Two blocks from the boardinghouse, Lily’s heart pounded like a tribal drum, a portentous beat in her ears. She was well accustomed to walking the city streets on her own, even at night. But anytime she became too comfortable, a report on the wire about a mugging, or worse, would revive her diligence. As a mother, she couldn’t afford to ignore a feeling that something wasn’t right. And that intuition now sent a chill over her skin.
She hurried around the last corner. Footsteps in the dimness further quickened in her wake. On the verge of breaking into a run, she dared a second look back, and someone called out. “Wait! If ya please!”
The voice, being female, was largely disarming, but it still took a second or two for Lily’s feet to slow.
“Miss Palmer…” The lilt of the woman’s tone was young and familiar. Hat pulled low, she approached slightly short of breath. “It’s only me…Claire.”
“Claire?” The girl’s face was pale with freckles. Out of context, and without the sight of her red hair, the Millstones’ housekeeper hadn’t immediately connected with Lily’s memory.
“I didn’t mean to startle ya, ma’am. I was waitin’ outside the newspaper building in hopes of seeing ya come out. From across the street, I couldn’t be sure ’twas you.”
Lily smiled with relief and patted her chest. “It’s quite all right.”
“I woulda phoned instead, but when I tried this mornin’, the gentleman said you were far too busy to take calls.”
The chief.
And the woman he had spoken with was Claire. Not Sylvia, as Lily had presumed.
“So you traveled all this way?”
“It was a day I’d planned to go visit with me sister. But she agreed. This had to be done, she said.”
Voices cut through the evening air, and Claire’s head snapped toward them. A jovial-looking couple were nattering on while crossing the street.
Returning to Lily, Claire clutched her coat collar under her neck. “Is there a place we can speak, the two of us?” Her wariness over meeting in the open pointed to an unfortunate conclusion: Lily’s sense of foreboding was warranted after all.
“Come with me.”
- • •
In the house, supper had already been served to the tenants, the dining table cleared. Lily had scarcely touched her veal at lunch, ordered by Clayton on her behalf—his proposal had stifled her decisiveness over even the menu—but food remained the least of her concerns.
Particularly now, observing Claire.
Taking a seat in the den, the girl worried a loose seam on her skirt, her hands aged beyond her years, her coat still fastened. She resembled Geraldine just then, softened by lamplight, perched on the same chair.
“Could I get you some tea?” Lily asked.
“No, thank you, ma’am. I really shan’t stay long.”
Lily nodded. She closed the door, dulling the sounds of boarders in the parlor. Their high-pitched giggles dwarfed the symphonic notes crackling from a gramophone.
Across from Claire, Lily lowered onto the settee. Ellis’s spot. How she wished he were here now.
Claire fiddled more intensely with her seam. “On the bus, I thought of how to say it all. Now it’s slipped away, it has.”
Lily pushed up a smile. “Just begin wherever you’d like.” She attempted to bar any notions of what might be coming, along with regrets of not thinking to approach Claire first. Of course, finding the opportunity would have been a challenge unto itself.
“It’s the boy.”
“Calvin…”
“When the missus hired me on, around year’s end, they’d only just moved to the house. ’Twasn’t but a month, and she’d had her fill. All the lad’s crying and carrying-on. His sister tried to explain he was just missin’ their mam and their old home. But this only agitated the missus more. I did my best to calm the poor boy, to keep him from actin’ out. And Mr. Millstone would thank me for helping his wife. ‘She’s still so fragile,’ he’d say…” Claire’s story trailed off as her features gathered in a pleading look. “I didn’t want to be part of it, Miss Palmer, but I needed the extra money.”
“Part of it?” Lily breathed, but the housekeeper continued.
“She was in need of surgery, my sister was. And if I said no to the missus, I feared she’d sack me straightaway.”
“Claire,” Lily interjected, “what did Mrs. Millstone pay you to do?”
Hesitant to a maddening degree, Claire dropped her gaze to the floor. Her voice lowered to a near whisper. “The missus told Calvin of plans for the day. Said I’d be takin’ him to a special winter zoo, with his sister off to school. Even packed a wee suitcase for the boy. To be ready if we made a night of it, she told him. As we rode the bus together, he started askin’ after the animals. ’Twas the most I’d ever seen the child smile.” Claire’s lips lifted at the memory, though just as soon fell with the quivering of her chin. Tears filled her eyes. “The lad trusted me, and I betrayed him. The staff at the children’s home, they had to pry his hands from my arms.”
The vision caused a squeezing of Lily’s heart. Indeed, there were far grimmer scenarios. But for Lily, there was little relief to be found in a child’s pain of feeling wholly unwanted, cast out not just once, but twice. “Is Calvin there now? At the orphanage?”
“Couldn’t say, ma’am. I went back first chance I had, to see if he was all right. But the director there, he warned me to steer clear, he did. Said the boy needed a more pleasing disposition if a fine set of parents were ever willin’ to give him a home, and I’d only ruin his chances. If I coulda taken him in myself, I would have. I’d take in the poor lass, too, if I had the means.”
The reference to Ruby was almost as alarming.
Lily leaned forward in her chair. “I need you to be candid with me, Claire. Is his sister safe in that house?”
Claire’s shoulders hunched and her chin pulled in, a mouse backed into a corner. She was unaccustomed surely to stating her opinion. Not one bearing such importance.
“Please,” Lily said. “If you care for those children as much as you say, you have to tell me what you know.”
A wave of giggles drifted in from the parlor. The contrast of emotions a single room apart—perhaps even greater in a house one state away—was woefully striking.
Claire slowly raised her eyes, though only halfway. “All was peaceful for a spell, without Calvin there. Yet after time, the missus only worsened.”
“Worsened…how?”
“More and more, ’tis as if her daughter never died. Any reminder often upsets her…if the lass insists she doesn’t like marmalade or ribbons in her hair or playing the piano. And if she damages anything that belonged to their other daughter—a dress, even a book—it can mean standing in a corner for hours, or writing pages and pages of the same sentence, apologizin’.”
Ellis had mentioned something once. About Ruby being kept from the playground for staining her clothing…
But Lily had greater concerns now as she reflected upon another handwritten page. She had her suspicions but yearned to know for certain. “I understand that Ruby received a letter from her mother, right after Calvin was taken away. Sylvia wrote it herself. Didn’t she?” The question being largely rhetorical, Lily hadn’t expected the spilling of Claire’s tears, the straining of her voice.
“The words were from the missus…but the writin’ was mine.” Droplets clung to Claire’s chin as she finally met Lily’s gaze. “Oh, Miss Palmer, I’m so very sorry. I didn’t want to do any of it.”
Lily’s compassion shifted to this poor, young girl, strapped with a load of guilt from impossible choices. Deserving of forgiveness. Lily reached out and squeezed Claire’s hand. “This is my doing much more than yours. I assure you, I’ll do all I can to make it right.”
Though with a tinge of confusion, Claire gained an air of hope. She wiped her tears with her coat sleeve. “Are ya goin’ to fetch the boy, then? You must think of him first.”
Before Lily could form an answer, Claire added, “I know plenty who’ve grown up in children’s homes much the same. They can be fine enough for the good ’n’ quiet type. But for those who don’t settle easily…the tales aren’t ones I’d care to repeat.”
In other words, Lily needed to investigate in a hurry. After the passage of at least two months, Calvin could be in dire need of rescue from a place that could leave scars of every sort.
Assuming he was still there.
