Twisted River

by Kelsey Gietl

  “You feel like you don’t matter to him, don’t you?”

  Maggie knew she hit the mark. The little boy reared back and slammed his heel against the wood grain, splintering the end of the board. He glared up at her. “Dad won’t care if I don’t come home.”

  “That’s not true.” She remembered how fired up Hugo became when Damaris suggested sending the children to an orphanage. Those children seemed to be one of the only things he could break out of himself to fight for. “Think of the sacrifices your father makes for you.”

  “That’s why I should run away. He wants to see places like before. When Mama was here, he would go away for months and never let us come.” He threw another firm kick at the stairs. “Now he doesn’t leave anymore, and he hates us. That’s why Mama left. She didn’t want us either.”

  How was she supposed to react to such words? A mother should probably respond with arms outstretched to offer hugs and kisses and pearls of wisdom. But, despite the child growing inside her, Maggie didn’t feel like a mother. Among her parents’ set, mothers were emotionally absent, their children more connected to their nannies and governesses than their own blood. Then one day every young lady woke up to receive a husband, breed babies, and treat her little ones in the same manner she had been treated. That was the golden rule, was it not?

  Clasping her hands, Maggie templed two fingers, channeling her father’s spirit instead. “Henry, sometimes adults do things children simply cannot understand. I felt like you do when I was little. My father often traveled to London, many miles away from our home, and he never brought me with him. Even so, I always knew in my heart that he loved me very much.” That statement at least was truthful. Her father had never treated her like a commodity.

  Henry frowned. He picked a rock from the ground and tossed it up in the air once ... twice. “Mine doesn’t. I made Mama go away. Now he’s got you. What does he need to love me for?” Winding back, he launched the rock against the brick of the opposite building and the mortar crumbled. Fat tears spilled out of his little hazel eyes, rolling down wind-chapped cheeks into his collar. With a yelp, he ran up the steps and disappeared inside.

  Maggie stood shell-shocked in the alley unable to quite regain her bearings as Henry’s accusation stabbed her senseless. She collapsed onto the stairs and cradled her head in her hands. His sisters never knew their mother like he did. They didn’t understand what it meant to lose a mother or gain a new one. But to an adult, it spoke volumes when a woman voluntarily walked away from her husband and abandoned her children. That wasn’t exactly a story for polite conversation with strangers or one any man would be proud to claim. Certainly most would blame Hugo for his wife’s absence, just as he blamed himself. Like father like son, they were both trapped in their own personal torment.

  Only when the wind whipped the first flakes of an oncoming snowfall through the alleyway did Maggie pry herself from the steps and re-enter the office. She paused on the other side, rubbing her hands together for warmth.

  “I won’t stand for it, Hugo,” Damaris spat, her voice slipping through the cracked parlor door. Maggie stepped closer, edging behind the desk to listen. “You always behave poorly after a birth, and I won’t be kept home for months because of her. Let’s go before the next one gets here and you lose your head again. We leave Tuesday.”

  Maggie nudged the office door open an inch. Through the crack, the children were visible outside the front window. Molly and Isa danced in circles on the sidewalk, sticking their tongues out to capture falling snowflakes, while Henry sulked against the glass. Hugo watched them with his back to Maggie. “Thanksgiving is Thursday, Damaris.”

  “The girls won’t notice,” his sister insisted. “Maggie won’t even care. She’s British.” She forced a wide envelope into Hugo’s hands. “This might be your only chance. You can’t argue that time is of the essence.”

  “Essence for what?” Maggie stepped into the room, drawing both their attentions. Hugo averted his eyes to the envelope clutched in his grip. Unfortunately not before Maggie saw the embarrassment on his face. His posture was quiet, as small as Isa’s when she found herself in trouble she never intended.

  “Come see for yourself,” Damaris purred. A grin rivaling the Cheshire Cat’s played across her lips. “The investigator found her. He found Emma.”

  TWENTY

  Neither Hugo nor Maggie spoke again of Emma’s assumed discovery until they were home with the children tucked into bed and steaming coffee situated on the study desk between them. Neither reached for their mug nor could either entertain the other’s gaze. All eyes stilled on the photographs Hugo slid from the investigator’s envelope—hurriedly captured photographs of a slender waitress through a restaurant window, her slight face tilted half in shadow. Impossible to identify with any degree of certainty, the woman could be the former Mrs. Frye as easily as she could not.

  Yet statistical probability mattered little when even the slightest possibility existed that Hugo could finally gain reparation for three years of life and love lost. He held the investigator’s typed correspondence in a white-knuckled grip, reading again the words he spent every penny searching for.

  Dear Mr. Frye ... pleased to inform you ... located your estranged wife ... Salt Lake City, Utah ... recommend immediate departure.

  He would divorce Maggie as soon as he found his other wife. Of course he would. It was exactly what she would do if the roles were reversed.

  With her usual haughty grin and a jar of molasses in her hand, Damaris floated into the room and perched upon the edge of the desk. She added a spoonful of the syrup to Hugo’s mug then prepared her own and handed the jar to Maggie. After the surprise announcement at the studio, she insisted on joining them for dinner supposedly to finalize the details. Mostly Maggie suspected it was to ensure her brother agreed to her plan.

  “We’ll be off on the usual ten o’clock train Tuesday?”

  Hugo stared at the letter without comment. Maggie sipped her coffee simply for something to do and waited.

  “Tuesday, Hugh?” Damaris pressed. She snatched the correspondence from his hands and scanned the lines again, her grin expanding with every sweep of her eyes. “If they think they found her, we have to go.” Her voice drew upward with a childlike ecstasy. “I’ve always wanted to see the red rocks of Utah. Ever since Papa told us about them all those years ago.”

  Hugo picked up the photographs. “Utah,” he repeated.

  Damaris stabbed a finger against the paper. “This even tells us the exact town and the boarding house she’s staying in. She’s listed under the name Adeline McClay.”

  Tossing the photos on the desktop, Hugo ran both hands through his hair and tilted back in the chair. He stared at the ceiling as though the plaster held the answers. “Adeline McClay.” He closed his eyes. “Adeline McClay. My wife.” The lilt made it a question rather than an assurance. Disbelief tinged with hope. Never had their age difference seemed more expansive to Maggie than it did now. Thirteen years seemed a lifetime. The day he married Emma, Maggie had only crossed into her twelfth year.

  “You should go to her.”

  Hugo’s eyes shot open with Maggie’s command. His lips parted, ready to ask the question, only she ordered herself to answer first. “Because this is the day you’ve been waiting for.”

  “What if it’s not? What if it isn’t her?”

  “Then you return home and try again.”

  He nodded, another question sealed within. And what if it is? What happens then?

  Maggie patted her stomach gently. “All will be well. I’ve always managed before.”

  His fingers came to rest on Emma’s image with a heavy exhale. “I don’t deserve you.”

  Slowly, she swirled her coffee, a single thought breaking through the steam, Does he mean her or me?

  “Absolutely true,” Damaris snapped. She flung the letter towards her brother only to stop its flight with a nail tip to the desktop. The abrupt motion deflected Hugo’s atten
tion in her direction. “You don’t deserve Maggie. You can do much better, and in fact have done. That’s why you’re taking this chance.”

  “Precisely,” Maggie agreed, “and you’ll bring Henry with you.”

  With chin squared, she rose from her seat in defiance against the unbelieving stares now focused on her. She folded her arms on her stomach. “That boy is longing for your attention, Mr. Frye. It’s why he’s acting out. Twice each year my father traveled to London, and he never once invited me along. Not even when I was all but grown. I never thought to question his reasons. I think now, like Henry, perhaps I should have.”

  “You couldn’t,” Damaris said. Bitterness punctuated her scowl, full of a deeper loathing than she had yet shown towards Maggie. “You were his eldest, entitled to everything if only you were a boy. Satisfied with a portion if you managed to marry well. But you were a plain insignificant little girl and unlike your sister, not destined for love. So you never traveled with your father, and you never questioned it, because what answer would he give? Surely not the truth?”

  If any words should have sent Maggie clawing the volatile sneer from her sister-in-law’s face it should have been the ones just spoken. Her skin warmed at the insinuation that Laurence Archer didn’t love her how she believed, or that he never brought her to London because she was less than worthy of his attentions. It had never been so with her father. With every breath, every smile, every heartbeat, she trusted in him more than anything. He was the only man who loved her unconditionally, the only man who ever truly could.

  Except even within his affection her father also held secrets, ones he refused to share even after death.

  Damaris sneered. “Your father left you no inheritance, the same as me. I refuse to believe you lost everything on Titanic—a ship you never boarded. So tell me I’m mistaken.”

  She wasn’t, Maggie admitted and questioned how she had the ability to keep her head held so high when inside she was now crumbling. Laurence Archer’s last will and testament left every monetary asset to Beatrix Archer, and their mother disowned them when her daughters chose Charles—chose America—over her. All their father bequeathed to Maggie was a letter, a letter he wouldn’t even hand her himself.

  “Go on,” Damaris laughed. “Argue with me, Maggie. Tell me how your father loved you so much more than my father loved me.”

  She couldn’t. Her tongue was heavy and her throat frozen. Had her entire life been merely a scream for attention? A little girl lashing out because deep down in some hollow part of her she craved a love she never fully received?

  “Mare, enough.” Hugo reached for his sister’s hand. “Why are you so heated? You know Pop loved us all the same.”

  “No, Hugh. Papa loved you. You were the one who loved me.” The danger in her eyes finally dimmed. She tapped the investigator’s letter. “I refuse to agree with her, but let us take Henry. Have him appreciate the life girls like us aren’t allowed.”

  Shoving her dark thoughts aside, Maggie focused on the issue at hand. There were only three things she could say with absolute certainty: Henry needed his father, Hugo needed his estranged wife, and unfathomably she and Damaris had pledged sister solidarity to the cause.

  She yanked at her left hand until she could twist her wedding ring ever so painfully off her swollen finger and held it out to Hugo. “Give this to Emma.”

  He pushed back from the desk and shook his head. “That’s yours.”

  “No,” Maggie argued. She extended her reach, even as he retreated further against the bookshelves behind him. “It’s yours. You need to offer her something when you find her. Don’t assume she still has hers. If I ran away, that’s the first thing I’d trade.” She shook it fervently, wanting him to rid her of the thing.

  The smoldering fireplace logs crackled into the silence while he argued with his eyes and the firm shake of his head. She knew what he wanted her to say. He was terrified of knowing and not knowing, of giving up a seven-year certainty—her—for a possible lifetime of doubt. Some unknowns were meant to stay buried, but this was not one of them.

  “Take it, Mr. Frye. If Emma were here, she would insist.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” he whispered. His broken eyes searched hers. “Because if Emma were here, you wouldn’t be.” Without a second glance, he swept the ring from her hand and escaped the room.

  Once his footfalls ascended the stairs, Damaris hopped from the desk. “Thank you, dearie, for making that so very easy to accomplish.” With a condescending pat to Maggie’s head, she sauntered for the door.

  Maggie whirled to snatch the older woman’s arm, her fingernails digging into a surprisingly firm muscle. “This is all a contest to you, isn’t it? Meddling with my emotions to win your brother’s?”

  “Of course it’s a contest,” Damaris twittered. “One I will win. Emma was no match for me, and neither are you.”

  “If you’re planning some treachery to rid Mr. Frye of me, it won’t work. If he can’t convince Emma to return, he has to abide by the prenuptial agreement we signed.”

  “That agreement was no more based on nuptials than your child shares blood with my brother.”

  “You know nothing,” she spat, although it was becoming increasingly clear that Damaris observed far more than they assumed. When the woman smoothed a single finger over Maggie’s stomach, she flinched and slapped her hand away.

  Damaris’s smile broadened. “Oh, Miss Margaret—such a revolting pet name my brother has for you—I’m twenty-three years wiser than you. It hasn’t been easy biding my time, but I knew luck would turn in my favor sooner or later. Before Emma left, our lives were about the rush of the journey, fairs and parties, something different and new and exciting every day. Now it’s been three years of doldrums.” She motioned to where the photographs of Emma’s alter-ego, Adeline McClay, still lay face up. “Utah is everything I’ve waited for. Hugo will never stay put once he remembers that the road is where we truly belong.”

  “Once he finds Emma, he’ll never leave her alone again. How foolish do you believe him to be?”

  “Not a fool. It will be under my direction that he’ll decide to bring all the devils with us.” With a final snide smile, Damaris swayed to the door, pausing only once before she turned the knob. “Life is like a carnival game at the fair, dearie. The fact is when it comes to my brother’s heart, Emma was the grand prize. You’re merely a consolation and always will be.”

  “Do you think I mind? Emma can have his heart,” Maggie returned vehemently as the door swung shut. She glazed her palm over her stomach, pausing at her baby’s favorite spot beneath her left hip. Immediately came the return of a tiny jab. “We only need each other,” she whispered.

  Dropping another log into the flames, Maggie sat alone until long after midnight, able even in the fire’s warmth to notice the chill on her barren finger and wonder why she felt it at all.

  ~~~

  December 15, 1912 –

  Three weeks later

  Scouring her hands and the dinner dishes in the hottest water she could manage, Maggie listened to the wind howl outside the window, every so often shaking the glass above the kitchen sink. Sleet pelted the panes behind the curtain, closed in a feeble attempt to ward off December’s cold. The garden lay as frozen as the ice floes bobbing in the Mississippi, and she prayed again for one of St. Louis’s unpredictable spring days to appear.

  For the hundredth time, Maggie glanced at the early Christmas card lying open on the counter from Amara Müller, her cabinmate on Höllenfeuer. She missed the young German girl’s spunky attitude, as positive as the flowing script wishing Gesundheit und Glück—health and happiness—in the new year. Her letters were the solitary bright spot in what was an otherwise most depressing winter.

  After Christmas, Maggie planned to pack her trunk. She had already located the women’s home in the city directory and by New Year’s Day, she would be gone from this place. She would bear another person into this world, and she refused
to yet acknowledge her fear in doing it alone.

  Pressing a hand to her heart, she yanked the plug from the sink. Hugo would have found Emma by this point. Had she agreed to return home or was he using this time to woo sense back into her? Would seeing her son be enough to convince her?

  “Molly!” she called. She flipped a towel from the drawer. “Isa! Dishes to dry.”

  There was no response. No sound at all and now that she thought on it, hadn’t been for a few minutes. She moved into the doorway. “Girls?”

  A scream echoed and Maggie sprinted for the living room, both hands braced to support her burgeoning stomach. She skidded to a stop when Isa slammed against her, buckling Maggie’s knees into the doorway. The little girl buried her face in her stepmother’s skirt and pointed over her shoulder.

  “Heavens, no ...” Maggie breathed. Shoving Isa to the side, she fell to her knees as panic seized.

  Eyes rolled back beneath a face burning with fever, Molly convulsed upon the rug unable to respond while her stepmother cradled her body and helplessly called her name.

  TWENTY-ONE

  December 15, 1912 –

  Elsewhere that same evening

  “Race you to the bottom!”

  Hands snug inside Karl’s woolen gloves, Tena clung to the red wooden sled, her knees hugged nearly to her chest and toes tingling against the rudder. Flying down the snowy hill, her heart sang as icy wind nipped her cheeks and laughter bubbled from her lips. With her only light from the waning moon and three glass lanterns perched at the slope’s end, the world rushed by in the dark blur of the eleven o’clock hour, announced only minutes before by distant church bells. For all that mattered, it may as well be the middle of the day. Neither the hour nor how numb her feet became could end the joy of this night.

  As she neared the end of the hill, she flung herself sideways into the snow inches from the edge of the frozen water. Situated at the bottom of what the locals referred to as Art Hill, the Grand Basin had been constructed for the 1904 World’s Fair along with the magnificent Palace of Art on the hilltop above it. Even in the near darkness, the white columns of the city’s art museum gleamed in the light flickering from their bonfire. She imagined its brilliance under the daytime sun must be even more spectacular.