• • •
ELISE, SOAKING HER hand, was still angry enough to spit, but she was also deeply apprehensive. Bullies did not stand down so easily, especially not when they had been bested by a girl. Walking home from the New Amsterdam might not be the best idea. Not for herself or Anna. She wondered why Anna had not sent for the police, if there was something unspoken that stopped her.
After a while she dried her hand, flexing each finger and making a fist. No serious damage, but then punching Campbell’s middle had been like burying her fist in half-risen bread dough. She thought for a long moment, and then went to find pen and paper.
• • •
JACK HAD COME to the conclusion that the one advantage to working the night shift was Mrs. Cabot’s determination to feed him to bursting when he got up in the early afternoon. Today he was served a spicy beef hash along with a wedge of onion pie, a dish of preserved green peas dressed with mint and cream, and a bowl of banana pudding.
When he protested she poured him more coffee and put another slice of onion pie on his plate. Then she went off to answer a knock at the door and came back with a note.
Dear Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte,
I write to say that this morning a man called Archer Campbell came to the hospital and spoke very rudely to Dr. Savard in the hall outside her office. Very rudely. Because I feared for her safety I stepped in and delivered a shovel hook as taught to me by my brothers. I intended this for his liver, but it landed on his diaphragm instead. He was not seriously hurt, but he may swear out a complaint against me. More disturbing, I fear he may also seek revenge toward Dr. Savard or me or both of us, and thus this note.
To be clear, I didn’t hear the conversation between them and I don’t know what it was he wanted, but he wanted it very badly.
Yours sincerely,
Elise Mercier
His first stop was the New Amsterdam, where he found Joshua Abernathy behind the porter’s desk.
“Dr. Savard didn’t want us to call in the police,” he told Jack. “I would have done it anyway, but I figured you’d be along.”
He didn’t have much to report beyond the fact that Campbell had snuck in while the porters’ shift was changing, at about six. “I didn’t see him come in, but I made sure to see him out.” The surly expression gave way to a wide smile. “He was still coughing and wheezing. I hear Nurse Mercier walloped him proper, right in the breadbasket.”
“She sent me a note, worried about Campbell hanging around looking for a chance to get his own back.”
“Same thought occurred to me,” said the porter. “If you hadn’t shown your face by four, I would have sent a note on my own.”
“Has he been hanging around?”
“Not that I could see. But there’s no shortage of dark corners to hide in, if he’s determined.”
And that was the question. Jack could imagine Campbell desperate and foolish enough to do about anything.
• • •
FROM THE NEW Amsterdam he went straight to Oscar’s boardinghouse on Grove Street. It was a big, comfortable, and orderly house where troublemakers didn’t last a week, because Oscar saw to it. For his help the landlady gave him use of the parlor, where Jack found him with a newspaper and a cigar in a sea of smoke.
He sat down across from him and handed over Elise’s note.
“Oh ho.” Oscar put the paper down and read.
Jack said, “How close are you to sorting out the last of the bonds?”
Oscar had taken the bonds on as a project, converting them to cash at different banks, a few at a time, and sending the money to Little Compton by registered messenger. The scheme was both elaborate and fraught with pitfalls, but Oscar lived for that kind of challenge.
“Just three left,” he told Jack now. “Not too many or too few. Just right. I’m looking forward to this.”
• • •
WHEN THEY SAT down to dinner at Aunt Quinlan’s table for the first time in almost a week, Anna was prepared to be asked a million questions about everything from Staten Island to Mrs. Cabot’s magical head-cold tea. Instead there was only one subject under discussion: the upcoming trip to Greenwood. The Mezzanotte family celebrated the twenty-fourth of June every year with a huge party, and the combined Quinlan and Savard households were invited to join them. Margaret had other plans she couldn’t change, but the other adults were almost as excited as the little girls to be getting out of the city.
Even the Lees were coming. Jack had announced his plan to show Mr. Lee around the farm and greenhouses right from the start, which put Anna in a difficult spot. She tried to explain the problem: “Mr. Lee never leaves Waverly Place except to visit their son and his family, and he’s just four blocks away. He always has the same excuse, that somebody has to stay to look after the property. Properties, now.”
But Jack had gotten a particular look, one she had learned to recognize as unvoiced disagreement. The next day he introduced a young patrol officer he liked and trusted to the Lees. With their approval Jack hired him to stand watch while they were gone. Mrs. Lee was so touched that for once she couldn’t find a single thing to say, but Aunt Quinlan didn’t hesitate; she pulled him down to kiss one cheek while she patted the other. Anna wondered why they had never thought to do something similar in the past.
So they were going to Greenwood. Anna knew they had put the visit off too long already and that nothing short of an earthquake would be an acceptable excuse for staying away. What she couldn’t explain to herself was how nervous the whole thing made her until Aunt Quinlan pointed out that a big party with a lot of people would be easier than a small supper where she had everyone’s attention.
“We need to get an anniversary gift,” Aunt Quinlan said now. “How many years have your parents been married, Jack?”
He stared at the ceiling while he subtracted. “Massimo was born on the twenty-fourth of June in . . .” He looked at his niece, who was waiting for this question.
“Eighteen forty-four.”
“So they were married on the same day in eighteen forty-three; that would be forty years ago.”
“They don’t want presents,” Chiara added. “We don’t give a lot of presents.” She said this a little wistfully.
Anna was thinking about forty years of marriage, what that might be like in the year 1933. If there would be children and grandchildren and a party. She thought sometimes about children, a subject Jack hadn’t yet raised in any serious way. Why that might be was unclear, and not something she wanted to contemplate just now.
“What are you thinking about?” Rosa asked her. “Your face is all scrunched together.”
Anna started out of her thoughts. “I was thinking that I’d like more of that apple cobbler, unless somebody else has beaten me to it.”
“Your appetite is restored,” her aunt Quinlan said.
“After days of toast and tea and clear broth, I could eat the tablecloth.”
The girls found this very funny, as if they hadn’t had the same diet for days.
Margaret said, “What time are you leaving on Sunday?”
The discussion shifted to the logistic challenge of getting them all to the Hoboken ferry in time. They were a party of—the girls counted on their fingers, noisily, and came up with the astonishing number of ten, counting Bambina and Celestina. Eleven, if Ned came too, as the little girls were hoping. The plan was to leave Sunday morning and return to Manhattan late on Monday.
“Are there beds for all of us?” Aunt Quinlan asked again.
“Yes,” Chiara said, smiling broadly. “Room enough.”
Rosa was asking Chiara about the Mezzanotte grandchildren; she wanted names and ages and maybe even a chart that would tell her who got along and who didn’t. It seemed now that Rosa had survived the trip to Mount Loretto and the shock of losing Vittorio. She had always been a serious ch
ild, and now just enough of that had lifted to see what might become of her if she could learn to let her brothers go.
She wasn’t healing, that was the wrong word. She was coming to terms with loss. As Anna had never been able to do.
• • •
SLEEPLESS, RESTLESS, IMAGES and snatches of conversation tumbling through her head, Anna decided that she would go read in the parlor. In the day the room was sunny, but there were gaslights, and a good chair, and a rug to put over her legs if the room was chilly.
Though Jack was a deep sleeper she moved very quietly, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat up.
“Savard.”
She lay back down again. He rolled to his side and yawned at her. The curtains weren’t closed all the way, so that she could just make out his features by the faint light from the streetlamp.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you need your sleep.”
“So do you.” He ran a hand down her arm. “The tension is rising off you in waves.”
“I’m going to go read until I’m too tired to stay awake.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Just rest next to me.”
His hand traveled up and down her arm, the lightest of touches.
She said, “I don’t want to talk about that dream.”
He hummed at her, his broad fingertips barely brushing along her skin. When she was about to say that it was no use, she would go read in the parlor, he made a soft shushing sound.
“I have a question that isn’t about your brother, and I want you to think about it before you answer.”
She drew in a deep breath. “All right.”
“Why did you feel so drawn to Rosa as soon as you met her?”
Others had asked her this question, but she had never answered it truthfully because, she knew this much, she didn’t know the answer. She thought back to that day in the church basement in Hoboken, all the frightened and anxious and angry children and Rosa, holding on with all her strength to her brothers and sister. As if they were all that kept her afloat. She was going to find her father. She had promised her mother. She would keep the family together, come what may. Anna had listened closely and watched her face, knowing that none of those things would happen. They were orphans and Italian, and they were about to be tossed into a whirlwind.
She said, “I was that determined too, once upon a time. When the telegram came saying Paul had been wounded in battle I tried to run away. I thought that if I could get to Virginia and find him in the army hospital he would get better.”
“How far did you get?”
“Not very. Uncle Quinlan caught up with me at the corner, on my way to the omnibus. I was six years old. I screamed and kicked and bit, but he never scolded me. He just carried me home to Aunt Quinlan and they sat with me while I howled.
“That evening Uncle Quinlan left for Virginia. Later Auntie told me he would have gone under any circumstances, but I still think that he went for me. The irony is that Paul was dead before Uncle Quinlan got there, but there was no way he could have known that and so he went around the field hospitals, asking. That’s how he caught typhus. He died not two days later and they both came home in coffins.”
Jack seemed to hesitate. “You blame yourself for your uncle’s death.”
She turned on her side to look at this man who was her husband. “I blame Paul. I blame Paul because when our parents died he swore he would always take care of me and never leave me, that when he grew up he’d have a house and we could live there together. And just three years later he broke his word and went to war. He was the most important person in my world. He knew that, but he left me to go to war when he promised he wouldn’t, and he died when he said he wouldn’t, and he took Uncle Quinlan with him. Uncle Quinlan was the only father I remembered.
“Everyone thinks that I was mourning my brother. That I’m still mourning him, but that’s not true. I was consumed with anger. I couldn’t say his name, I didn’t want to see his likeness, I hated him for leaving me. And I couldn’t say that, not to anyone. Not even to Aunt Quinlan. It was unsaid until Sophie came, but she understood without words.
“All these years people tiptoe around me when the subject of my brother comes up. It’s almost funny, sometimes. And the thing is, I’ve tried to stop, but I can’t feel any other way.”
She drew in a breath like a hiccup and turned away to lay an arm over her eyes. Her whole body was shaking, but she was powerless to do anything but let it happen. She was afraid to look at Jack, sure to see disappointment and disapproval where there had been no doubt.
• • •
JACK MADE HIMSELF take three deep breaths and reached for her. She came to him trembling, pressed her face against his shoulder, and wept.
When she was quiet he said, “I don’t know if it would be any comfort to me if I were in your place, but I can guarantee that your brother died thinking of you and full of regrets. You were so young, Anna. He was young too, but old enough to know that he had failed you. He made promises he couldn’t keep because he thought that would make you happy.”
She swallowed hard. “All these years I was so angry at him, so unforgiving, and then I went and did the same thing to Rosa that he did to me.”
Jack sat up, pulling her with him, holding on to her shoulders so he could look into her face, tear streaked and swollen.
“You are too rational a person to really believe that. You promised to look for the boys, and you’ve done that. You’re still doing that. Rosa doesn’t hate you. Anna, Rosa and Lia will love you for as long as they live.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple. “And so will I.”
43
ROSA CAME TO breakfast on Friday morning, without Lia. She stood very formally before Anna, her expression almost sorrowful as she put a folded piece of paper on the table.
“Will you read this, please?”
Anna could feel Jack watching them, but she kept her gaze focused on Rosa.
“Now?”
Rosa nodded, the muscles in her throat working hard as she swallowed.
Anna spread the single sheet open. Rosa had written from margin to margin, each letter carefully formed and spaced.
Dear Mayor of Annandale Staten Island New York,
I write to ask whether you have living in your town Eamon and Helen Mullen, and their two children, a girl and a baby boy. Mr. Mullen is a blacksmith. If you know of them I would very much like to learn their address in order to write them a letter. Thank you. Yours sincerely,
Rosa Russo
18 Waverly Place
New York NY
Anna finished reading and handed the sheet of paper to Jack. Rosa was staring at the floor, her head bent. She was trying so hard to be a grown-up, it wouldn’t do for Anna to start crying.
“Rosa.”
The small face came up, slowly. Misery and determination fought for the upper hand.
Anna said, “You’ll need a three-cent postage stamp. I’ve got some in my desk.”
After some discussion they came up with a plan. Every week Rosa would write to another town, one she chose from the atlas she found in the parlor bookcases at Roses. One week she would write to a town in New York, the next in New Jersey. Anna would provide the paper, envelope, and postage stamp.
Margaret would help her with the wording, consulting now and then with Aunt Quinlan and the others. Rosa could continue writing these letters for as long as she liked.
Rosa asked Jack a question that another man would have had trouble answering. “Do you think I might find them this way?”
He reached out and put a hand on the crown of her head. “I’ve seen stranger things happen.”
Elise came in as Rosa left.
“I’m about to leave for the hospital,” Anna said. “If you want
to walk with me you should get your things.”
“I will,” she said. “But I wanted to be sure you saw this.”
She put the New York Post on the table in front of Anna, and Jack immediately got up to come around and read over her shoulder.
• • •
NEW YORK POST
LATE EDITION
ARCHER CAMPBELL IN CUSTODY
STOLEN BEARER BONDS FOUND IN HIS POSSESSION
Acting on an anonymous tip, Detective Sergeants H. A. Sainsbury and M. P. Larkin of the New York Police Department yesterday searched the home of Archer Campbell at 19 Charles Street and found a number of stolen bearer bonds. Campbell resisted arrest and sustained significant injuries in his struggle with the detectives. He sits now in the Tombs awaiting arraignment.
Just weeks ago Campbell appeared in court to testify in the inquest into his wife’s sudden and tragic death. At the same time the couple’s four young sons disappeared without a trace and are still missing. The city mourned with Mr. Campbell for the loss of his family, only to find that their sympathy was ill placed.
The bonds found in his possession were just three of a larger issue of fifty. The Boston and New York police will interrogate Campbell in an attempt to uncover the location of the rest of the bonds.
“The Boston police tell us this was an older robbery,” Detective Sergeant Larkin told the Post. “It’s possible the rest of the bonds will never be recovered.”
It took a great deal of stern self-discipline, but Elise never asked about the newspaper article; she kept all her questions to herself and ignored the burn of curiosity in her throat.
Instead they talked about Regina Sartore’s surgery, which Anna had missed. To Elise Anna’s many questions felt something like an exam that she hadn’t studied for, but she answered with what turned out to be satisfactory detail. Finally she got up the nerve to ask about a different matter, almost as difficult as the newspaper article.