Shaken to the Core (11 page)

“Giuliana, stop! It’s not safe. Let me help.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. I don’t mind at all.” Kate climbed up so that they stood on the same step. Only now did she realize that she’d have to put down her photographic equipment. She stared at the carrying case in her hand for a moment. Leaving it behind with all the strangers downstairs didn’t sit well with her, but there was no other option. She put the leather case and Giuliana’s other crutch on the step below and bent down a little so that Giuliana could climb onto her back. “Your trusted mount awaits, my lady.”

Giuliana hesitated. Her cheeks were flushed, either from exertion or from embarrassment—or maybe both. Finally, she leaned the crutch against the banister, pinned the hem of her dress and her one petticoat up, and gripped Kate’s shoulders with both hands. Her legs wrapped around Kate’s waist.

For once, Kate was glad of the dim light on the stairs, for it hid her face, which was now flushed too. She reached back and gently held on to Giuliana’s thighs so she wouldn’t slide off. Bending slightly forward, she started up the stairs. Admittedly, Giuliana was heavier than she had expected—or maybe Kate wasn’t as strong as she had thought. Her muscles ached, and her back screamed at her with every step, but a part of her still regretted that the piggyback ride was coming to an end when they reached the fifth floor. She’d never been this close to another woman, and feeling Giuliana’s heat against her back was making her a bit dizzy in a very pleasant way.

“Which room is it?” she gasped out and hoped Giuliana would think it was the exertion making her breathless.

“This.” Giuliana pointed over Kate’s shoulder to a door at the end of the landing.

Each of the doors Kate passed had a three-digit brass number on it, but the first number on Giuliana’s door had fallen off, so now it just said 12. The once-white paint was peeling off the door.

When Kate stopped in front of the room, Giuliana slid down and produced a key from somewhere.

“Wait. Let me get your crutches.” Kate rushed down the stairs, glad to have a moment alone. Thankfully, the carrying case and the crutches were still where she had left them. She picked them up and then turned back around. By the time she made it to the fifth floor, she was thoroughly winded. She pulled on the lace collar of her dress. “Could I beg a glass of water? I’m parched.”

It was true, but admittedly, she was also curious to see how Giuliana lived and didn’t want to be turned away at the door.

“Oh. Scusa. Come in, please.” Giuliana shouldered through the door on her crutches, just pausing to light a single kerosene lamp.

Kate followed her in and looked around. Not that there was much to see. The room was tiny. Two narrow beds stretched along the walls to the left and right. Between them was a single window, which faced north, overlooking the dirty roofs of other boardinghouses. There was no sink and no other door that might lead to a water closet. Two chairs, a small table, a trunk, and a shelf were the only furniture. How could anyone live in this broom closet of a room?

Well, at least it was neat and tidy, and several trinkets lent a more homey feel. A yellowed photograph of a couple and a gaggle of children in front of a fishing boat leaned against the shelf, next to a large sea shell. A pipe filled the room with the spicy-sweet scent of tobacco, and a leather strop hung by the washstand in the corner, but the razor belonging to it was nowhere in sight.

An invisible male presence seemed to linger in the room. Did Giuliana live with a man? But surely Kate’s mother wouldn’t have hired a married woman, would she? Did that mean that Giuliana was living in sin? And where was her…companion?

Giuliana crutched over to a pitcher next to the washstand.

“Oh, no. You sit. I can do this.” Kate gently pressed her down onto one of the beds and piled the two pillows up for Giuliana to rest her foot on, which she did with a grateful sigh.

Her gaze followed Kate across the room as she took the two tin cups from the shelf, filled them with water, and carried them over to Giuliana. She handed Giuliana one of the cups and sipped from the other while she sat on a chair next to the bed and looked around the room again. “Can I ask you a question?” she said before her courage could abandon her.

Giuliana looked up at her, her dark eyes wide as if she was afraid of what Kate might want to know. But finally she nodded. “I can ask you too, yes?” Her eyes widened as if she was surprised by her daring words.

Fair enough.
Kate was the one who had wanted them to act like equals, forgoing formalities, so now she had to live with the consequences. She nodded and took a deep breath. “That leather strop…” She pointed. “Who does it belong to?”

Giuliana followed her gaze and then looked away. She took a moment adjusting her leg on the pillows before answering. “It was of Turi…Salvatore. But no one called him that.” Her voice wavered.

Kate wanted to ask who he had been to Giuliana and what had happened to him, since Giuliana had spoken of him in the past tense, but she wasn’t sure if more questions would be welcome. She sensed that this might be a painful topic for Giuliana, so she curbed her curiosity and remained silent.

A baby started to cry in the room next door, sounding overly loud through the thin wall.

Giuliana took a sip of water and then, as if that had fortified her, added, “He was my brother.”

“What happened to him?” Kate blurted before she could stop herself. Quickly, she put her hand on Giuliana’s arm. “You don’t have to tell me if it pains you too much to talk about it.”

“He…” Giuliana’s hand holding the tin cup trembled. “He died not long ago. A few days before I work for your family.”

The baby next door stopped crying. In the sudden silence, Giuliana’s words kept echoing through Kate’s mind.
He died.
Then another thought came:
So that’s how she knows Dr. Sharpe. She must have treated her brother.
A lump formed in her throat.

“Dr. Sharpe said it was purmunia,” Giuliana continued, her eyes damp.

“Purmunia?”

Giuliana patted her chest. “Sickness in the lungs.”

“Oh. You mean pneumonia?”

“Yes.”

Memories of Corny rose unbidden. “I had a brother too,” Kate found herself saying, even though she’d intended to say only how sorry she was.

“I know,” Giuliana whispered.

Of course. Giuliana had probably overheard some of her conversation with her mother this afternoon. “His name was Cornelius, after my father and grandfather, but he, too, went by his nickname, Corny.”

They both sipped their water without saying anything else, their gazes connecting over the rims of the cups.

With Kate’s parents, their grief seemed to isolate them from each other and from her, but now, with Giuliana, it was as if it formed a connection between them, one that warmed Kate from the inside out as if she were drinking sherry, not water.

Finally, Giuliana looked away and directed her gaze to a point next to the door. “Can I ask the question now?”

Her heart pounding furiously, Kate nodded.
What are you so afraid of?

Giuliana pointed to where she’d been looking. “What is in there?”

Kate turned her head.
The carrying case.
Of course Giuliana would be curious about it, wondering why she was lugging the thing all over the city. “My camera and a few plates.”

“Do you take it every place?” Giuliana asked.

“No. I…” Kate picked a piece of lint off her dress. Should she tell Giuliana? Or would Giuliana think that she was foolish for dreaming of a career as a newspaper photographer? She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, refusing to feel ashamed of her dreams. “When I found you in the study, I was about to go out and find a way into City Hall so I could take photographs.”

“I do not understand. Why do you want photographs of City Hall?”

“Not of City Hall,” Kate replied. “Of anything interesting that might come through its doors.”

Giuliana shook her head as if that would help her think. “I still do not understand.”

It was time to confess why she’d been so eager to take Giuliana to the hospital instead of calling a doctor or taking her home. With her gaze on her hands, Kate said, “Photography is not just a pleasant way to pass the time for me. It’s what I want to do with my life. I want to be a newspaper photographer.”

“A newspaper photographer? That is…” Giuliana seemed to search for the right words.

Kate tensed, waiting for her to say that it was ridiculous for a woman.

“That is wonderful. The family in the next room gives me their newspaper some time, and I always look at the pictures.” Giuliana blushed and bent to tug on the bandages around her leg.

Look at the pictures?
Was it possible that she couldn’t read? Kate didn’t want to embarrass her any further by asking. “It is wonderful,” she said. “Well, it would be if the editor of the
San Francisco Call
wouldn’t be so stubborn. He flat out refuses to even consider hiring a woman as a staff photographer. That’s why I wanted to go to City Hall, where all the interesting things in the city are happening. I need to impress him with my work and show him that a woman can do the job just as well as a man.”

Giuliana’s hands stilled on the bandages. She said nothing for quite a while. “That is why you took me to the hospital, yes?” A bit of hurt vibrated in her voice.

“No, that’s not—”

“I am not stupid,” Giuliana said. “I am poor and I cannot read, but I know a lie when I hear it.”

“I’m not lying,” Kate said, but it sounded weak, even in her own ears.

“To bring a hurt person is a good excuse to go to the hospital. How good for you that I fell down the chair.”

“Giuliana, please, don’t be upset.”

“I am not upset, Miss Kate,” Giuliana said without looking at her.

Miss Kate
…
So now they were back to that. It surprised Kate how much that hurt, considering they barely knew each other. “I admit that I thought I could kill two birds with one stone…do two things at once. But my desire to help you was sincere.”

Giuliana turned her head toward the wall, away from her. “You must go now. Your parents will worry when they find out you are not in your room.”

Kate clutched the tin cup in her hands. With abrupt movements, she downed the rest of the water and then quietly put the cup down on the table. Walking to the door only took two seconds because the room was so small, so there was no way to delay the inevitable. When she reached the door, she turned back around.

Giuliana was still staring at the wall.

“I didn’t take a photograph, did I?” Kate said into the silence.

“Scusa?” Slowly, Giuliana turned her head.

The baby next door started crying again, so Kate had to raise her voice to be heard. “I didn’t take a photograph at the hospital, not even when they brought in the woman who’d been hit by the cable car.”

Giuliana seemed to consider it for a moment. “No,” she said after a while. “You did not. Why?”

“I didn’t think it was right, with her bleeding and helpless,” Kate answered. She shuffled her feet, unsure whether she should admit her second reason, but then said, “I also didn’t want to leave you alone. You seemed a bit scared.”

“I do not like the hospital. It is where my brother…” She bit her lip.

“I understand,” Kate said softly. Now she was glad she hadn’t abandoned Giuliana to take photographs of the accident victim. She waited for Giuliana to say something, to forgive her, but no answer came.

The wails of the neighbor’s baby got louder. Someone trampled up the creaking stairs and hammered on a door.

For land’s sake! How does she get any sleep with that kind of noise around?
Kate waited until the cries had died down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to ask my parents to give you the day off on Monday?”

“Yes,” Giuliana said.

“All right.” That left nothing more to say. Kate picked up the carrying case with her camera, opened the door, and stepped out.

“Thank you,” Giuliana called after her, just when Kate was about to close the door.

Kate turned and faced her across the doorstep.

Giuliana’s closed-off expression had softened. It wasn’t quite the smile she’d given Kate before, but at least she was no longer looking at Kate with that hurt in her eyes. “Thank you for all.”

“You’re welcome.”

They nodded at each other, and then Kate turned and closed the door. Slowly, she made her way down the creaking steps, her thoughts still in the tiny room. Giuliana hadn’t said
Kate
when she’d called her back. Well, neither had she used the more formal
Miss Kate
. That would have to do for now.

Kate strode past the men sitting on the front stoop and climbed back into the automobile. She placed the camera equipment on the seat next to her, where Giuliana had sat earlier.
Forget her. You’ve got a photograph of a cable car to take and an editor to impress.
Determined, she put the automobile into gear and pulled away from the curb without allowing herself to look back.

CHAPTER 6

Market Street

San Francisco, California

March 31, 1906

Kate was beginning to understand that the most valuable instrument a newspaper photographer possessed wasn
’t a camera with an expensive lens; it was a network of informants. With that, she would have found out hours ago where the accident had taken place and would be home in bed by now.

If it had happened at the eastern end of the Presidio & Ferries line, she was out of luck anyway. Not that she’d ever been there, but she had heard that San Francisco’s Barbary Coast district was full of criminals, drunks stumbling out of saloons and grog shops, and women with painted faces and low-cut bodices leaning out of brothel windows. A respectable woman alone at night wouldn’t be safe there.

The editor’s words rang in her ears.
The newspaper business is too rough for the feminine nature.

She shook her head to chase away the thought. No. She wasn’t ready to give up just yet, so she steered the automobile down Market Street.