“Do you belong to a lot of associations like the Italian Benevolent Society?”
He shrugged. “Two or three. When there are legal matters to deal with I’m often called in. There aren’t many lawyers in the city who speak Italian.”
Anna considered. The obvious question was, did he want to be that lawyer? He was not too old to read law, after all. But as forward thinking as Jack Mezzanotte might be, few men liked having their career choices challenged. Instead she said, “I should learn Italian.”
“It would be helpful.”
“If I can find the time.”
“You have a willing tutor right beside you.”
“We’ll never have a moment’s quiet time.”
Jack squeezed her hand. “Italian lessons can happen any time. Spontaneously.”
Anna was glad of a cool evening breeze on her cheeks. “On demand?”
“If there’s a room available, certainly. Or a suitable hotel.”
And here they were back at the original problem. Not for the first time she wondered what other people who had no place to be alone together did. The birthrate was evidence that such things happened constantly and everywhere, and not just between married people who shared a bed.
“What are you thinking?” he wanted to know.
Anna started out of her thoughts. “About privacy,” she said. “And the reason people rush into marriage.”
20
THREE DAYS LATER Jack said, “There’s something I wanted to tell you about.”
Anna looked up from the medical journal article she was reading. They were sitting in the garden while the girls played hide-and-seek. For once there were no other adults nearby.
She said, “I’m listening.”
“Where’s your aunt?”
Anna’s brows slanted down into a V shape. “Why?”
“Because I want to tell her about it too.”
“Staten Island?”
“No,” he said, vaguely irritated.
“We’re not going?”
“We will go, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
“And when will that happen, the trip to Staten Island?”
He realized she was winding him up, and let out what he hoped would sound like a long-suffering sigh.
“Saturday, if you like.”
“It’s a long journey. At least a half day if the ferries are running on time.” She paused to study the binding of her journal. “I doubt we can get back at a reasonable hour. Are there hotels on Staten Island?”
Jack bit back a laugh. “We’d shock Sister Mary Augustin right out of her shoes.”
Anna’s face went slack with surprise.
“What?”
She sat up straighter. “I forgot to tell you about the letter I had from Mary Irene.” She recited it to the best of her memory. “There was an odd phrase,” she finished. “Something like she was reassigned to the Mother House where she can contemplate devotion to duty and detachment from self. What does it mean? Is she being punished?”
Jack said, “I don’t think they would see it that way. They are being protective.”
“Ah.” Anna sat back. “They are protecting her from her own curiosity and her talent—because she is talented, Jack. She has a natural affinity for medicine.”
He waited for her to come to some conclusion, and hoped she wouldn’t decide to rescue Mary Augustin. He could see her doing just that, and looking to him for help.
She was saying, “I don’t understand it, but I don’t see what I can do, either. If she wants a different life, she’ll have to walk away on her own.” She glanced at him and her frown deepened. “It’s a terrible waste of a good mind.”
“I agree.”
“Do you really, or are you trying to appease me?”
“Savard,” Jack said. “Listen to me now. I’m not the kind of man who will say anything to avoid an argument. In fact, I like arguing with you. In this case I do agree.”
“You agree that her mind is being wasted?”
Jack shifted uneasily in his seat. “I agree that she’s in a place where her gifts are not put to good use, yes.”
“Could I write to her?”
“To what end?”
She shrugged. “I could offer her a position as a nurse; she’d have room and board and a small salary. And she could apply for medical school and a scholarship, if she wants to do that. Can I write to her?”
“Believe it or not, I’ve never been inside a convent and I don’t have any idea what’s allowed and what isn’t. I wasn’t raised a Catholic, you know that.”
“There must be a way to get a letter to her. She’s not a prisoner, is she?”
“No,” Jack said. “Or better said, she’s not being physically restrained. But there are other ways to tie people down.”
Other women liked nothing better than a compliment, but his Anna was inordinately pleased when he offered her a way of looking at something she hadn’t considered. Her smile said this was one of those moments.
“It will have to wait until after the wedding,” she said. “But this weekend—”
“It will have to wait until Monday,” Jack said firmly. “This weekend—” It was his turn to lift a brow.
“Staten Island?”
“Have you ever been?”
“No, I’ve never even thought of it.”
“It’s a wonderful place to visit, the beaches especially. Do you have a bathing costume?”
She shook her head.
“We’ll have to remedy that. I’d like to see your hair down with the sun shining on it.” She looked away, but he went on. “You are beautiful, you know.”
Anna was up in a flash, too embarrassed to sit still, unwilling to be admired.
“I’m going to keep telling you things you don’t like to hear,” he called after her. “Until you believe them.”
She threw up her hands in disgust and disappeared into the house.
• • •
ANNA DROPPED ONTO the sofa across from her aunt, who sat contemplating a swatch of watered silk, the tender blue-green of Sophie’s eyes.
“Did the fitting go well?”
“She will be a stunning bride.” Aunt Quinlan smiled at Anna, something of wistfulness in her expression. “It’s a good thing you’re here, I might have turned maudlin without you to distract me. Where’s Jack?”
“In the garden hatching plans. We’re going to eat with his sisters this evening, to sort through some practical matters.”
Aunt Quinlan’s eyes were damp, and she blinked hard.
“Are you all right, Auntie?”
“I was just thinking that the house will be very empty when you go away. And I’m wondering about the little girls, if you’ll want to take them with you.”
Anna drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment. “I don’t want to disrupt the girls now that they are settled, and I also can’t imagine leaving you to handle this all on your own. Especially if we manage to find the boys.”
“You’re so sure the younger one is on Staten Island, but why?”
“We know Father McKinnawae took him from the Foundling, that’s the one solid piece of information we have. So I think we need to have a plan in case we do bring him home. I know you and Mrs. Lee and Margaret like having children here, but it is too much to ask. We need to talk about hiring a nurse and a maid, too, I think.”
Her aunt nodded. “You’ve decided to move in with the sisters, then.”
Anna bit back a laugh. “God, no. I really don’t want to leave here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else but here.”
“Then stay,” her aunt said. “Jack is welcome, you know that.”
Anna wrapped her arms around herself and offered a small and regretful smile. “He’s too much of a bull for t
his china shop, Auntie.”
Aunt Quinlan looked beyond Anna to the parlor door. “Come in, Jack,” she said. “We were just talking about your plans.”
He sat down next to Anna, not quite touching. “Bull in a china shop?”
A ripple of awareness ran down Anna’s spine and along every nerve. She wondered if his voice would always elicit such a physical reaction from her.
“Listening at doors, Mezzanotte?”
He flashed a smile at her but spoke to Aunt Quinlan. “I came in to see if you two would take a very short walk with me.”
Aunt Quinlan reached for her cane before the words were out of Jack’s mouth.
Anna got up too. “Is this what you were wanting to tell me? Where are we going?”
“Mrs. Greber’s.” And in response to a blank look: “Your neighbor?”
Aunt Quinlan sat down again. “Katharina Greber?”
Mrs. Greber was one of the few people Aunt Quinlan truly disliked, and her tone gave that away. Anna was glad to see that Jack had it figured out.
“I see there’s some history I don’t know about. You aren’t the best of friends?”
Anna scrambled for the shortest possible explanation. “Aunt Quinlan believes that Mrs. Greber took—”
“—stole.”
“That Mrs. Greber is responsible for the disappearance of one of Mr. Lee’s prize roses. Roots and all. There used to be a door in the wall between her garden and ours—”
“Anna,” said Aunt Quinlan. “You know she took that rose.”
Jack said, “So you won’t miss her, now that she’s moved away.”
Aunt Quinlan’s expression stilled, and then she produced a huge and unapologetic smile. “Moved?”
“To live with a son, I think.”
“And the house is empty?”
Jack’s gaze settled on Anna. “For the moment. I was thinking we might want to buy it.”
“Anna,” Aunt Quinlan said. “If you don’t kiss that man, I’ll have to do it for you.”
• • •
THE HOUSE WAS far smaller than the Quinlan residence, but similar in style and solidly built, most likely by the same architect. Buff-colored limestone walls and a tile roof, the rooms not especially large but more than sufficient. Inside it was in desperate need of renovation and repairs, but Jack had known immediately that it would suit. The expression on Anna’s face told him he was right.
She went from room to room and then outside into the garden, almost as large as her aunt’s, but terribly overgrown. The symmetry made it clear that this property must have once belonged to the Quinlan parcel, and according to Jack the plat book confirmed that. Both buildings constructed in 1840 by Jonathan Quinlan, Harrison Quinlan’s grandfather. In her second marriage Lily Bonner Ballentyne had married into a family with a shipping fortune and, more rare still, an appreciation for beauty.
“Mr. Lee will need help to bring this garden back to order,” Anna’s aunt murmured.
“There are Mezzanotte cousins and nephews enough to help,” Jack said to her, but he kept his gaze on Anna. “Mr. Lee can have his pick of an army of gardeners.”
Anna walked away from them into waist-high weeds, scanning the brick wall and then pointing. “There’s where the garden door was taken out and bricked over. Could that be restored, do you think?”
“It could,” Jack said. “I would put it at the top of the list so you can come and go easily. It will be safer for the girls too.”
She swept around, her eyes so bright that he thought for a moment that she might be on the verge of tears.
“How soon can it be brought into order, do you think?”
“I’ll talk to the attorney tomorrow. We can start renovations next week, after we make plans and talk about a budget. If that’s what you want to do.”
She strode toward him. “Of course it is,” she said. “It’s exactly what I want. You’re exactly what I want.”
Jack heard Aunt Quinlan moving away and the door closing behind her just as Anna walked into his arms.
She said, “First on that list of things to do is to get a room together where a person can take a nap.” And then she sneezed, three times in a row.
“Good idea,” Jack said. “Unless we want these weeds mowed down first.”
She sneezed once more, a triplet of high quick spasms that made him laugh out loud.
• • •
ON THE WAY uptown later in the afternoon, Anna asked the question she could hold back no longer. “How long have you had that house up your sleeve?”
He shrugged. “Just since yesterday. I saw a mover’s wagon pulling away from the curb and I asked some questions. This morning I talked to the attorney and made an offer. What?”
“Before you asked me?”
“It would have sold to someone else before the day ended. Did I misstep?”
“No,” she said, quite truthfully. “You stepped perfectly.” And after a long moment: “This will be difficult for your sisters.”
Jack touched the small of her back to steer her around a group of girls playing with a jump rope. “There may be a way to lessen the sting.”
She glanced up at him. “You are full of surprises today. What are you thinking?”
“Ask for their help. Unless you want to handle the furnishing and decorating yourself, of course.”
That made her laugh out loud. “Do you think they’re so easily distracted?”
“Ask them and find out. But be prepared, the first question they are going to ask you—”
“A date for the wedding.” She sighed.
“Such enthusiasm,” Jack said dryly.
She pressed his arm. “If the house can be ready, I would say late summer. Will that serve?”
“No,” Jack muttered. “But it will have to do.”
21
THURSDAY MORNING ANNA woke at dawn, full of energy, and left the house without eating anything at all; to step into the kitchen would mean being caught up in the frenzied preparations for the party on the East River or the wedding. All the way to the New Amsterdam, Anna kept tripping over the idea that Sophie and Cap would be getting married in just one day’s time.
Anna had avoided dwelling on what it would mean to be without her cousin for months or even years, but now she could think of little else. There was a lot of letter writing in her future, but she had discovered that she liked writing letters to Jack, and she thought writing to Sophie and Cap might be a good thing, a way to sort through all the changes ahead.
She reminded herself that she had patients to see. She tried to remember the last time she had been unhappy to have to work, and could not remember a single instance. She wondered what it said about her that at almost twenty-eight years old she had never even imagined staying away from work. There were, in fact, more interesting and even more important things in her world.
There was Cap, who would board a ship tomorrow and never come home again. Anna imagined him wrapped in blankets and looking out into a world of winter blues and whites, the cold clear air and perfect silence of the high Alps.
The urge to turn around and go spend the day with Cap and Sophie came over her and had to be dismissed; she would see her patients and then spend the afternoon and evening on the East River. The party would be a great deal of fun, everyone talking and laughing, and the noise of the celebration on the bridge would overwhelm all else. Sophie would not be there, but Jack would.
At one he would fetch her and they would go to meet the rest of the family at the ferry dock and then she would be free for an unheard-of three and a half days: not on duty or on call until Monday. After the wedding her time was her own, to spend dozing in the garden or more likely, in the new house answering questions about window hangings and linen closets while Jack and his cousins began putting bigger things to rights and his sisters went
to work on the sewing machine they had already determined must be installed before everything else.
By the time Anna reached the New Amsterdam she had reconciled herself to the day ahead and could turn her mind to rounds with her students, to a scheduled surgery and a meeting, and to seeing three patients who were in decline.
She left her most difficult case for the end of the workday, so that she didn’t have to feel rushed. The patient was a fifty-nine-year-old woman, unmarried and without family, who would die sometime in the next day or two because she had ignored a cut on the sole of her foot too long. Anna had amputated, knowing that it was almost certainly too late, and so it had turned out to be. Rachel Branson had led a quiet, even peaceful life, but her death would be neither of those things.
• • •
ANNA FOUND HER patient sitting quietly, her hands folded over the newspaper in her lap while she looked out the window. Her bed was at the very end of the surgical ward, which provided her with a little more privacy and a view.
Miss Branson was flushed with fever, her brow and throat damp with sweat. Pain had taken up permanent residence in her face, drawing creases down her cheeks and along her mouth. Anna reached for the chart that hung at the foot of the bed and made a note for an increase in her pain medication. She hoped that Miss Branson would slip into a coma before the pain outstripped every relief medicine had to offer.
Then she sat down on the single chair, holding the chart against herself.
“I’ve been watching the bit of the new bridge I can see,” Miss Branson told her. “Such a lot of excitement, rushing back and forth. The president is there, according to the newspaper. It’s a wondrous thing.” She raised her face to look at Anna. “Are you going to the celebration?”
“Yes,” Anna said. “Later this afternoon.”
“With friends?”
Over the time she had been practicing Anna had learned how to deflect personal questions without giving offense, but she found herself wanting to talk to Miss Branson.