by Janette Oke
“And certainly you may do so if you please, sir. But, as I said before, it was my understanding that you were leaving shortly on a journey. It’s imperative that we have the paperwork completed before you go. Surely you understand that . . .”
“But we’ve only just learned . . .”
“Yes—but how long will you be away?”
A deep sigh. “We expect to be gone at least a year. I’m scheduled to do a series of lectures.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Walsh. You can’t possibly expect to keep the court waiting.”
“But until your papers are signed, we have no legal responsibility?”
Mr. Dorn reached for his glasses again, unfolded them, and set them back on his nose. “I’m afraid that’s not true, sir. If your daughter has a legal claim to the estate, that would also render her responsible in the eyes of the court—your daughter and the other heir.”
“Other heir?” Father shook his head. “Oh yes, the man in Toronto, you mean?”
“No, sir, the sister—Grace Bennett.”
Lillian gasped audibly. Grace? Sweet little Gracie. No, she died too.
Father’s voice softened. “Forgive me, but you’re misinformed, Mr. Dorn. Lillian had a younger sister, but she also succumbed to illness—shortly following Lillian’s birth parents.”
The man’s head tilted in surprise at Father’s response. “No, I don’t believe that’s correct.” More shuffling through the papers.
Lillian held her breath. What is it he’s saying? No, that was settled long ago.
As he drew out the proof document, Mr. Dorn became noticeably shaken. “I—I’m afraid that I didn’t realize you weren’t aware. I’m so sorry, Miss Walsh. I’m afraid I’ve been recklessly blunt.” Holding out this new paper, he pushed it across toward Lillian, explaining solemnly, “We have a record from the hospital where your parents were treated. Grace Bennett was suspected of having contracted tuberculosis, but there was never a death report filed. Which led me to check with various sanitariums in the region—places where she might have been treated instead. And I found one where Miss Bennett was, in fact, registered.”
Lillian’s words were scarcely audible. “Gracie? My sister? She was so small at the time.”
“Yes, miss, your sister.” Setting his pen on the table, he paused for Lillian to recover from the shock before proceeding gently. “I’m afraid we’ve failed to find her though. I’m so sorry. All I can tell you is that she didn’t die alongside your parents. She went to the sanitarium, but she was later released. We just don’t know where she went afterward. That’s where our trail currently ends. I had hoped you’d shed some light on this as well.” His expression was tender with empathy. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of such unexpected and—well, unsatisfactory—news, Miss Walsh. Please know, for the purposes of our investigation into the matter, we shall continue to actively search for Miss Bennett’s whereabouts.”
Softly at first, Lillian’s words began to tumble out. “Oh, Father, Gracie might be alive. I have to find her. I just have to find her. I’ve got to find out . . .” she pleaded, hands trembling.
“Yes, of course. Yes, we must . . .” Father turned fully toward Lillian at last, his eyes surrendering as he realized the state of her. “My dear, I’m so sorry. You must be in utter shock.” His hand reached over the table to cover hers.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, though her tears belied the words. Blinking down at her father’s large hand tight around her own, she knew it wasn’t true. No, I’m not. I’m in pieces! Absolute pieces!
CHAPTER 2
Lemuel
The shadowy figures of his troubling dreams pursued the boy, even here in this hiding place where no one else had as yet discovered him. Held prisoner by sleep, Lemuel suffered again the desperate sense of searching without ever finding, of being chased by a frightening phantom he both wished for and avoided. Then suddenly the pain shooting through his injured arm wrenched him into consciousness.
A violent shiver passed through him, more from the searing pain that accompanied his movement than from the coolness of the prairie summer night. He hated and feared such dreams. They were so vivid—so real.
No, Lemuel fought back. It isn’t real.
Yet, as the boy shifted position on his mat made of discarded newspapers to try to find some relief from the pain in his arm, he wished again with all his heart that things were different—that waves of misery weren’t for some reason his lot in life—that he could return to the farm where for a time he’d felt safe and cared for. While he’d lived there, he’d never been mistreated. In fact, when the farmer’s wife had been alive, there had even been gentle smiles and soft words. He gritted his teeth at the throbbing pain, forced his mind to work harder despite his agony.
Long ago in England, before death had claimed his parents, he’d known love within a family. But that security had been stolen away. He was driven instead into the streets to fend for himself. Such emotional injury meant that during the three short years in his second home with the Canadian farmer and his wife, Lemuel hadn’t allowed himself to fully believe he might be secure again. It was too painful even to hope for. He remained suspicious of any sense of well-being. What had been lost once couldn’t be trusted.
He’d been able to suppress some of the bad memories, had even come to the point where he had fewer frightening dreams, but that fledgling hope had been snuffed out again when his circumstances changed with a few spoken words. And as much as he’d tried to shore up his resolve not to need anyone now that he was nearly fourteen and old enough to take care of himself, in his heart he understood fully that he hated being alone—orphaned again.
He shivered and tried to draw the blanket closer about his body using his good arm, unable to shake the feelings of exposure the dream had brought. Early in life Lemuel had been taught not to weep. “Be strong,” he’d been told. “Tears don’t change nothin’. Only the weak give in to tears—the shameful, weak ones.”
Now, lying in the darkness, his arm throbbing, the feeling of helplessness and fear pressed down against his chest and made breathing difficult. He knew that his survival depended on making a plan. He had to be strong despite his circumstances. His very life depended on it. But how? He hated the recollections of his past. Yet to work his way to a future that would meet his needs, he knew that was where he needed to begin. And anything was better than returning to the nightmare.
“Lemuel Stein.”
The voice sounded loud and demanding as it echoed through the vaulted room. It lifted Lemuel’s eyes from the train station’s checkerboard floor. Rising from the bench, he hesitated before acknowledging his own presence aloud.
“Lemuel Stein—or is it Steen?” The man in charge frowned as he took another look at the sheaf of papers in his hand.
Swallowing hard, the boy timidly stepped forward past the rows of other children on benches, exhausted and silent. Waiting and traveling felt like all they’d done for months—first in the dorms of London and Liverpool, then on the steamship voyage to Halifax, next in stages across the country by train. Lemuel had begun to think his journey would never end.
“Stein, sir.” His voice was little more than a whisper.
“You are Lemuel Stein?”
“Yes, sir.”
The big man with the rolled-rim hat frowned and looked again at the papers he held in his hand. “This says yer a ten-year-old.”
Lemuel nodded, hesitant to speak if the scowling man wasn’t asking a question of him. He dared not admit he was almost eleven.
Turning one more frown downward, the gentleman elbowed a gray-whiskered man who stood beside him. “Looks more like six or seven to me,” he grumbled.
The second man shook his head. “Been starved most his life, I reckon. Don’t grow if ya ain’t fed.”
The man holding the papers looked up, waving the pages he held in his gnarled hand, passing them along to a woman waiting nearby. “You been placed with Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. They need a bo
y for chorin’.”
Choring? Lemuel’s heart gave a quick beat. He was to live on a farm. That seemed hopeful. But the next words brought a flutter of fear.
“If they don’t change their minds at the sight of ya.” The man spoke the last words as if to himself with a shake of his head, but Lemuel had overheard him.
The other whiskered man’s brow furrowed. He leaned forward, a flicker of sympathy softening his eyes. “Just foller that boy waving the red flag. He’ll take ya on out to the folks.” Then the men turned their attention to the next child listed on their paperwork.
Lemuel lifted his small case holding his few possessions and stepped forward to obey. The teenager before him didn’t really carry a red flag—simply a piece of red rag tied to a stick—but Lemuel obediently fell in line with the others.
Without warning, the man with the papers reached out a hand to catch Lemuel’s shoulder, halting him and drawing him one step back. His face loomed close, too close. His words were a fierce whisper. “A word of advice, boy, shorten that name of yers to Lem. Got it? Lem. Or Jim or Joe—just not Lemuel.” For a moment he searched through the papers that he held scrunched in his fist. “Look here, I’m gonna change yer last name for ya too. ’Cause Brown or Smith or Olson will serve ya better. Anything but Stein. Got it? Bad enough ta start life as a street rat, but some folks hereabout might not take kindly to a Jew.” His pencil scratched on the paperwork. “There, now yer just Brown—Lem Brown.”
Lemuel stood frozen to the spot. If he had felt frightened before, he was doubly so now. A Jew? Yes, he was. Or at least he had been three years before, when his parents had still been alive. What was he now? He wasn’t sure. Then he consoled himself with a sudden thought. He was an orphan. That was the word everyone had called him when he was taken from the streets of London and housed with others like himself. He’d assumed that taking on the label changed everything about him. After all, the title had provided a place to sleep indoors as well as regular, though scant, meals. And there was a promise of a home at the end of the long road.
But could it be that I’m still a Jew, even now? And is being a Jew a bad thing—something that I need to hide? He didn’t know. Silently, he nodded toward the eyes of the man looming above him. He had no country. No home. No parents. And now he was denied even his own real name.
He swallowed hard, dropped his gaze. One thing he’d learned—one needed to follow orders, whatever the orders were. That had been very thoroughly drilled into him before he left the shores of England. He nodded again, fighting the forbidden tears that wanted to come. He would allow himself to be called Lem—just Lem. At least he would keep that much of the name his mother had given him. But the change worried him as he tried to catch up to the line of boys following behind the red flag. Others in front of him were led away one at a time to waiting adults. His quick eyes studied his surroundings, the people, the children, the quiet of the small city beyond them.
Two horses stood in harness on the road nearby, shifting a little as if they were anxious to head for home and the stall that held their evening oats. The near one tossed his chestnut head, white blaze flashing from forehead to muzzle. The beautiful mare caught Lemuel’s eye. The man who held the reins loosely in his hands spoke to it, causing one of the horse’s ears to tip backward attentively.
Gradually Lemuel approached the front of the line. The tall boy with the red flag waved toward the wagon and its occupants, called loudly above the racket around them. “Yer boy, Mr. Andrews.” He pushed Lemuel forward using the hand that held his paperwork.
Lemuel was being moved closer to the beautiful horses. The man on the wagon seat merely stared. His eyes traveled up and down Lemuel once—and again. “Must be some mistake,” he finally said. “Asked fer a chore boy.”
“This is him,” the teenager responded. He lifted a sheet of paper upward as if to prove his assertion. “Says yer name right here next to Lem Brown—age ten. And this is him.”
“But I—”
The man got no further. The woman on the wagon seat leaned forward. Her warm eyes surveyed Lemuel’s pitiful form. She spoke. Her voice was soft—but firm. “I think we need to take him, Henry.”
“But I need . . .”
“Looks to me the boy has needs too,” she said, still not raising her voice.
The man turned his gaze to his wife, nodded silently, and looked back at Lemuel. “Throw yer bundle in the wagon and climb on up to that box seat.”
Lemuel obeyed.
The teenager passed a set of papers to the man. He signed twice, once on each, and handed only one copy back. The other he folded and tucked inside his shirt pocket. Lemuel wondered what the papers said.
No one spoke much on the drive to the farm. The man still seemed dour and brooding and the woman chose not to be chatty. Lemuel was far too busy studying the countryside that they drove through and watching the magnificent team of horses that easily pulled the wagon and its load. They were sleeker animals than the boy was used to seeing, and he marveled at the way they tossed their heads and gave occasional snorts, much like a human coughing to clear his throat.
After what felt like hours the farm finally came into view. Tired as he was, Lemuel felt that he had arrived at some type of fairyland. There was a frame house with unpainted sides but real glass windows and a pink rosebush by the door. A good-sized barn with a fence around it stood off to one side, and there were several smaller buildings scattered about the ample yard, filled with haystacks and woodpiles and a coop of chickens scratching and clucking and scrapping over food troughs. There were many other strange things that Lemuel didn’t understand—but nothing that made him frightened or uncomfortable. In some strange way he felt excitement. After his seemingly endless journey it appeared that he’d arrived where there might be a place for him. No one to snatch away the scarce food he managed to find, no older boys waiting to grab his worn scarf or holey mittens, nor anyone to push him aside when a well-intentioned soul offered a coin to the poor street urchins.
He lifted his eyes toward the field and saw a line of round-bellied cows slowly making their way, single file, toward the big barn with its open door. Cows. Imagine! He wondered if they were dangerous animals but dared not ask. Then a spotted dog crawled out from beneath the front step and with a wildly waving tail and joyous barks came running to greet the wagon.
“That’s Rufus,” said the gentle voice from the front of the wagon. “He always welcomes us home. He’ll be glad to meet you.”
Lemuel almost lost his guarded control. He blinked hard to keep the tears at bay. They weren’t tears of terror—or sadness—or suffering. He couldn’t understand them. Why did he feel like weeping? Perhaps it was because he was afraid—afraid he was merely dreaming again, that when he awoke it would all be gone. He reached a hand to feel the solid side of the wagon. That seemed real enough. He took a deep breath and waited for the wheels to stop rolling before getting up from his box seat and dropping clumsily to the ground.
Lemuel claimed his small case that contained everything he owned in life, his limited ration of essentials from the society that sent him west, tucking it possessively under his arm, and followed the man and woman into the small house. It was a simple dwelling, clean and cared for, with little touches of welcoming color here and there on a table or wall. He let his eyes slide over everything, then come to rest on the stove. A pot stood near the back and from it emanated an aroma he couldn’t identify, but it made his empty stomach rumble in protest. He remembered that it had been hours since he’d eaten—and even then the repast had been scant. He pressed his free hand tightly against his belly lest the folks ahead of him also hear his stomach’s plea.
The woman was the first to speak. “That room to the left will be your room. You can lay your things on the bed for now.”
He moved woodenly toward the room indicated. It was very small—but it had a real bed, a cot with a bright quilt of various colors and materials. He questioned whether it was proper to l
ay his soiled bundle on such a perfectly clean surface, but he did as he’d been told, trying to set his case down lightly so it wouldn’t touch too much of the clean covering.
As he looked around, he realized it was really a storage room. Barrels and bins lined the wall. A cupboard stood at the foot of the bed, the shelves neatly stacked with jars filled with all manner of canned goods. It had clearly taken some effort to find room to place the small cot into the confined space. But to Lemuel it was beyond his dreams. His own room. A real bed. With blankets—and surrounded by food. He hadn’t expected to be so blessed. For a moment he looked greedily at the shelves before him. There was a familiar urge to pilfer what he could and stash it away safely for later. But there’s no need, he told himself. There’ll be food now. I have a place. I belong.
And then he half smiled despite his nerves. Besides, where would I hide it? In my room? That’s where it is already! So I’ll just pretend it’s all mine. However, the silent boast did little to stop the gnawing in his middle.
A voice from the kitchen brought him back to the present. It was the woman. “I’ll fix him a plate before you show him ’round the place. Would you like your coffee now?”
The man’s answer was muffled, but when Lemuel joined them in the kitchen, she had already positioned the coffeepot on the newly fueled stove. Lemuel clasped his hands together. He would’ve shoved them in his pockets if he had them—but pockets were deemed excessive in the clothing provided by the society that had brought him to this new country. The man nodded toward one of the chairs around the table, and Lemuel understood he was to sit.
It was the woman who spoke. “Thought you might be hungry. We don’t have our supper until about seven, but you can have some bread and stew before you go to learn about the choring.”
Lemuel swallowed. Even the promise of food had his mouth watering.