"Don't Be Afraid"
- Holmes' Englewood pharmacy is a success. Especially among the ladies.
- Holmes writes letters to a Myrta Belknap, whom he had met in Minneapolis one year earlier.
- He asks Myrta to marry him and she moves to Chicago with Holmes.
- They settle in the apartment above the pharmacy, the same one previously occupied by Mrs. Holton. Creepy.
- Myrta helps run the drugstore, but she quickly becomes uncomfortable by the endless train of young women piling into the store.
- Pregnant, she grows possessive of Holmes, which makes him only see her as an obstacle. He makes her stay upstairs to manage the store's books so she's out of the way. Aww, that's true love.
- Meanwhile, Holmes sees an opportunity across the street at the intersection of 63rd and Wallace. He purchases the undeveloped land. He uses the name H. S. Campbell.
- "The building's broad design and its function had come to him all at once, like a blueprint pulled from a drawer" (1.5.16).
- Holmes wants retail shops on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors. "It was the details of the building that gave him the most pleasure" (1.5.17).
- Holmes begins construction immediately, employing different contractors to work on each room to allay any suspicions.
- Not going to lie: Holmes is kind of mean and demanding to the contractors.
- And he really doesn't trust anyone except Charles Chappell, Patrick Quinlan, and Benjamin Pitezel, whose name America would come to learn of six years later.
- Meanwhile, back at the fair, the World's Columbian Exposition has (finally) found a place to put the fair.
- To Holmes' delight, the site is Jackson Park, due east of his building.
- Suddenly, he finds that he has a new idea to satisfy his needs. (Dun dun dunnnn.)