by Mary Hogan
DEDICATION
To the resilient people of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Past and present.
EPIGRAPH
“You and your people are in no danger
from our enterprise.”
—BENJAMIN F. RUFF, PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTH FORK FISHING AND HUNTING CLUB
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .* About the author
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Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE PITTSBURG DISPATCH
1889
CHAPTER 1
The previous day . . .
Memorial Day
May 30, 1889
Elizabeth, please.” Mother looks away from the train window long enough to eye me sharply. “Why do you test me?”
I frown as she grips the gloves in her lap and returns her gaze to the branches flickering past. It’s Memorial Day. Yet the weather matches my mood: stormy. It rained all morning. More is on its way. Even now, in a dry patch, the gathering clouds are the shade of dried lobelia. It’s destined to be the dreariest week of my life. I can barely breathe. The air in the Pullman is as dense as Connaught pudding.
“All I’m saying is that the newest styles from France don’t choke the very life out of yo—”
“No daughter of mine will dress like a Parisian trollop.”
The crease between Mother’s eyebrows mars the creamy skin that was once a smooth canvas over her legendary aqua-colored eyes. I’ve come to begrudge that scolding expression as much as the two words that often accompany it: “Elizabeth” and “please.” As if I were a naughty child.
“It’s eighteen eighty-nine,” I mutter. “Not eighteen-fifty.” Then I cross my arms over my chest, knowing Mother dislikes such a common gesture.
Tears threaten. Not only was I awakened this morning too early to be agreeable, I am now stuck on the Pennsy with my mother and six-year-old brother on our way to Lake Conemaugh. No one will be at the lake this early in the season. The clubhouse will be deserted. The sculls will be locked in the boathouse. Not a single stable hand will be there to saddle a horse. Plus, the timing couldn’t be worse.
“You can plan your debut at the cottage as well as here,” Father had said, leaving me speechless. My quadrille lessons in Pittsburgh require daily practice to reach perfection. Would Father have me embarrass the family by stepping on a gentleman’s toes? Did he think it was easy finding a gown that would be the envy of everyone? One that Mother would allow? With matching shoes that didn’t pucker? There isn’t a moment to waste. Especially after the unfortunate events of last summer—and my current predicament—so much is at stake. Certainly Mother has reminded Father—as she has me endlessly—that my entire future depends upon a flawless performance.
I sigh. It’s more than any eighteen-year-old girl should have to bear.
“How much longer, ’Lizbeth?” Henry asks.
“Elizabeth,” Mother corrects him.
“Two more stops,” I say, curtly.
On the seat next to me, my little brother makes figure eights with the toy train he brought along for the ride. “Whoo, whoo!” Ruddy-cheeked, he gazes at me with adventure dancing in his eyes. “Mother says you might take me exploring around the lake.”
I glance at Mother and she glances at me.
“It’s too muddy today,” I say.
“Tomorrow, then?”
“We’ll see.” I think, What else is there to do?
“Last summer, Albert Vanderhoff told me he saw a baby deer behind the clubhouse. But no one else saw it, so I think he made it up.”
“Albert lied to you?”
“It’s not lying if it’s your imagination. That’s what Albert Vanderhoff says.”
In spite of my frustration, I laugh. To have such innocence. Such certainty! Twelve years separate my brother and me. Most of the time, it feels as if we were born into two different families. I am Elizabeth Haberlin, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Stafford Haberlin, of the Pittsburgh Haberlins, of Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania.
“You are a reflection of me,” Father often tells me. Too often. When I look into a pier glass, I prefer to see my own face.
Henry is merely Little Henry. He is a boy who will grow into a man who will never feel the obligations that suffocate women like a spoon busk corset. Even as Father’s patients are maligned in the newspaper—Mr. Frick’s tug-of-war with his workers at the steel mill, Mr. Carnegie’s battles with Mr. Frick, Mr. Mellon’s public arguments over the value of his properties, and Mr. Vanderhoff’s vulgar disputes with his working-class tenants—his daughter must be above reproach.
“Discretion and propriety are as important to your father’s practice as a proper diagnosis,” Mother reminds me constantly. As if I could forget that Father’s position as personal physician to Pittsburgh’s elite puts our family so close to the center of society.
“When we get to South Fork, will it rain cats and dogs?” Henry asks. His new favorite expression.
“If it does,” Mother says, “we’ll run outside and turn our umbrellas upside down to catch them.”
“So they don’t get hurt when they hit the ground?”
“Exactly.”
“What if they fall into the lake? Will they drown?”
She shakes her head. “They’ll swim ashore and we’ll warm them up with Maggie’s lima-bean soup.”
Henry grins blissfully. Feeling a surge of affection, I reach my hand across the seat to stroke my brother’s silky cheek.
“Don’t slouch, Elizabeth, dear heart.”
My smile disappears. My hand returns to my lap. I sit upright. Mimicking my exasperation, the train’s whistle blares.
On the other side of the compartment, Mother reaches one slim hand up to tuck an errant strand of dark hair beneath the rim of her hat. Before we left Pittsburgh this morning, she chose an olive-green frock with a matching bonnet. She had her maid, Ella, style her hair in a low coiffure. Ostentation would never do when a woman was traveling alone with her children. Even the first-class compartments got dirty once the trai
n wheels agitated all that soil on the tracks. Grit had a way of creeping between the seams of the railcar, the edge of the closed window. Best to dress for camouflage.
Personally, I don’t care for camouflage. I had my maid dress me in my favorite apricot silk with the creamy satin embellishments from elbow to cuff. The ruffled edge dusting the floor is a shock of peacock blue, matching the trim on my hat. Nettie spent half an hour taming the humidity in my black curls and frazzling my bangs just so. Impractical in such soggy weather. But, if my parents are going to make me endure days of seclusion, I might as well look stylish on the way.
In a burst of energy, I leap up. Jostled by the train, I nonetheless manage to open the window latch. A glorious breeze rushes in, cooling my face and releasing the dank odor in the airless compartment. In spite of the dirt and dampness, I lean into the fresh air and breathe.
Predictably, Mother moans. I know what she is thinking: Henry was unwell last week. He mustn’t get a chill. Pretending not to register her distress, I fill my lungs to their bursting point. I stretch to my full height. Mother will worry about Henry no matter what I do. Ever since his sixth birthday—the same age my uncle was when he was so tragically taken—her anxieties have flowered like butterfly weed along the rail tracks.
“Fresh air is good for the body and soul.” I quote Father. His progressive views include the healing power of nature and tranquility. Why, the very reason we are banished to the lake cottage before the season has begun is so that Father can secretly treat Lily Vanderhoff’s “moral insanity” with peace and quiet. In his medical office behind our home in Upper St. Clair, I overheard his conversation with Mrs. Vanderhoff’s husband.
“It’s as if two women reside inside her,” he said. “At times, she is blank in the face and unable to rouse herself from bed. Other days, she takes over the maid’s cleaning duties, scrubbing floors so furiously her fingers bleed.”
Bernard Vanderhoff—a wealthy Pittsburgh landlord—would no more consider the public humiliation of committing his wife to an asylum than he would arrive at dinner in the striped trousers of a dandy. Instead, he asked Father to treat her secretly. Naturally, Father did not have the option to refuse. If one patient left his practice, others would follow. It was their way.
“The only treatment poor Lily Vanderhoff needs,” he told Mother later, “is a peaceful week away from those indulged children and her overbearing husband.”
“Then why can’t she go to the lake?” Mother had asked.
“At the moment, I’m afraid, a train trip is beyond her.”
So that was that. To preserve Bernard Vanderhoff’s reputation, Father arranged for us to depart for our family’s lake cottage without him. Several days before anyone else would dream of arriving.
“Your hair will be a mess of curls, Elizabeth.”
Thunder rumbles in the distance. The train slows as it climbs the mountain to Horseshoe Curve. I cannot bear to leave the breeze. With my head tilted back, I let my eyelids flutter shut. I breathe in the mountain air.
“One more minute,” I tell Mother. For the first time in weeks, I feel free. The fear that I may soon be disgraced by the so-called gentleman from Great Britain slips to a far corner of my mind.
“The loop!” Henry jumps up and joins me at the open window. His little fingers curl around the edge of the open sill.
“Henry, dear. Please sit down.”
“One more minute,” he says.
I needn’t turn around to feel Mother’s annoyance. “He’s fine,” I tell her. Then I press my palm against my brother’s back as the train leans around the curve.
Standing on tiptoe, Little Henry pokes his face out the window to see the locomotive spew a blast of white steam. The railroad arc that loops around the tip of Altoona’s new reservoir is his favorite part of the journey. One can feel the compartment list into the sharp circle cut into the mountain as the train curves in on itself. This high in the Allegheny Mountains, the view is spectacular, even on a day darkened by black clouds. The Pennsy snakes through swollen forests of white pine and black cherry, along foothills blanketed in yellow oxeye and lavender musk mallow. A deliciously woodsy aroma twirls around the floral scents in the air.
I feel my bleak mood lifting. Father is right. Fresh air is a tonic.
A porter taps on our compartment door.
“Twenty minutes to South Fork.”
Once more, I fill my lungs with sweet air.
“Watch fingers,” Mother says behind me. Henry obediently removes his chubby hands from the sill. Reluctantly, I shut the window and return to my seat as Henry hops over to join Mother on her side of the compartment. Nestling beneath her arm, he gazes adoringly into her eyes. His feathery blond hair dances about his forehead.
“Two stops, right, Mama?”
“Yes, darling.” She kisses the top of her son’s head.
“Will we see squirrels on the way up the mountain?”
Mother nods and grins. Then she glances across at me with a contented curve to her lips. In the tilt of her chin, she conveys the notion I know she’s had many times before: Oh, to have two children who wouldn’t trouble her with minds of their own.
CHAPTER 2
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Memorial Day
Present
The sun boiled Lee awake. Only a few hours into Memorial Day and North Beverly Park was already mired in the heat of deep summer. Like a cranky toddler after a drawn-out nap, Lee pressed her fists against her flushed cheeks and felt disagreeable. The towel she’d duct-taped to the wall of French windows had fallen in the night. Curtains were not allowed. A fan blowing on her face made more noise than breeze. Moldy smells rose up from the couch upholstery. Wet bathing suits and chlorine-soaked hair. The top sheet was kicked into an accordion at her feet. She flipped her clammy pillow to the cool side only to discover there was no cool side. Might as well sleep on a stack of pancakes.
“Good morning, adult daughter.” Beaming, Valerie Parker emerged from the back room and kissed the top of Lee’s head. The humidity of sleep frizzed a halo of fine hairs down the length of Lee’s long black curls.
“Pop-Tart?” Valerie asked. Dressed in beige Bermuda shorts and a striped tee, she seemed younger than her forty years, perpetually on the verge of bursting into a song from Annie.
“Mmph.” It was the only sound Lee could muster. Trapped as she was in a nether land between wake and sleep, words were as yet unavailable. Her best friend, Shelby, once made her a choker out of letter beads that read NOT A MORNING PERSON. Frustration gusted from Shelby’s lips like seawater from a whale’s blowhole whenever she waited, yet again, at their corner. Once Lee arrived, she always attempted apologies, but it was morning. Sentences were still a jumble in her head.
Fluffing her coupon haircut, Valerie bounded into the kitchenette.
“Iced Raspberry Zinger?”
Lee bobbed her head and sucked in a deep breath to extract the last square inch of oxygen from the stuffy room. The air was as thick as Jell-O. Could a person die from carbon-dioxide toxicity so close to a wall of windows?
One glance outside revealed a palette of saturated blue. The turquoise water of the infinity pool met the sapphire sky. From this elevation in the hills above Mulholland Drive, the view was spectacular. If you stood at the edge of the ridge, the Valley looked picturesque. It was impossible to see the brown lawns.
“The bathroom is all yours,” Val chirped. “I have time to lollygag.”
Lee’s shift didn’t start until nine. Time for five more minutes. She rolled over and surrendered to the weight of her eyelids, inhaling the fusty air. Above her were the sounds of her particular morning: the creak of a cabinet door hinge, the rip of a Pop-Tart’s freshness pouch, the bang of a microwave door open and shut, the beep, beep of its timer as her mother set it for twenty seconds.
“The day awaits, my sweet.” Valerie leaned over her daughter and gently shook her shoulder. As she had since Lee was a baby, Valerie marveled at Lee�
��s minky lashes, so long they curled in on themselves like the barrel of a surfer’s perfect wave. Valerie joggled Lee’s shoulder again.
Slowly, Lee opened her eyes. The microwave pinged.
In the white sunlight of another camera-ready day, Valerie stroked her daughter’s soft cheek with the backs of her squat fingers. She smoothed Lee’s tumble of black hair. Though the dread she’d been feeling as this day approached sat in her stomach like yesterday’s oatmeal, she shook off all cloudy thoughts and returned to the kitchenette to open the minifridge and excavate the lone ice-cube tray from the frosted metal sleeve that was their freezer. Lee heard a crack and plop, plop into a plastic tumbler. The woodsy aroma of cinnamon braided midair with a sugary berry scent.
“Happy birthday, dear Lee-ee.” Valerie’s soprano pitch made Lee’s heart clutch. Her mom’s relentless cheer was her way of coping with the ocean of sadness within her. Val’s natural buoyancy would never allow her to be sucked beneath the surf. They were as different as mother and daughter could be. Valerie greeted each day with determined bounce. Especially bleak mornings when she awoke to a refreshed memory of how badly her life had derailed. Lee was wired for catastrophe. Things didn’t always go wrong, but they could. Best to be perpetually prepared.
Over the years, Lee had tried to appropriate her mother’s ruthless optimism, but it was no use. A black panther could never be a tabby cat. DNA was destiny.
With a grunt, Lee pulled herself up from the couch and into the day. She sleepwalked into the bathroom and shut the door. Eyes half closed, she avoided examining her face. She knew how she looked—irises like espresso beans, a jaw sharply angled in a determined sort of way, dark hair so dense it somersaulted down her back. She didn’t even slightly resemble her champagne-haired parents or her brother with the Nordic eyelashes. They needed sunglasses when someone turned on a light. Even a stranger could tell she was adopted. Not that it was ever a secret.
Leaving the toilet unflushed to save water, Lee washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face. Twice. Shelby had nailed it. Lee Parker was not a morning person. Not even this morning when the world as she knew it was about to change. Again.