“That will never happen,” I say. “The police will have your files documenting the true number of deaths. We have the letter describing ‘blue,’ your ‘solution.’ These are murders. The killers will be prosecuted.”
“No, my dear,” Cecily says with a pitying look on her face. “The letter seems damning. But in court, it will be laughed at. There is nothing that says we ever used this plan.
“We merely inoculated the unfortunates who had been exposed to the flu before they came here. Sadly some died. You need a piece of paper that says, ‘We, the undersigned, plan to do this, this, and this to kill the unfit.’ You don’t have that and never will. It doesn’t exist.”
“I’ll testify to what you just told me.” I can feel my face getting hot.
“And I’ll deny it. Now who is more likely to be believed, hmm?”
“What about Father then? He was one of you, but he hated the ‘solution.’ He’ll testify about your plans.”
Cecily shakes her head. “No, he won’t. He didn’t approve of this project, but he never knew we put it in practice. And even if he did”—she leans toward me, triumph shining in her eyes—“he would take the long view and do what is good for the Betterment movement as a whole. He would not drag us through the mud.”
I leave the room; I can’t breathe. She has strangled me with her words.
The key is in the lock. I lock her in and give the key to Louise, saying, “The next time Cecily leaves that room will be with the police.”
Chapter 46
Voices rise into the warm, sunny morning, carried on a light breeze. Pools of water in the road reflect the bright sky. Reuben is sawing the tree that fell on the generator. He gives me a wave. Tom and Jack stand a few feet away, deep in conversation.
I walk down the front steps and sit taking deep breaths of fresh salt air and feeling nothing.
“No, I said.” Tom’s voice is low and desperate. “I won’t go back. I can’t. Not now. Not after this.”
“After what?” Jack says.
“Don’t follow me.”
“Stop,” Jack yells. “Don’t go.”
I stand up. Tom is running along the narrow cliff path away from the house, toward the bay.
Fear, as sharp and urgent as a kick, sends me after him, walking as fast as I can.
That tone in Tom’s voice scared me too. I have to catch up to him. The sun turns the ocean rippling far below to gold. Above, small white clouds sail across the deep blue of the sky. The storm has blown out to sea. But nothing distracts me. I’m being pulled straight to Tom.
The cliff path rises to a high point, and when I get up there, I find him. He sits on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling into nothingness. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me. “Reuben told me about this place. He calls it the top of the island. It’s as good as any.”
I sit down. I study his handsome face, locked in a mask of pain. “Good for what?”
“I learned something here,” he says.
After a long silence, I ask, “What?”
“How to help people.” His voice has a bitter edge.
Far below, waves surge against shiny black rocks, dousing them in foam. “Yes.” I say, “Dorchy and I saw it. You helped us.” It is hard to say her name, but when I do, it feels good. As if she’s here with us.
He looks at me with a lopsided grin. “You did the same for me. And Dorchy.” He shakes his head, remembering. “Hands down she’s the bravest person I ever met. She saved us by jumping out of that tree. To stop Vera and save us, she had to yell and jump in front of the horse at the same time.”
“I’ll never stop feeling guilty,” I say.
“Me neither.”
I hear the pain in his voice and say softly, “Now the police will go after all of them, especially Dr. Jellicoe and Vera. In my mind I can see their pictures on the front page of a newspaper. Walking into court, heads hanging low.”
He spits out into space. “You have a lot to learn, if you think that.”
“That letter I found in the file is evidence of what they did here,” I say. Cecily dismissed it, but I want to give him hope. A gull swoops below us, screaming a warning.
“I know you believe that evildoers get punished,” he says. “I used to. But nothing in my life or yours bears that out.”
He stands up and moves back from the cliff edge, then bends to untie his boots. “It comes down to this.” He kicks the boots off. “I let down the boys I was supposed to protect. I closed my eyes to what happened to them and to the ones who came after them.”
I stand up next to him, my heart racing. “Come back to the house with me.” I struggle to sound calm.
He grabs my hands and gives them a squeeze. “You mean well, Rowan, but you shouldn’t have followed me up here. Go back. Now.”
Desperation makes my voice tremble. “You aren’t responsible for what happened to the boys. The killers are. Who will bring them to justice if not us?”
He shakes his head. “There’s no justice for them. No one will believe us. We’re just corks in a river headed for the falls.” He takes a deep breath and abruptly moves to the cliff edge, dislodging loose stones. They cascade down through the blue air.
I follow him, begging now. “Move back, Tom. You’re too close.”
He gives his head and shoulders a shake and says without turning. “Go back, Rowan. Please.”
“Tom, listen.” He’s so close to the edge. I have to keep him talking. “We stopped them. We got the boys, all except Ratty and Snout. We got Posy and Magdalena. Louise says all the sick ones will recover. That’s something.”
“But not my boys, Harry, Arthur, Bert, and Tommy. Or Ratty. Or Elsa. Or Dorchy.” His voice breaks on her name. He turns to look at me and spits the words. “Not the twins. And the worst criminals got clean away.”
“They won’t win.” I will him to believe this, even though, after listening to Cecily, I’m not sure.
He says nothing. Turns back to face the ocean. A breath. A heartbeat.
I grab his hand, keeping my crutch close to my side.
“No.” He tries to pull away.
I lean back and hang on. “If you jump, you’ll take me with you.” My heart, mind, and body connect in the words I fling out: “I lost her; I won’t lose you.”
In front of us, a gull dives straight down the face of the cliff, an arrow into the waves.
“Let go,” he says, and starts prying my fingers back. The loose rocks under our feet start to slide. I shift my weight to keep my footing, stabbing at the ground with my crutch, loosening more stones. The ground starts to give way.
He yanks me back so hard I fall, dragging him down onto the path with me. Safe. Still holding hands.
Staring up at the sky, I say, “We have to live to remember the ones who died. They don’t have anyone else.”
He doesn’t say anything, but after we stand up, he squeezes my hand.
When we get to the house he says, “Thanks. I’m all right now.”
“Promise?” I try to read his expression.
“You won’t lose me, Rowan. I promise.”
Chapter 47
Later that morning three lobster boats arrive. In one is a police constable, in another one an undertaker, and in the third a newspaper reporter. The lobstermen have wind-toughened faces and reddened hands. Everyone else looks seasick. Tom and Reuben meet the boats at the dock and bring the constable and undertaker first to the cave to collect Snout’s body and then to Cecily’s house. The reporter is left with no one to talk to except Dr. Ritter and the nurses at the staff cottage.
I go into the sitting room to say a final good-bye to Dorchy before the undertaker comes. Her body is covered with a white sheet. But everything that was Dorchy has escaped this small, sad room. I leave the way I would depart a station waiting room, eager to be on my way. On my
way out, a moth—small, plain, light brown—brushes my cheek.
The constable takes Cecily, Dr. Ritter, and the nurses to the mainland where Miss Latigue will join them. Cecily’s lawyer will meet all of them at the dock.
Louise asks for help nursing the sick boys and Posy until the ferry comes tomorrow, bringing Louise’s sister, a nurse. Tom and Jack help with the boys, while Magdalena and I amuse Posy. Tom, Jack, Magdalena, and I will leave on the ferry.
Reuben is staying at the house while Cecily is gone. No one has seen or heard of Vera and Dr. Jellicoe. Maybe they drowned, as Tom seems to think.
The rest of that day and night I feel pulled in so many different directions that it’s hard to know what to feel.
Posy asks me about Dorchy’s body, and if she’ll have a funeral. That’s up to Miss Latigue, I say. I expect she’ll try to find Dorchy’s uncle, a carny at Coney Island in New York. Otherwise the Council will take care of a burial.
I tell Posy about the moth and the feeling that Dorchy wasn’t there anymore.
“The moth was her spirit,” Posy says. When I protest, she says, “Don’t argue. I believe it. And someday you will too.”
When the ferry arrives on Sunday, I’m ready to go. I have a plan, and I have the rest of the money Dorchy took from Mr. Ogilvie and the twenty dollars Miss Latigue gave Dorchy and me. I know Dorchy wouldn’t mind me using her share. I give Mr. Ogilvie’s watch to Tom.
Tom surprises me on Sunday. As we walk to the ferry, he tells me that before Cecily left, Reuben asked her if he could hire Tom to stay on the island to work and she said yes.
“I’ll be earning money,” he tells me with pride in his voice. “I’d like to save up and get an education, maybe even be a teacher someday.”
“But Reuben helped Vera and Dr. Jellicoe,” I say. “How can you trust him?”
Tom says, “I can’t explain it. He could have led them to the cave, but he didn’t. And he refused to hunt down Ratty. Besides, his loyalty isn’t to them anymore. We’re going to rebuild the lighthouse in Dorchy’s memory. And Cecily has agreed to put in a radio, so there will be direct contact with the mainland.”
At the ferry he says, “Be happy, Rowan.”
And I say, “Good-bye, Tom.”
He stands waving on the dock for as long as I can see him.
Chapter 48
On the ferry I write a letter to Miss Latigue, promising to give her a full report soon. I mail it in Rockland and catch the train to Boston. It’s late when I arrive, so I go to the Parker House Hotel, where Father often stayed before the war.
I have enough money to pay for a room for two nights. I ask the desk clerk to help me call Dr. Friedlander at the Children’s Hospital right away.
“It’s Sunday, miss,” he says gently.
“All right,” I say, “first thing tomorrow, please.”
Then I send a telegram to Julia in New York: Staying at Parker House Hotel. Home Tuesday. Rowan.
At noon on Monday Dr. Friedlander and his wife come to the hotel restaurant where I’ve asked them to meet me. Dr. Friedlander looks the same, tall and quiet with a twinkle in his eye. He introduces me to his short, bubbly wife, Annie, who is also a doctor. “Call me Dr. Annie,” she says. “Two Dr. Friedlanders in one conversation can be very confusing.” Over lunch, they disagree about almost everything, but in a lighthearted way. I bask in their banter and tell the story of riding the waves on Cape Cod. Climbing the lighthouse is too hard to talk about right now.
Before lunch is over, I get to the point. “Dr. Friedlander,” I say, “I have left the Boston Home for good. Now I would like to work with you as a ward assistant with polio patients. And enter nursing school next year.”
“I’d be delighted,” he says, smiling. “But I need to hear in your own words why you want to do this now.”
“Because from the very beginning, you believed that I would walk again. You made me believe it. And now that I’m walking and climbing and riding the waves, I know I can help other patients believe in themselves.”
He smiles. “I support your plan. But what do your father and sister say about it?”
“I wanted to ask you first,” I say. “I’m on my way to New York to discuss it with them. But since it is the only thing in the world that I want, I believe they will be very happy to support me in this.” Do I really believe this? Or did I just lie to Dr. Friedlander? “To be honest,” I go on, “I’m trying to believe they will support me.”
“Tell your father and sister you’ll be living with us at the start,” says Dr. Annie, patting my hand. “That may ease their fears about a young girl living in a strange city. And maybe I’ll convince you to study for a medical degree. You never know.”
“Thank you.” Tears well up. I brush them away.
As we say good-bye, Dr. Friedlander hugs me. “If I thought you wanted this just to get back at your father and sister, I would discourage it,” he says. “But your reasons are very gratifying. You will be an enormous help to my young patients. Bravo.”
He promises to write a letter to Father, explaining about the job at the hospital, my studies and their cost, and his offer to provide me with a place to live. He’ll mail the letter to the hotel so I can take it to Father.
When I go back to my room, I have a message from Julia. She’s in Boston and will meet me here at five o’clock. If she expects me to go back to the Home and Dr. Pynchon, she’s in for a surprise.
Chapter 49
Julia appears at the door of my hotel room in a beautiful summer suit of paisley silk, pale yellow gloves, and a pretty straw hat. She takes one look at me and sinks down on the bed.
“What’s happened to you? You’re thin as a rail. Those horrible clothes. And that crutch. Father paid good money for two crutches, and here you are three months later looking like an orphan.”
I feel like one.
She doesn’t wait for me to answer but just goes on. “What possessed you to get involved with the Van Giesens? They are out of control, always have been. That’s why Father broke with them years ago.”
I stare at her, not knowing where to begin. She’s turned me into a speechless ten-year-old.
Julia unpins her hat and lays it on the bed. Then she strips off her gloves and jumps up to study her face in the mirror. “The train is a disaster for one’s skin,” she says. “Don’t you agree?” She takes out a pretty gold compact and powders her nose. “Now tell me everything that happened. It’s been in the papers that children died there.” She turns around expectantly.
“Another time, Julia.” A huge weariness sweeps over me. “Ask Miss Latigue.”
“Well, you’ll be glad to hear you’re coming home with me.”
Home. Not the Boston Home. Just home. How happy those words would have made me in June.
“Dr. Pynchon has been informed in no uncertain terms that what she did was completely unacceptable. Your things are being shipped to New York at her expense,” Julia says. “That woman betrayed our trust and hired you out as a freak in a sideshow run by the New England Council.” She shudders. “Those awful carnival people you were forced to rub shoulders with.”
How dare she?
“My best friend is a carny,” I begin, but she rides over me as always.
I stop listening. She’ll never know what I accomplished this summer. She’ll never know me.
But her next words drag me back to the conversation. “Father gave me a camera to use in Europe this summer,” she says. “We’ve spent the past few days in the darkroom. Father thinks I can be quite a good photographer with more training. So, guess what? He’s sending me to the Art Students League to study photography in the fall. Whatever happened to your little Brownie?”
I shrug and fight back tears.
“Now let’s talk about us. We’ll spend a couple of days in Boston,” she says, “enjoying ourselves and�
�—she looks critically at my clothes—“shopping.” She takes my hand and bows her head. “I’m sorry I broke my promise to come on your birthday,” she says. “Father asked me to do something for him, and I couldn’t say no. I’ll make it up to you when we get to New York. Just tell me how.”
Father asked me…I couldn’t say no. Does she ever think for herself?
I explain my plan to return to Boston as a ward assistant living with the Friedlanders until I enter nursing school. She looks relieved. “You’ll need Father’s permission and money for expenses. I’ll help you get both.”
Later, as we’re getting ready for dinner in the hotel restaurant, I ask her the question that has tortured me all summer. “Dr. Pynchon showed me a letter with your signature on it, permitting me to go to the Unfit Family show. Did she forge your name?”
“No, I signed it, but I can explain,” Julia says, tears running down her face. “Dr. Pynchon wrote to Father about ‘a five-week sterilization-education project,’ and because we were going to Europe, it sounded perfect. You’d be away from the Home and learning something useful. Father told me to give permission. I apologize for not standing up to him and asking more questions.”
Her tears make me feel better. I don’t mention that without the Unfit Family show I would not have met Dorchy, the best thing that ever happened to me.
The restaurant food tastes rich and unfamiliar; I nibble at it. Julia goes on and on about her trip to Europe with Father. She’s afraid to be silent for one second in case I tell her about my horrible summer. She doesn’t really want to know.
“Julia, stop.” I interrupt her description of Father’s lecture on sterilization in Paris at the European Academy of Science and Society. “You have to think for yourself now.”
Julia snorts, or maybe it’s a choked-back sob. She looks very pale.
I stop, wondering if I’ve gone too far.
She folds her linen napkin, pressing on the creases. “But Father needs me. You know that.”
“You say you’re afraid of the ocean,” I say. “But you liked it once. I saw the photographs Mother took when you were little. You can like it again. And you can have your own ideas, not Father’s.”
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