The Threshold by Millhiser Marlys

Author:Millhiser, Marlys [Millhiser, Marlys]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781504010221
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
Published: 2015-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

28

Mrs. Stollsteimer met Callie O’Connell at the kitchen door off the alley as the girl tried to sneak back into the hotel after her visit to the shaded side of Telluride. The housekeeper gave Callie the nastiest duties available and promised to end her employment the minute she could contact one of her parents. But John O’Connell arrived in the next week to talk her into reconsidering. He promised Callie would never do such a thing again. “She’s but a child, ma’am, here to learn under your fine teaching.” He explained that his ailing wife and invalid son would soon be returning from Denver and he’d been able to find only a room to house them. They needed Callie’s earnings as never before. He’d found himself a place at the Smuggler and a bed at its boardinghouse. He took Callie aside and gave her a wink. “It’ll not be long and we’ll all be together, darling. You’ll do it for your Ma’am and your brother?”

“Why did you tell me Aunt Lilly was dead?”

“Did I ever say she was? Or that she wasn’t? Your Ma’am will explain such things as a man can’t. Are you not just filled with longing to see them, Callie?”

Her father hadn’t noticed that Callie was limping, but Aunt Lilly had and she’d measured Callie’s feet. One day a new pair of soft black boots arrived by way of a gentleman staying at the hotel. “I see that father of yours finally bought you some new shoes,” Mrs. Stollsteimer said when she noticed the boots. “They appear costly for someone in such a precarious financial state as he claims.”

Callie allowed the housekeeper to think what she would and reveled in her new comfort. But her general unhappiness grew at the thought of having to live apart from her mother and Bram when they moved to Telluride. Word came at last that they were settled in a rooming house in Finntown and Mrs. Stollsteimer gave Callie permission to leave the hotel to visit them. Finntown was a section around the depot inhabited largely by working-class Finns. It lay on the south side of town but was separated from the bawdy section by an invisible curtain of respectability and in some places by a buffer of warehouses.

Her mother was waiting for her on the landing of a staircase attached to the side of a house with pretty wood banisters around its front porch and a gleaming picket fence. Callie hid her face in Luella’s clothing. Her mother had never carried much extra flesh but now it seemed all that lay beneath the dress was bones. Finally Luella held Callie away and knelt in front of her. “Has it been so very bad for you?” There was a blackness to the skin around her eyes. “You’ve grown so since last I saw you.”

The room held two cots with a blanket hung between on a wire. It had a wardrobe, Ma’am’s trunk, a small table with two straight-backed chairs, an oval braided rug, and obviously no room for Callie.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.