through the floorboards.”
Wynn looked at the mug, then at Hollis’s hands. Hollis’s knuckles were raw, split at the cuticles from cheap lye and industrial bleach. They were working hands—hands that spent eight hours a night scrubbing stairwells and mopping away the salt tracks left by Chicago’s wealthy tenants.
“Why didn't you leave me?” Wynn’s voice sounded scraped raw, barely louder than the draft whistling through the sash. “Most people don’t touch someone lying in an alley. In this city, touching someone who is bleeding or frozen usually means you end up paying for their coffin.”
Hollis pulled a frayed wooden chair from the drop-leaf table and sat down, leaning forward with her forearms resting on her knees. Her dark hair was pulled back in a hasty knot, dark smudges of fatigue bruising the skin under her eyes.
“I have a daughter,” Hollis answered simply, nodding toward the curtained corner where Posy had crept back under her quilt. “When you walked into this world, someone carried you. If Posy were ever seventeen and starving on frozen concrete, I would pray to whatever God was listening that a mother found her before the morgue van did. That’s the only ledger I’m keeping.”
Wynn lowered her gaze. A single tremor passed through her shoulders, followed by a tear that dropped soundlessly onto the star blanket, darkening one of the faded yellow points.
Across the room, the curtain rustled. Posy emerged again, wearing flannel pajamas with worn-out feet. She did not approach with the reckless noise typical of five-year-olds. She moved with the quiet caution of a child raised in thin-walled tenement housing where loud voices brought landlord notices.
She padded over to the cot, reached into the pocket of her oversized cardigan, and produced a cracked plastic hair clip shaped like a daisy.
“For your hair,” Posy whispered, holding it out with both hands. “It stays out of your eyes that way. When Mama cleans, she clips hers so she can see the dust.”
Wynn looked at the cheap plastic flower as if it were carved from solid emerald. Her chest hitched. Slowly, with a hand that still shook from residual fever, she reached out and took it.
“Thank you,” Wynn whispered.
“You can keep the blanket until the sun goes away again,” Posy added generously. “I have my coat.”
“Posy, sweetheart,” Hollis called softly. “Let her rest. Go eat your toast with Marguerite’s apple butter.”
The girl nodded obediently, scurried to the drop-leaf table, and climbed onto a chair.
Hollis turned back to Wynn. She pulled the damp, folded scrap of paper from her apron pocket and laid it beside the mug. The paper had dried into a stiff, brittle square, the three words still visible through the creases: *Not of the same blood.*
Wynn flinched as if struck.
“I didn't read it to pry,” Hollis said gently. “You were holding it so hard your fingers were locked. I had to pry your hand open to get you over my shoulder. If someone is hunting you for this, Wynn, you need to tell me if I should keep the deadbolt thrown.”
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Wynn stared at the note. Her lips trembled, the color of wet slate. “The man who raised me is dead,” she whispered. “The man who protected me... thinks I ran because I hate him. But I didn't run because of hate. I ran because if this note is true, I have no right to his name. And if his enemies find out I am not his sister... they will use me to kill him, and he will let them do it to save a ghost.”
***
