What You Said to Me

by Olivia Newport

  He laid down his pen on the kitchen table, where he’d been writing while nursing a late evening cup of tea. Missouri came in from her thinking bench and stood at the window to continue her evening vigil.

  “He’ll come,” Cliff said.

  “It’s late.”

  “Not so late.”

  “I didn’t mean to disturb your journaling.”

  “You didn’t.” Cliff capped his pen and closed the journal.

  “Mama needs to understand that Loren and I are going to be together,” Missy said.

  Clifford nodded. “You have my blessing.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Thank you, Papa.”

  “You’re not so different than when your mother and I started out. She’ll come around.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I’m in your corner, Missouri. Right now everything feels untrue. No jobs, no money. Your mother’s nerves clanging about every little change. You’re old enough to remember she hasn’t always been like this.”

  “Doesn’t she know she can trust you?”

  “I certainly like to think so.”

  “Then what changed?”

  Clifford drew in a slow breath. “Sometimes other things get in the way. Things we can’t control. Things we never imagined would happen that mean the old answers won’t work no matter how badly we want them to.”

  “Well, I trust you, Papa. I don’t know what the answers are for our family, but I know you won’t stop looking for them.”

  Clifford smiled. “I do enjoy our little talks, Missouri.”

  “Me too.”

  He picked up the journal. “I think I’d like you to have this.”

  “Your journal? That’s private.”

  Cliff shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose. But I haven’t written anything in it I’m ashamed for you to read, even if some of it may be new to you. You share my heart in a way your sisters don’t. It’s only half full. Why don’t you take it from here?”

  “But what will you write in?”

  “Maybe I’ll start another someday. Or maybe my writing days have come to a close. My life is taking some unexpected changes, but yours is just starting.” Cliff held the journal toward Missy.

  Tentatively, she took it. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just receive it and carry on.” Cliff glanced out the window. “Looks like he’s home. You can go to bed and rest easy now.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  “In the morning, ask him to wait for me around the corner. We can go out to the relief camp together and see if we can find news of our other men.”

  She nodded, and they both went upstairs.

  Loren had on fresh clothes the following day. The trousers fit his leaner frame better than his own had after the last few weeks, though Missy was doing what she could to fatten him up again now.

  “Tell me you’ve left your money clip at home,” Loren said.

  Clifford nodded, and they began to walk. It was a long way to Riverfront Park, where the camp was, but they both had more time than money, even for a streetcar.

  “I have some news,” Loren said.

  “Oh?” Clifford looked at him.

  “The People’s Tabernacle is going to make an announcement today.”

  Clifford’s stomach sank. “It’s not good news, is it?”

  “I heard Parson Tom talking about it yesterday. Their committee has made a firm decision. They can no longer keep trying to feed all the single men who have flooded the city.”

  “I don’t know how they’ve managed as long as they have.”

  “They feel they must return to focusing on serving the poor who are permanent residents of Denver, especially women and children. There just aren’t enough donations to go around.”

  “This will be devastating to the camp,” Cliff said.

  “I’m so grateful that you’ve taken me in,” Loren said. “Obviously I would hate to have to leave Denver, or even Colorado, right now. I’m going to try again to see if I can get one of the jobs the city is offering.”

  “They must have four or five men applying for every job they have.”

  “I’m still going to try.”

  “If it helps, I’m happy to be a reference. But Loren—”

  “Yes?”

  Clifford shook his head. “Never mind.” It was better if no one knew until arrangements were certain.

  At the camp they found piles of lumber. Clifford stopped one of the camp organizers.

  “What’s all this? Are we building more permanent structures than the tents after all?”

  “Rafts,” the man said.

  “Rafts?”

  “The city is providing the lumber. The men can build rafts and put off into the river.”

  Clifford blinked, awaiting a more reasonable explanation. When none came, he said, “Put off into the South Platte River without provision or destination? Where will they go?”

  “The current will take them.” The man mopped sweat off his forehead. “They can’t stay here. We don’t know if we’ll even have a meal for them tomorrow or the day after.”

  That evening Clifford found Missy writing in the journal—or trying to—as once again she waited to be sure Loren had come home for the night.

  “I don’t know how to get started,” she said.

  “It will come to you when you’re ready.”

  “I read what you wrote. I felt nosy at first, but you wouldn’t give me the journal and not expect me to read it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You worked so hard for so long, Papa. I’m sorry everything fell apart. None of it was your fault.”

  “The drop in silver prices wasn’t, and I can’t help what President Cleveland intends to do even though he knows it will only make the catastrophe worse in the western states. But there are some decisions I wish I could take back.”

  “Mama was very quiet at dinner tonight.”

  Clifford nodded. “Everything is out of her control. I think she realizes none of this is suddenly going to improve.”

  “Have you no employment prospects at all, Papa?”

  Clifford reached for the inner pocket of the suit jacket he still wore most of the time when he left the house, to appease Georgina, and touched the envelope of papers.

  “I have put together an unconventional plan.” He resisted the urge to remove the papers and say more. “It won’t be long now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I wasn’t there, but my dad said it was bad. Very bad.” After her morning run, Jillian pulled a brush through her tangled hair while she spoke to Nia using the speaker feature on her cell phone. “I feel like I’m prepared to work harder at thinking before I speak, but I can’t control what state of mind her own mother puts her in.”

  “Has Nolan thought about checking with the police or Child Protective Services to see if there have been previous complaints?”

  “I think he plans to. My guess is neighbors have complained about noise, but if the police get there and don’t see anyone hurt, what will happen?”

  “Sadly, nothing,” Nia said. “I had a student in Denver in a similar home situation. But he showed no signs of physical abuse. He had secure shelter, food, and clothes. They dropped him at school on time every morning. He didn’t always come in, because, like Tisha, he had bigger things on his mind. But they got him there.”

  “I guess we never know what someone is going through.” Jillian grabbed a band and attacked the task of taming her hair enough to get it off her neck for the hottest hours of the day.

  “Unfortunately, being nasty to your kid is not illegal,” Nia said. “And in Colorado, parents can use reasonable and appropriate force to discipline a child.”

  “But what is reasonable and appropriate?”

  “That question only becomes relevant if a case gets in front of a jury.”

  “In other words, it has to be pretty bad.”

  “Right. Just listen to her, Jills.”

>   “It seems like no one else does. Except my dad.” Jillian moved from the powder room into the kitchen. She had time to make a fortifying caffeine beverage before Tisha’s arrival. “Somehow Brittany and Peggy manage to put on their manners to work in the shops.”

  “But they’re never all that happy about it, if you pay attention,” Nia said. “It’s like they work in the stores because they’ve always worked in the stores, not because they enjoy interacting with people. Seems to me the family has been unhappy a long time, all the way back to that diary fragment at the Heritage Society.”

  Jillian’s movements froze. “The one in the display case in the front room?”

  “Yep.”

  “I haven’t thought of that in years. Georgina Brandt, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “That’s what Tisha meant when she told me her family used to be rich. The Brandts. But no one has ever figured out why one random diary page surfaced. It’s not much of a story.”

  “Well, there you go,” Nia said. “Now there’s a girl who needs to know the whole story and a genealogist who can help her sort it out.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “She’s here,” Jillian said. “Gotta go.”

  Tisha wore a change of clothes since yesterday, so she’d made it home at some point, Jillian presumed. The defiance in her features, which had softened slightly after a day of building with Nolan, had reset beneath haggard shades, suggesting she hadn’t slept much.

  “Great! You have your raspberry soda.” Jillian infused sparkle to her greeting. “Ready to work!”

  Tisha simply nodded and shuffled into the house.

  “I looked at the bookshelves last night,” Jillian said. “They look terrific!”

  “We still have to finish the second one. Nolan said maybe Saturday, or Friday afternoon if he has time. You can’t put any weight on those shelves yet.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I got out the file boxes I bought, so we can put those together. Do you feel ready to get back to labeling so we can box everything up?”

  “Nolan will be glad to have the table back.”

  Was that a half smile on Tisha’s face?

  Jillian sipped her coffee. “I believe the two of you might be colluding, but since it seems to be friendly conspiring, I will let it pass.”

  “They’re not the same, you know. Colluding and conspiring. Separate legal definitions.”

  Jillian chuckled. “My dad would be proud of you for pointing that out. I’ll look up the distinction and be more careful.”

  “You’re all right, because it is possible to be doing both at the same time.”

  “How about we avoid anything involving nuances of deceit and go straight for positive cooperation?”

  Tisha met Jillian’s gaze, but her eyes had flattened again. “I can do that.”

  Jillian felt like sentencing herself to a fifteen-mile punitive run. She’d taken the banter a jive too far. Reading Tisha—well, she still wasn’t very good at it.

  “Well, let’s get started.” Jillian nodded toward the sideboard. “The label maker is there.”

  “Do you still want separate blue and red folders?”

  “Yes, please. It’s important for our research to know what came from the original folders and what comes from other sources. Plus, for the families we eventually find, they might like to have those original documents. I want to be confident I know right where they are, even if I’ve scanned them.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Have you ever used a scanner?”

  “A couple times at school.”

  “I have a pretty good one. You’re going to become an expert at adjusting settings for the best image.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Until yesterday, you didn’t know you could use a power drill.”

  Tisha almost laughed.

  “I have a nine thirty video call with my client Raúl. I will leave you to carry on.”

  “You’re not going to check my every move?” Tisha cocked her head, suspicious.

  “I have to be on this call,” Jillian said. “Raúl relies on me, and I don’t want to lose his business. I expect it’s going to take thirty or forty minutes. So I’m depending on you to do the best work you can labeling and stacking the folders, getting them ready for boxes to go on the shelves you built with your own hands.”

  “I had some help with the shelves.”

  “Shhh. Don’t let my dad hear you say that. He tends to let that sort of thing go to his head.”

  Jillian exhaled as she went around the corner and set up for her video call. She might well spend her evening going through the work Tisha did while unsupervised because the girl’s head swam with the emotions of her home conflicts. On the other hand, if Nolan’s efforts at making the Duffy home a safe space—and Jillian’s apology—were bearing any fruit, Tisha might surprise her with more accurate work. Jillian likely wouldn’t know until she double-checked everything later, away from the impulse to chastise and correct.

  Forty minutes later, her heart sank at the sight of an idle label maker not even within easy reach and very few blue and red completed folders. Instead, several previously organized stacks were unclipped and the contents spread atop other piles. Jillian sucked in her lips for a few seconds before speaking.

  “Tisha?”

  The pink head lifted. “These stories are awful.”

  Jillian slid her feet forward a couple of yards, waiting for words to come to her. The table was a disaster—and Tisha? What just happened?

  “Have you read these?” Tisha said. “I mean, really read them?”

  Jillian nodded, resisting the urge to sort pages she could see were intermingled. “That’s how the mess ended up on the table in the first place.”

  “I suppose the babies never knew the difference—if they went to good homes. We don’t know where they ended up, though if they had decent mothers to begin with, they didn’t deserve what happened. But some of these kids were separated from their parents and then separated from their brothers and sisters too. And they were old enough to remember having another family than wherever they ended up. That is so unfair.”

  Righteous indignation. Yes!

  Jillian sat in a chair beside Tisha and looked at the papers on the table and in her lap.

  “Before, you asked me to look at names,” Tisha said. “Spelling. Ages. Whether there were siblings. Whether the papers mentioned cities.”

  “Yes. All that will help in the searches as we eventually build a database.”

  “But don’t you see? That’s like trying to answer questions on a book you haven’t read. The students who do that fail the quizzes. You have to know the whole story for any of it to make sense.”

  Click.

  The explanation Jillian gave the previous week hadn’t fallen into place. Maybe she hadn’t had time to consider how to approach introducing the project, and maybe Tisha hadn’t had opportunity to clear her mind—and attitude—to care. Whatever had gone wrong was shifting today, right now, even at the risk of the piles losing order yet again.

  “What in the world did they tell those kids about why suddenly they had new parents?” Tisha tapped a page.

  “That’s a very good question.” Gingerly, Jillian moved a few sheets from a chair so she could sit down. For now she kept the pages safe in her lap.

  “I read one file where they took children from a woman who didn’t have a husband. So what? They wrote some ridiculous platitudinous thing about how every child deserves a father. Well, as much as I’d like to know who my father is—and that’s a lot—I never said I didn’t care who my mother was.”

  “Of course not.” Jillian blinked at Tisha. Did Nolan realize how close to home this work was going to hit for her when he suggested it?

  “Children are people too, you know.”

  “I do know.”

  Tisha picked up another stack from the table. “Here’s one where a woman who was ba
bysitting a family with twin baby girls stole one of them. She knew she could get money for that ‘extra’ baby. Extra baby. That’s what they called her. It’s right there in the notes. What kind of people would write down words like that? Maclovia, if that was really her name. Who knows what happened to her?”

  “I remember that one.” Jillian took the file from Tisha. “A name like that sticks in your head.”

  “They even put where they got her from specifically so there could be absolutely no chance they would adopt her out to a family in that county, because, after all, the twins were identical, and that would be a dead giveaway.”

  “That’s going to be a huge clue.” Jillian scanned the file for more information. “She was born in 1939, so there’s a chance she’s still alive.”

  “But her parents aren’t.”

  “Not likely. Her twin could be, though, and their other siblings. The notes say there were other children in the home. They probably lived their whole lives wondering what happened to their baby sister.”

  “She has a right to know,” Tisha said. “We have to find her.”

  We.

  Jillian nodded. “We’ll put this at the top of the list. There are some good leads in the file. Place. Date. A unique name. If she was taken as an infant, there’s a good chance she was born in the town she was taken from. Since she was born before the 1940 census, which is the last census we have public access to, we have that as a starting point.”

  “Is that how this works?”

  “It’s one avenue. The records we have are from June 1940, so there’s at least some chance she would be listed in the census with her birth family in April when the census was taken. Whoever took her would not have been able to alter that. Depending on the state, sometimes birth records are public. I have paid subscriptions to various databases. We keep looking until we find the piece of the puzzle that starts opening up the whole picture.”