“Ah, Kathleen,” Mother Bruyere says, entering the room and sitting across from me. “Thank you for coming. I have something important to discuss with you.”
I shift on the hard seat.
She knows. Miller has found out.
“It’s about your sister, Annie.”
Annie?
She sits and puts on her glasses. Shifting the letters, she finds what she’s looking for and reads it over. “The Chartrands live on a big farm near Richmond. They have three little girls, Melanie, Natalie, and petite Valerie. I’ve met Monsieur Chartrand. He is a good man.”
What is she talking about?
“I’m sorry, Mother, but I don’t know the Chartrands. Is this about a new job?” There is no way I’d leave Annie to go and work on a farm. Besides, there is no money in that.
She takes off her glasses and looks at me. “Ma chère, the Chartrands, they want to adopt Annie.”
I laugh at first. But Mother Bruyere’s serious expression sobers me.
“There must be some mistake,” I argue. “Annie does not need to be adopted. She has me. I’m her family.”
“You are her sister, Kathleen. She needs a mother and father. The Chartrands, they are—”
“They are NOT her family!” I blurt, bolting to my feet. “She’s not a Chartrand. She’s a Byrne.”
“She will keep her last name,” Mother Bruyere says. She begins to explain how many orphans keep their Irish surnames. But I still can’t get my mind around what she’s asking of me. She can’t be serious. This isn’t happening. There’s no way I’m letting them take Annie. She’s mine.
“I’ve been saving my money,” I say, “every penny. I’ll even show you. I can take care of Annie, Mother. I can.” The room feels small all of a sudden. I’m finding it hard to breathe.
“Well, that is the other matter I need to discuss. Mr. Miller has let you go.”
“What?” Panic ripples through me and I sit back down. Does he know I’ve been stealing his papers? If he told on me, I’d surely be kicked out of Saint Raphael’s or maybe even sent to Perth Jail. I’d never be able to support Annie then.
“He’s gone bankrupt,” she says. “Lost it all on a bad deal; the lumber business, the house, everything.” Mother Bruyere comes around the desk and stands before me. “I’m sorry, Kathleen. I know you enjoyed working there. Perhaps I can ask the new owner if he would need your services.” She lifts another letter, adjusts her glasses. “His name is Lynch, Henry Lynch.”
My God, what have I done?
“But even with a job, ma chère, you could not give Annie what she needs. It takes more than money to raise a child.”
“I can do it!” I say. “I’ve gotten her to speak again, haven’t I?” She doesn’t say much, but still … “She needs me. Please, Mother. Give me a chance.”
She tucks her hands inside her sleeves. “I have prayed on it much. Letting the Chartrands adopt Annie gives you both a better chance. They are coming for her this Saturday. You must trust God’s will, Kathleen.”
My head pounds as the thoughts boil inside. “But I love her. The Chartrands, they don’t even know Annie.”
“Anyone who knows Annie loves her. And if you truly love her, Kathleen, you will want what’s best for her,” she says gently, resting her hand on my shoulder. “You will let her go because you love her.”
“No!” I shout, pushing her hand away and breaking free from the tiny room. “I’ll never let her go. Do you hear me? Never!”
CHAPTER FORTY
I find Annie feeding the chickens in the yard behind the boarding house. When Martha goes back inside to fetch something, I wave Annie over, careful to stay hidden by the bushes. Surely Mother Bruyere suspects my plans. I’ve no time to waste.
“Annie, would you like to come with me on an adventure?” I ask. “We can’t tell anyone, though. ’Tis our secret.”
She looks over her shoulder.
“It’s a treasure hunt,” I add.
A smile flickers in her eyes and she nods.
We cross the street in front of the cathedral and climb the bluff. Stopping at the flat stone near the edge, I lift it and tell Annie to look underneath. She picks up the bag and shakes it, her eyes lighting up at the sound of the coins.
“Kit!” she whispers. “We’re rich!”
Far from it, I’d say, for surely we’d only enough in there to last us a week or two. But I have other plans. I grab her hand and we run up Sussex for Upper Town. The coins jangle in the bag swinging from her fist, tempting her with their promise of lemon drops and candy sticks. She tries to slow as we pass Sparrow’s General Store but I yank her onward.
“The thing about treasure, Annie, is that someone’s always trying to take it from you.”
“Pirates in Bytown?” She looks over her shoulder, eyes wide. But her pace quickens just the same.
We stop at Miller’s house. Or Lynch’s, I should say. Using my servant’s key, I let myself in.
“Ah, Kathleen.” Lynch sits at the table fiddling with a deck of cards. He splits it and grabs half in each hand. “Just in time to make me my tea.”
“I need money,” I say.
“You and every other Irish farmer fresh off the boat,” he replies, as he fans the cards’ top edges together. He bends the halves until they look like the arch under Sappers Bridge. Our meeting place. Then, lowering his finger, he forces the cards to slap and slip one atop the other into one pile again. Annie is mesmerized by it, but I won’t be fooled by his tricks.
“You owe me, Henry,” I say, stepping forward.
“I owe you nothing,” he says, meeting my eyes. Demands won’t work with him; I should know that. My only trump card is the fact that if someone else arrests me, he’d lose his inheritance.
“Give me some money and I’ll disappear. I’ve done it before; I can do it again. I’ll take a new name. Kathleen Byrne will be as good as dead.” I cringe as the words leave my lips, for the last thing I want is to remind him of his other option—to kill me.
“You’d sell out your family name for a few coins?” he says with a smirk. He cascades the cards from one hand to the other, but his eyes never leave mine.
I nod vigorously. “I will. I swear. No one will find me. The bounty money will never get paid. Your inheritance will be yours.”
He looks at me with admiration. For a moment, I think he’s going to agree.
“You’re right about the inheritance,” he says as he leans back in his chair. “In fact, I already have it. Oh, did you not hear?” He clasps his hands behind his head and grins. “My father died last month.”
“What?!” The news stuns me. I can’t believe it. “All this time, you let me think the bounty was still on my head.”
“What sort of a card player tips their hand?” he asks. “If you’d done the job properly the first time and killed the old man, I would have taken my inheritance and left that Godforsaken country. Instead, I had to hunt you down. But you did prove useful after all. My inheritance gave me something to invest, but knowing Miller’s business from the inside out, that gave me the edge. I knew I couldn’t lose.”
“You are a liar and a thief! You destroyed a man’s livelihood!”
“No, Kathleen,” he smiles, thoroughly enjoying this conversation. “You did. You stole from the very man who paid your wages. If anyone is a deceiver here, it’s you.”
I cringe at the thought of all I’d given Henry Lynch. Of my role in Miller’s downfall. Miller was an upper-class snob, but he didn’t deserve this betrayal.
“Look at me,” Lynch brags. “Not two months in Bytown and I’m already a lumber baron.”
I can’t take his smug face any longer. I storm out of the house with Annie in tow. He’ll not help me. I don’t know why I thought he would. Any fool should know a deal with the devil gets you nothing but burned.
Annie and I hide out on the streets of Bytown for the next two days. I try to make it exciting for her, try to keep the panic from my eyes as w
e eat our meager meals in alleyways and sleep in empty boats. We’ve enough coins to feed us for a week or two, if that. But I’ve no job and no plan. I’d thought of looking for Joe Murphy, but if the Chartrands live in Richmond, ’tis the last place I’m taking Annie.
“Kit?” Annie says as we settle in for the third night in our rowboat banked along the canal. She leans back against me looking up at the stars. Without Tish at her side speaking for her, Annie’s talking more. Becoming her old self again. “When are we going home?”
“Ireland is very far away, pet,” I explain.
“Not Ireland,” she says. “The boarding house.”
“That’s not your home, Annie,” I say. It pains me to think she sees it like that.
“Mother Bruyere said I’m getting a real home soon.” She turns to face me, her eyes wide in the moon’s light. She seems excited. “And three new sisters and a new mammy and—”
“She told me,” I say; I don’t want to hear it again. I take her small hands in mine. “But don’t you want me to be your mammy? I’ll take care of you.”
Annie frowns as she glances around, and then smiles, like I’m pulling her leg. “No, a real mammy. Not one that runs from pirates and digs treasure. Not one that sleeps in old boats.”
She lies back on me and her breathing deepens; soon enough she’s sound asleep.
What does she know? I tell the stars. She’s only a child.
We won’t be sleeping in boats. We won’t be on the run. Not if I can help it. All I need is more money.
The cathedral bell tolls in the distance.
And I know just where to find it.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
We’re up with the dawn, as stiff as the old boards we slept upon. But it doesn’t matter. We won’t be sleeping like this again, for I’ve a plan now.
The roads are near empty for a Saturday morning. Only a few farmers are on their way to the market. Thankfully, we don’t see a soul the whole way down Sussex to the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral. Just as I’d hoped, there is no one around to see us slip inside the great stone church. Father Molloy is sick with typhus. The sisters are at morning prayers in their tiny chapel behind the convent, praying for miracles. But I’m going to make a miracle of my own.
The red candle burning next to the tabernacle and the choir of flames before Our Lady are just enough light for the work at hand. Sticking to the shadows, I pull Annie to the far right and up to the front. There it is, hanging on the side wall. Small, black, and metal: the Poor Box.
Letting go of Annie’s hand, I try my servant’s key in the lock. Sure enough, after a bit of fiddling, it opens and I set the lid on the ground. ’Tis full, for the novena had brought parishioners to the church in droves. I grab a handful. Red candlelight glints off the coins, cold and heavy in my sweating palms. Three months wages, just like that.
I’m not stealing, not really. The money is meant for the poor, meant to help the needy. And I’ve never felt more in need than I do now.
Annie kneels at the altar rail, her back to me, but the jingle of coins catches her attention and she comes over. “Can I have one?” she whispers.
I almost don’t want to give it to her. Don’t want the sin of it on her shoulders. For, truth be told, I am stealing from the Church.
From God himself.
The thought chills me. But before I can say no, she reaches up and takes one from my shaking hands.
We’re damned now, the both of us.
But Annie doesn’t drop it in her pocket like I thought she would. Instead, she reaches past me and slips the penny inside the slit at the front of the Poor Box. It clinks against the others still inside. Taking my other hand, she leads me to the altar rail where she scans the rows of identical tiny cups, searching for the candle that is hers.
She lights the narrow stick from another candle and passes the flame to her own. Then, snuffing the stick, she clasps her hands together and kneels before Our Lady. The candlelight catches the gold in Annie’s hair, shining like a halo around her bowed head. “Thank you for my new family,” she whispers. “Bless Kit when I’m gone, for she’ll have no one but you to look after her.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and raise my eyes to the statue. In all the times I’d been in here cleaning dirty corners, I’d never really looked up. My eyes take in the hissing snake’s head beneath Mary’s bare feet, her blue mantle trimmed in gold, her pristine white dress. It looks so real. Like folds of soft cotton, not cold, chiseled marble. Her upturned hands reach from under her mantle as though waiting for me to hand her something. Squeezing my fist of heavy coins, I push my gaze to her face, knowing what I’ll see there. I’ve imagined it on Mam’s face a million times these past few months. I deserve it.
Judgment. Blame. Disappointment.
But instead, in the flickering light, I see something else. Perhaps my eyes are playing tricks, but it almost looks like … understanding.
All this time, I told myself I was doing what my parents would have wanted. I did whatever it took to keep the family together. I glance down at the coins in my sweaty fist.
Mam would never have wanted this.
I know what Mam and Da would have wanted. What Annie wants. To have a real family again. To have a chance at happiness. I can’t deny her that. All I can offer Annie is a life on the streets, a life of thieving and running.
I step back to the Poor Box and drop the coins inside, but it doesn’t lighten my burden as I kneel beside my Annie one last time.
“... and send me a puppy. Amen.” She finishes, blessing herself.
One tear rolls along my nose and drops into her hair as I kiss the top of her head, for I know now what I have to do.
I only wish I wanted to do it.
The Chartrands’ wagon waits outside the boarding house when we leave the cathedral. Mother Bruyere sees us coming down the street and acts like we’d just been out for a morning stroll.
“Kathleen, Annie,” she says, resting her hand on my shoulder for reassurance, or perhaps to hold me there. “This is Monsieur and Madame Chartrand.”
They seem nice enough. Hard-working people. Salt of the earth, Mam would say.
“Are you my new Mammy?” Annie asks the woman.
Madame Chartrand kneels and places her hand on Annie’s chest. “Your mammy is in heaven and in your heart. But if you like, I will be your Maman.”
“And you can call me Papa,” Monsieur Chartrand adds.
Annie slips her hand into Madame Chartrand’s. She smiles at Mother Bruyere. “I’ll take them.”
They laugh. But I don’t.
I can’t do this. I can’t say goodbye to my Annie.
As if reading my thoughts, Mother Bruyere takes my hand and squeezes it.
“I’m ’dopted, too!” Tish calls from the wagon and Annie runs to her.
Letting go of Mother Bruyere’s hand, I walk to Annie and lift her up to the wagon.
“Bye, Kit,” she says, hugging me tight.
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. My words are smothered in pain. I lived to find her, to keep her. What will I live for now?
Annie pulls away and settles herself beside Tish. Seeing them together helps. They still have each other. For all the hours I’d been working for Annie, I have to admit, I’d really spent very little with her. She won’t miss me. Not like I’ll miss her.
The Chartrands say goodbye to Mother Bruyere and invite me to visit anytime. But how can I? How can I see Annie in a family that isn’t my own?
Mr. Chartrand snaps the reins.
“Kit!” Annie clutches the wagon’s sideboards and waves the bag of remaining coins overhead. “Your treasure!”
If she only knew what treasure that wagon truly holds.
“Buy your puppy with it!” I call, as they roll away. Her face breaks into a huge smile, filling her cheeks and igniting her eyes, making her look almost like her old self. No amount of money will ever buy my dreams. I see that now.
The least they can do is b
uy Annie’s.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The days roll into each other. What does it matter? I have no job, but what need have I of money? Mam and Da are gone. Jack and Mick, and now my Annie, all lost. I have nothing. I feel nothing. I am nothing, for I’m neither daughter nor sister anymore. I’ve neither purpose for today, nor hope for tomorrow. And even though I’ve willed myself a thousand times to sleep and never wake again, even though I curse the sun that rises, still the morning comes.
Day after day after day.
Mother Bruyere sends for me from her sick bed. So wrapped up in my own misery I didn’t even know she was ill, has been for nearly two weeks. I enter the tiny room in the convent house to find her lying in bed, pale-faced and drawn. Her white-capped head turns as I enter and she smiles weakly. She whispers something in French to Sister Thibodeau sitting on the one chair in the room and Sister Thibodeau leaves us alone.
“How are you faring, Mother Bruyere?” I ask, for she doesn’t look well.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” She motions for me to sit on the chair beside her. “Sister Phelan tells me you are not working or eating.”
I nod.
“That makes two of us. Such a waste, non?”
I don’t answer.
“There is so much to be done and yet, here we are. I suppose the least we can do is pray for their work. Will you pray with me, chère?” She lifts her rosary from the side table, blesses herself, and begins, but when she pauses for my response, the words don’t come.
“A Bible story, then?” she says, taking her black book from the table. It reminds me of Mam’s old Bible. “Perhaps learning the stories will help you—”
“I don’t need to learn them,” I blurt. “I lived them!”
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