by Liz Freeland
Christmas morning was so perfectly orchestrated by my aunt, however, that it was hard to summon thoughts of the apartment fire, my near escape from the houseboat, or anything else negative. My aunt’s house was a scene of domestic beauty and tranquillity, like a cover of House Beautiful. When I arose Christmas morning, the air smelled of strudel, the baked apple and cinnamon mixing with the usual morning aromas of bacon and the rich coffee my aunt preferred. I floated downstairs on that scent. In the parlor, candles were lit and the decorations on the tree shone with their reflection. Santa had arrived during the night, bringing at least two large boxes for Eddie and a few other smaller packages that hadn’t been there when I’d gone to bed.
I added the wrapped parcels I’d bought for everyone and stood back to admire the display of colors. My aunt appeared next to me, rubbing her hands together. “Oh good, you’re up. We can start the real fun now.”
For the next hours we opened gifts, nibbled at all the wonderful things Bernice had prepared, and watched Eddie crawl everywhere in search of mischief. He loved every gift he received, meeting each unwrapping with a gummy smile and a desire to touch his new possession. He also enjoyed the boxes themselves, and the ribbons.
My aunt laughed. “Next year perhaps I’ll go to FAO Schwarz and ask them to wrap up their best empty boxes for me.”
Next year. I tried to imagine it. Everything seemed so up in the air. Would Callie come back? Would Otto have put on Double Daisy? And what would I be doing? After the week I’d had, it was hard to imagine going back and sitting with the female prisoners of Hell’s Kitchen. But that was my job—babysitting accused criminals. A bit dull, perhaps, but safe.
The trouble was, safe didn’t appeal to me. I only wished there was a way to do interesting, exciting work without having to worry about possibly being killed.
One thing that made me perfectly contented was seeing my aunt so blooming. Ever since Eddie had arrived, she’d become a new person. That maternal side of her might come across as ridiculous at times, but I’d never seen her happier. Occasionally I even felt a spike of envy. Somewhere in the city, my boy was having his second Christmas. He was walking and running now—I’d spent the previous afternoon on a certain street on the Upper East Side, doing a little spying—and his hair, my mouse-brown color, was now long and curly. Calvin Longworth was as pampered and cared for as Eddie, but if I’d kept him, the two could have been friends. Now they would never know each other. If only . . .
I gave myself a shake, bringing myself back to the celebration. After presents, we sang carols at the piano, accompanied by Walter. Otto had gone home to Altoona for a few days, and though his presence was missed, I looked forward to his bringing back a report of our old hometown. I wondered what he would say of my aunt and uncles, or if he’d had a chance to visit with my two younger cousins. Did they remember me, talk of me?
Around noon, guests began to come by, some just to drop off token gifts and goodies, others to share in the big meal Bernice was busy preparing. I spent an hour helping in the kitchen, where Bernice and I chopped, sang carols, and stirred pots.
“Do you ever miss home, Bernice?”
“I’m home right here,” she said.
“I know . . . but I guess I mean having a home of your own. A family?”
She narrowed her eyes on me. “A husband, you mean? I’ve had those.” How many she’d had varied from telling to telling. “I might find another one yet. Thing is, it’s better to be happy how you are than to hanker after what you don’t have.”
“Count your blessings and all that,” I said, without much enthusiasm.
“Never being satisfied with what you have gets you in a whole load of mischief.”
“Maybe, but look at Aunt Irene. Did you ever expect her to have a son and be so happy? She must have been hankering after something else, and when she saw her opportunity, she reached for it.”
“A baby’s a responsibility, not an opportunity.” She smiled. “But Eddie’s a sweet little thing, isn’t he?”
Eddie had landed in cotton, all right. After all the horror since discovering Ruthie’s death, I was glad at least for this happy ending.
When Aunt Irene’s dinner guests had all arrived and offered their tributes to her and Eddie, we sat down to dinner. I missed having my friends there, but Aunt Irene’s guests were always a diverting bunch. I was seated between her lawyer, Abraham Faber, whom I’d met before, and a poetess named Evelyn Hartwell. She wasn’t the first poet I’d met, and certainly not the first pacifist, but she was the most argumentative pacifist I’d ever come across. We weren’t halfway through the meal before she and Abe Faber were in a deep, heated discussion of the war in Europe, with me playing the role of no-man’s-land between their sharp volleys.
“And what do you say, Louise?” she asked me, then thought better of it. “Never mind. You’re probably too young to have thoughts on political matters. At least thoughts that mean anything.”
“And why shouldn’t young people have political thoughts?” Abe Faber said. “They’re the ones who’d have to go fight.”
“Not the girls,” she shot back. “Girls nowadays are all frippery and foolishness.”
I weighed how much I could tell her of what I knew of war without bringing the United States Secret Service down on my head. When Holger Neumann was about to kill me, he’d claimed that it was because of the war. In that moment, I was part of the fight. Ruthie and Johnny had been casualties. The conflict, I feared, would reach us all sooner or later.
Before I could speak, however, the doorbell rang.
Aunt Irene looked up. “Did I forget someone? I thought we were all here.”
Conversations resumed, but I was distracted now. I heard the front door open, and a minute later a strange couple appeared at the double doors between the dining room and the parlor, accompanied by a distraught Walter. Aunt Irene twisted in her seat to look up at them, and then, seeing Walter’s expression, she rose.
The man and woman were in their thirties, and wore plain clothing obviously made by the woman’s own competent but unpretentious hand. I’d never seen her, but I knew her from a picture of a woman I realized must have been her mother. Her hair was arranged in braided loops beneath a plain brown felt hat decorated with a plaid ribbon. The visitors’ faces were red-cheeked from a lifetime of sun and wind. Both bore nervous expressions.
Ever gracious, Aunt Irene smiled and held her hand out to the woman. “How do you do? I’m Irene Livingston Green.”
The woman looked a little confused. “I’m Sara Turner, and this is my husband, Hiram.” Hiram nodded, still holding his hat in his hands—Walter evidently hadn’t been able to part him from it. “We were sent here from another place downtown. We were looking for someone named Louise Faulk, but the people down there said her place burned down.”
I rose. It seemed as if strings were pulling me, strings I’d put in place weeks ago and then had forgotten about. An invisible band was squeezing my chest.
“You’re Ruthie Jones’s people,” I said, and then looked at my aunt.
“Why don’t we talk in the parlor?” Aunt Irene suggested, ushering them back a few steps. “I’m sure my guests will excuse me for a short while.”
The guests murmured their agreement. I hurried to join Aunt Irene before Walter shut the double doors.
The woman turned to me, her eyes bright but her expression unspeakably sad. “Thank you for writing to tell us about my sister. We came about the baby. My nephew. We’re here to take him home.”
The first thing my aunt did was have Walter bring the Turners tea and refreshments. The detritus of that morning’s gift exchanging had been cleared away, but a large plush tiger sat on a footstool. The couple looked but did not comment. Their eyes lingered longer on Dickens and Trollope, who had been groomed for the holiday in green and red velvet bows and sat in their usual places at both ends of the sofa, panting at the newcomers. In the minutes that followed, my few attempts to start conversation
petered out quickly. I’d never been so happy to hear the rattling of the tea tray as I was when Walter appeared again.
“You’ve come a long way,” I said as Aunt Irene poured out two cups.
“Nebraska,” the man said. “South Junction, outside Elbart. Don’t suppose you’ve heard of it. Took us shy of three days to get here. Had to overnight in Chicago.”
“I wish we’d known to expect you,” Aunt Irene said. “We could have made arrangements for you. You’re staying in a hotel?”
The man nodded. “The Hotel Manhattan, on Fiftieth. Good thing they gave the city’s streets numbers, else nobody’d ever know where they were. Darnedest place I ever saw.”
“I hope you’re comfortable,” I said. “At the Manhattan.”
“Oh yes,” his wife assured me, in a voice that made me suspect just the opposite.
“Doesn’t matter,” the man said, “we can’t stay long. We only came for the child.”
“Ruthie’s boy,” his wife added, as if that were necessary.
“We weren’t sure you . . .” My throat felt so dry I could barely talk. “When I didn’t get an answer to my letter, I thought maybe . . .”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You didn’t receive my letter?”
“Maybe we got here before it,” her husband said. “As soon as that photographer fellow came out to the farm, we knew we’d be coming out here. Just had to find somebody to look after the cows and such.”
“We have a little farm, and a dairy,” Sara explained.
“Milk gets taken to Omaha by train every morning, right from South Junction,” her husband said.
“It’s the same farm Ruthie grew up on, but Hiram’s made all sorts of improvements. Especially with the dairy.” Sara looked at Aunt Irene, then turned back to me. “Ruthie never knew Hiram. She was always a high-spirited girl, and she never got along with our stepfather. Especially after Mama died. Our stepfather wasn’t a kind man . . .”
“I saw the picture of him Ruthie had, which I assume was of him and your mother?”
She nodded. “When she ran away, Ruthie took that with her. I guess because of Mama’s likeness.”
“I can return it to you.”
“Thank you. I’d like to have it again as a keepsake of my mother. I also didn’t care for my stepfather too much. He was a sour man, and broke Mama’s spirit.”
“You don’t have to go over all that, Sara,” Hiram said.
“We’d like to hear however much you feel like telling us,” my aunt said.
“Well,” Sara said, “like I said, a while after Mama died, Ruthie ran away. For a long time I didn’t know where, and my stepfather forbade me to answer after the one time Ruthie wrote to me to tell me she was here. New York City seemed so far. She stole all the seed potato money, but even so it must’ve cost her most of it for the train ticket.
“It was awful at home without Ruthie, but then Hiram came along to work for my stepfather, and the old man died. To my surprise, the farm was passed on to me. And Hiram started helping me make all sorts of improvements. We got married last summer, and I wrote Ruthie and begged her to come home. But I never heard from her again. I didn’t know why . . . until I got your letter, Miss Faulk. I suppose she thought she couldn’t come home again, because of the babies. I gather there was no husband.”
I shook my head.
“It’s true, people would talk, but Hiram and I wouldn’t have minded that. We wouldn’t have held it against her, if she’d promised to set herself on a better path. Ruthie always was proud, though.”
I nodded.
Sara smiled. “Can I see him now, the baby? You said his name was Eddie. That’s the name Ruthie gave him?”
“Yes,” Aunt Irene said, standing. “I’ll bring him down.”
I wondered if the Turners noticed the slightly stiff way my aunt moved, or the moisture in her eyes. “Let me go, Aunt Irene,” I said, but she waved off my offer.
“Stay here with the Turners, Louise. I need to pack a case for Eddie. I know where all his things are.”
When she was gone, Sara turned to me. “My grandfather’s name was Edward. I guess Ruthie didn’t hate her family so much after all.”
“Was your other grandfather named John?” When she nodded, I told her that there had been another twin who’d died. I didn’t give her the particulars surrounding Ruthie’s death, and she didn’t press me. I would write her the details someday soon, but I had an inkling that today, Christmas, she wanted to remember her high-spirited little sister the way she’d been when they were younger.
“The boy will never hear a word against Ruthie,” Hiram said.
I nodded, then lifted the teapot’s lid. “Let me warm up this tea. And would you like some more strudel?”
Hiram nodded. “I wouldn’t say no. Best food we’ve had since leaving South Junction.”
I hurried to the kitchen and made a small plate of food from what was in there, because I knew Aunt Irene would want me to. Bernice was nowhere to be seen, but I guessed she was upstairs helping my aunt get Eddie set for his next journey. I was too cowardly to go up and check on them myself.
The guests in the dining room were still at their meal, oblivious to the drama. I could hear the poetess shouting about the brotherhood of man. I hurried back to the parlor. Hiram Turner had just finished a slice of roast beef when Aunt Irene appeared with Eddie.
He was dressed like a little squire in a tweed jumpsuit and cap, with brown booties. It was his least outlandish suit of clothing. Aunt Irene had put some thought into his outfit, wanting him to get off on the right foot with his relatives. She was smiling—a perfect hostess—but I detected redness in her eyes.
Bernice put a suitcase down and then turned to go back to the kitchen before I could catch her gaze.
“Here we are,” Aunt Irene said, placing the baby in Sara’s arms. “Reunited with his family. Of course you’ll need to take him to New York Foundling. I’ll have Walter escort you. The sisters will arrange for you to be his official guardian. There won’t be any trouble, I’m sure.”
As she held her little nephew, tears flowed down Sara’s cheeks. “Look, Hiram. He’s got Ruthie’s eyes. Aren’t they just like her picture?”
The man peered at the little boy, then turned to my aunt. “You say he doesn’t make a sound?”
“He can hear just fine,” Aunt Irene said, “but he’s mute.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hiram said, patting his wife’s shoulder. “Having a good heart’s what matters.” He looked at my aunt again. “Does he like animals?”
“He plays with my dogs.”
Hiram flicked another glance at Dickens and Trollope as if he wasn’t sure they qualified as part of the animal kingdom as he understood it, but after a moment he seemed satisfied. “We have a dog, and chickens, and the cows, and as much land for a boy to roam and play as he could want.”
The Turners stayed a bit longer, and to me each moment was an agony. Aunt Irene kept the conversation from flagging, and sent me up at the last moment to get Eddie’s stuffed bear. When I came back down, they were all in the foyer. Hiram took the bear from me and said, “Before I left I was going to take some money to that hospital you mentioned in your letter, to thank them for taking care of Eddie. But now it seems Mrs. Green here’s done most of the looking after.”
“Not at all,” Aunt Irene said. “The hospital merely asked if I would foster him during an outbreak of illness there. And of course we wanted the poor boy to have a happy Christmas.”
They thanked her again and were gone, with Walter agreeing to escort them to the hospital as Aunt Irene had promised.
Laughter drifted from the dining room through the closed double doors. Aunt Irene drooped, and for a moment I thought she would break down. But she straightened. “At least we can cool it off in here now.”
I felt like weeping for her, but I followed her lead, swallowing back tears. “Your guests were looking a little poached earlier.”
“I’d b
etter see to them,” she said, nodding toward the dining room. “They’ll be clamoring for dessert.”
“I can step in as hostess, if you’d rather.”
Her eyes, still slightly red, widened. “I couldn’t abandon . . .” Her voice choked, and she lifted a handkerchief to her face.
“Aunt Irene, I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. “If only I’d never written that letter.”
“No.” Gathering herself again, she put her hand on my arm, as if I were the one who needed comforting. “Remember Sara Turner’s face? How joyful she was. That woman got back a piece of someone she loved, and Eddie will be with family. Giving him a family—isn’t that always what we wanted?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
She patted my arm. “Thanks to you, Ruthie’s orphan has been given a happy ending.”
Happy endings were always Irene Livingston Green’s specialty. I only wished I’d managed to make one for her.
“Now put your company face on, and smile. And tonight, after everyone leaves, we’ll stay up late, and talk, and I’ll do my best turban and tell your fortune.”
“Oh, Aunt Irene. I wish I could believe in all that.”
“You will when everything I tell you comes true.” She took my hand, turned it palm up, and gave it a quick examination. “Look at that—1915 will be a good year for you.”
“Merely good? I’m not sure that will make me a believer in the occult arts.”
She dropped my hand, then hooked her arm around my waist and gave me a squeeze. “Oh, I’m just getting started, sugar plum. Wait till I’ve had a few more cups of Walter’s eggnog.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All my thanks go out to the wonderful people at Kensington Books who work with me on the Louise Faulk series, especially my editor, John Scognamiglio. Thanks also to my agent, Annelise Robey, for cheerleading me through the rough spots. I’m grateful as ever to my sister Suzanne Bass for critiquing my first draft, and to Joe Newman for being my go-to proofreader.