Page 4 of Familiar Things New

Edwin clenched his teeth to try to contend with the rush of sorrow, the sudden pinching feeling in his chest almost too much to bear.

“What is it?” Agnes asked.

Apparently, Edwin hadn’t been concealing his emotions as well as he’d hoped.

“I look like him a little,” Edwin said softly. He knew he needn’t specify further. “Don’t I?”

Agnes nodded, a small smile on her lips. The two stayed quiet for a while, both of them staring at Edwin’s reflection. Finally, Agnes tilted her head and patted her wavy brown locks, most of which were pulled up into a bun near the crown of her head, though a few sections had come loose, the pieces framing her face, her curly bangs further softening her look.

“I’m not sure who I look like,” she said, lifting her chin and obviously trying to lift the now somewhat somber mood between them, too.

“Yourself,” Edwin said simply, to which Agnes’s blue eyes seemed to brighten.

Agnes was the perfect mixture of not only their parents but other relatives as well. As a result, she barely resembled anyone. Petite, with a small nose and radiant smile, Agnes must have been one of the prettiest women in Albany. Of course, part of her beauty might have arisen from the manner in which she carried herself, too.

Back when they’d been children, Edwin had been envious of his sister’s beauty. Not because he had wanted to look like her, but because she’d worn herself and her clothing so effortlessly. Edwin, on the other hand, had never not struggled with feeling as though even his body was an incorrect fit. He still struggled with that, though he no longer experienced the same sort of envy of Agnes. Instead, Agnes’s self-possession had simply become something to admire. And perhaps to strive for.

“You always say that,” she said, the tone in her voice one of playful exasperation. “But I think it would be nice if I could see myself in someone else’s face. Or vice versa.”

“You have Mother’s hair,” Edwin tried. Agnes reeled back, raising an eyebrow, and Edwin chuckled. “Not the color, obviously.”

“I better not have white hairs yet. I’m only twenty-three.”

“No, not yet,” Edwin reassured her, though in reality, Agnes had so much hair, he couldn’t be sure whether there weren’t one or two white strands hiding amongst the chocolate-colored ones. “Speaking of Mother, how is she today?”

“She’s napping right now. At least, I hope she is. Last night, she barely slept because of the pain in her hands, and today, she still tried to help me with the orders we have for dresses.”

Edwin’s face fell. His mother was rarely ever not in pain these days. Severely swollen, her hands had started to change, their very structure transforming because of her affliction. Rheumatic gout, Edwin had heard her physician call it. It was one of the reasons why Edwin needed to work so badly. His mother could no longer keep taking orders at the pace she had been before. And, hell, even when she had been in better health—her pain still somewhat tolerable, her hands markedly less swollen—they’d been barely scraping by for a while.

After Edwin’s father had passed away, they’d lost his respected tailoring business, and it hadn’t been long before they’d begun to struggle financially as a result. Sure, Edwin’s mother had always been a seamstress, but the money she’d made from being one had never been a substantial chunk of their family’s income. Dresses were mostly produced in mass nowadays, after all, typically in factories, where neither Edwin’s mother nor Agnes had wanted to work (nor Edwin, for that matter), and Edwin’s mother had never built up a sizable list of clients from Albany’s elite as his father had, instead only having taken the odd seamstress work here and there from the families who regularly sought out services from Beasley’s Tailoring in the first place.

So now, with Edwin’s mother unable to keep up with the few orders she had from the few clients she’d been able to retain, the Beasley family was in even worse shape. And they’d only continue to struggle.

Unless Edwin could manage to keep his position as a nurseryman, God help him. Even then, though, Edwin’s salary really wasn’t much. He’d make more as a tailor, probably, especially if he could ever stand to open his own shop, though the prospect of facing customers every single day was . . . unsettling, to say the least.

“I’ll finish the rest,” Edwin promised. “Don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” Agnes said, the warmth and relief in her voice both comforting and concerning at once.

Edwin tried to smile in return. It was wonderful that his sister believed in him. Agnes seemed to see him as a leader and a provider and even as the family’s new patriarch.

What a pity it was that Edwin couldn’t see himself that way.

Gazing into the hallway mirror, Edwin frowned at his reflection.

Despite the fact that he had managed to begin living as the man he’d always been in his heart, he still had so far left to go. Time had passed, things had changed, but he had yet to find either the courage or the confidence to become the sort of man he so fervently wanted to be.

Chapter Two

Andrew

It was fifteen minutes to noon, which was the time that Andrew Thompson was scheduled to pick up the flyers from the printer. Andrew had hired the small shop on the corner of Steuben and Pearl to print the latest advertisement for his photography business. It was a modest-looking place, one that had promised to charge half of what some of the other, larger shops had wanted for the same product. Knowing that he’d have to make it there on foot, rather than hop on the streetcar, Andrew heedlessly shoved his feet into his shoes. He inadvertently scraped his skin on the stiff leather of the heel counter of one of them in the process. Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he chastised himself for not being more careful. Andrew forced himself to ignore the lingering pain and continued to put on his outerwear.

Once Andrew was close to being ready, he moved to snatch his scuffed derby hat from his worktable, and his elbow knocked the bottle of pyrogallic acid. Thankfully, he somehow managed to catch it before it fell. Closing his eyes, Andrew let out a breath and steadied it. His near-constant rushing never failed to worsen his propensity for breaking things.

Determined not to inadvertently smash every bottle of his small stock of chemical compounds (and probably harm himself in the process), Andrew set his hat back on the worktable and then rose up onto his tiptoes to open the cabinets above it. One by one, he carefully put the bottles back on the shelves, separating the chemicals in the precise manner that his grandfather had once shown him. Developers on the left. Fixers on the right.

After he finished tidying up, Andrew left for the print shop, concentrating on forcing an even pace as he descended the stairs, even though he knew how short he was on time.