by Sara Donati
A shudder ran down Sophie’s back. “Not as glad as I am to be here. Oh,” she said, looking over her shoulder toward the door. “That’s Pip.”
Anna realized she was hearing a small dog bark in the corridor.
“Pip, of course.”
“I left him with one of the sailors and now he’s come looking for me,” Sophie said. “I couldn’t leave him behind. I just couldn’t.”
She didn’t say I kept him because he was there with us at the end or because he loved Cap or even because Cap entrusted him to me, but Anna understood that all those things were true.
It took a moment to be sure of her own voice, but then Anna said, “He’ll be good company for you.”
There was a longer silence. When Sophie raised her head her eyes—a startling blue-green—were wet.
“You want to hear about Cap, I know.”
“Whenever you’re ready.” Anna could not keep her voice from wobbling. “I’m here.”
“I’ll never be ready,” Sophie said. “But I need to tell you just the same.”
Anna leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Sophie’s. “We’ll miss him together, every day. We’ll tell stories and read his letters out loud, you remember, the ones he wrote from Greece in that awful doggerel, and the stories of his landlady in Lisbon who wanted him to marry her granddaughter.”
“The waiter in Stockholm who tried to speak English,” Sophie said, her voice catching.
Anna nodded. “And we’ll laugh and weep until we run out of tears. Now please hand me a towel, or I’ll hug you just as I am and you’ll drip all the way home.”
4
WHILE SOPHIE AND the ship’s doctor were being interviewed by the coroner, Anna went looking for Jack and found he had been kept busy ejecting reporters as soon as they came through the doors. He was a useful creature, and she told him so.
“But I have to get back to headquarters,” he told her. “I’m on until midnight. Please tell Sophie I’ll greet her properly tomorrow. And you need to keep an eye on the brother—” He jerked his head toward a bench on the far side of the lobby. “It looks to me like he’s ready to bolt as soon as he’s handed the baby over to the city.”
Anna looked up at him in surprise, and he gave her the shrug he reserved for situations that made no sense.
“That’s what he told me, but you had better interview him yourself.”
Conversations with the newly bereaved were never easy, but Anna went and sat down beside him and introduced herself.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Anna said. “But I hope you’ll take comfort in the fact that your nephew is doing well. I understand your sister was a widow and there is no other family here. You want to leave him to the care of the city?”
His face was patchy with healing sunburn, beard stubble, and fading bruises, and his eyes were wet with tears, but what Anna sensed from him was anger. His whole face contorted. “I simply cannot take on responsibility for an infant.” His voice was hoarse but his English was excellent, almost without accent, even cultured.
“There’s no one else? Anyone in France?”
He gave a short shake of the head. “My mother is dead, and my father won’t want him even if I could get him to France. Is there something I need to do about my sister before I can go? I’ve got nothing, not a penny to pay to have her buried. I don’t know where I’ll sleep or how I’ll eat or where I’ll get the money to buy passage.”
“This is a terrible tragedy. I see from Dr. Savard’s notes that your sister was Catholic. The Church will see to her burial—”
He shot her a look so full of pain and anger that she lost track of what she meant to say.
“You object?”
With a sharp shake of the head he looked away. “What does it matter anymore.”
Anna went on, more slowly. “You see the man standing just over there, with the papers? He’s the clerk who can help you with lodging and meals, and possibly he’ll know of someone at the shipping company you can talk to about funding your ticket. Now I’m wondering what name the boy should be given. Do you know what your sister’s preferences would have been?”
Irritation brought new color to his ravaged complexion. “She wouldn’t talk to me. I know nothing of what she wanted or didn’t want.”
“If there’s nothing else you can give him,” Anna said with all the neutrality of tone she could muster, “then at least give him a name. Otherwise he’ll be assigned one. His surname is Bellegarde, if I’ve understood correctly. What was his father’s name?”
He swallowed convulsively. “Denis.”
“Denis Bellegarde,” Anna said. “That’s what he’ll be called. Is there any information you can share about his father’s family?”
“No. I have no information to give you about the Bellegardes.” He got to his feet—as awkwardly as an old man might have—and left her without further explanation.
Anna considered. It could be that he was telling the whole truth: the baby’s father had left no family, or there might be some feud between the Bellegardes and Belmains that could not be overcome, though it was hard to imagine that anyone would consign an infant to an orphan asylum out of animosity or disdain. It seemed to her more likely that shock and grief and guilt were making this young man’s decisions for him.
Later he might come to sorely regret what he was doing, but Anna couldn’t force him to listen to reason. And it was time she went home, herself, with Sophie.
* * *
• • •
THE TRIP TO Waverly Place was hampered by traffic, and that meant that Anna had twenty minutes or so to catch her breath and get used to the idea that Sophie was sitting just across from her, close enough to touch. She had put her head back and her eyes were closed, but she smiled as if she could see Anna watching her.
“I’m so looking forward to seeing everyone, I couldn’t have borne one more delay. Is Aunt Quinlan well?”
“Her arthritis is no worse and sometimes a little better, I think, with a new salve she’s been trying. She will be so happy to have you home. We all are, but Auntie has been very low.”
Sophie raised her head. “Since Rosa and Lia were sent away?”
“And Tonino,” Anna agreed. “She was making some progress with him and she hated letting him go.”
The second born and oldest boy of the small Russo family, Tonino had been lost in the city for months, and whatever he had experienced had robbed him of his ability to talk.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Sophie said.
Anna was sorry too, but it would be unkind and unfair to say so. Sophie hadn’t gone on holiday. Anna reached across and scratched Pip behind the ear and he sniffed her gloved hand, all polite curiosity.
“You’re here now.”
There was a comfortable silence that reminded Anna how much she had missed her cousin. She hadn’t been lonely, exactly; with Jack and his legion of family and friends in her life, loneliness was unimaginable. Aunt Quinlan and Mrs. Lee were there to talk to her about things that would be harder for Jack to understand, and she had colleagues she trusted and liked. Then there was Elise Mercier, who was becoming more of a friend and less of a student every day.
But it was true that the loss of Sophie and Cap both at once had set her off balance, to a degree she had not really comprehended but now was clear.
“Conrad has done great things with the house on Stuyvesant Square,” Anna volunteered. “I think you’ll be comfortable there.” Comfort was the most Anna would offer. Practicing medicine had given her a deep dislike for the platitudes, and she could not tell Sophie that time would heal her wounds or that Cap was in a better place. His place was here, beside her. A disease had cut his life short, a simple but terrible fact.
“Conrad,” Sophie said. “I have to send him a note.”
“No need,” Anna said. “Yo
u know that Auntie and Mrs. Lee have done that already. He might already be there waiting. We seem to have switched roles, the two of us. I’m usually the anxious one.”
That got her a real smile, a flash of the younger Sophie. “You’ve always been the impatient one,” she said. “Over the winter Cap and I wrote down all the stories we could remember.”
“About my impatience?”
“About all three of us as children. I want to sit down with you and Auntie and the Lees to go over them and fill in the bits we couldn’t quite recall.”
Anna knew that if she spoke, her voice would be hoarse with tears. Instead she leaned close and covered Sophie’s hand with her own.
* * *
• • •
SOPHIE KNEW THAT the moment was coming when she would no longer be able to govern her emotions. When she would have to let herself be submerged in grief. Away from home among strangers she could not afford to be vulnerable. Now, finally she must put aside the mask she had been wearing—somber, sorrowful, blank—and reveal what she had been hiding, even from herself.
The first sight of her Aunt Quinlan was the end to all that. She walked into the parlor and straight to her armchair, knelt, and rested her head on the familiar lap.
Auntie’s hands were twisted and swollen by arthritis, the knuckles misshapen, fingers bent at odd angles. But she used them still to stroke Sophie’s hair, very gently.
“There she is, my girl. Home with us where you belong.”
Her voice was a little rough and it wavered with age, but there was no sweeter sound. Sophie trembled and raised her head, tears streaming over her cheeks, to smile at her aunt. “He talked of you on his last day,” she said. “He loved you very much.”
She realized that Pip sat beside her because he put a paw on her skirts, his button black eyes roaming from her to Aunt Quinlan and back again. Looking for the cause of her distress, so he could fix it for her, all nine pounds of him ready to go to battle. She picked him up and tucked him into the crook of her arm, and then she turned to the rest of the room, fumbling for her handkerchief to wipe her face.
“What you need is some tea,” Mrs. Lee said, an unusual hitch to her voice. “I’ll go get that now.”
“Wait,” Sophie said. Getting to her feet, she crossed the room and, without waiting for permission, hugged Mrs. Lee with her free arm. “Your notes meant the world to me.”
“There now,” Mrs. Lee said, patting her back. “There now. You sit and visit for a while. I won’t be gone but a minute.”
“I want to see Mr. Lee,” Sophie said.
“As soon as he shows his face, I’ll tell him so,” Mrs. Lee said. She took out a handkerchief to blow her nose, as if that might hide the fact that her eyes were red-rimmed and damp.
Sophie made herself draw in a deep breath once, twice, and a third time before she glanced at the grouping of portraits hung on the far wall and realized that one was missing. It was her favorite, the portrait of her grandparents with their four children: her father as a boy, his older brother, and his two sisters. Each face so familiar that she could close her eyes and see the smallest detail. In the missing portrait her Aunt Amelie leaned against Sophie’s grandmother Hannah. She was a cheerful child, content with her place in a small village called Paradise tucked away in the great forests to the north. Sophie’s father, the youngest of the four, sat on Grandfather Ben’s lap, looking solemnly at the artist. At Aunt Quinlan.
The absence of the portrait struck her as so odd that for a moment she couldn’t find the words to ask the obvious question.
Anna read her mind. She said, “Auntie sent it to the house on Stuyvesant Square, so you would have it with you always.”
“But it’s precious to you, too,” Sophie said to her aunt.
“It is,” Aunt Quinlan agreed. “But I can summon Hannah and Ben and their brood out of my memory anytime I like, even without the portrait to look at. It belongs with you now.”
* * *
• • •
CAP’S UNCLE CONRAD Belmont arrived just as Mrs. Lee wheeled in a cart crowded with cake and sandwiches and tea. He was a very formal old man, the model of good manners, but for once he couldn’t help himself: he put both arms around Sophie and hugged her.
“Our boy is gone,” he said quietly. “How will we survive without him?”
“Together,” Sophie told him, pressing her damp face to his shoulder. “Day by day.”
Cap’s uncle had lost his sight in the war but Sophie had the sense he saw too much, even so. She could tell him that she was well and moving forward, but Conrad heard what she didn’t say.
“Come sit by me, Conrad,” Sophie’s Aunt Quinlan said. “Come, now’s the time to talk about Cap.”
For an hour they did just that, telling the familiar stories about the man they had all loved. Conversations overlapped and clashed, fell away and roared back to life, threaded through with laughter. In time they talked about the rest of the family, scattered as they were from one coast to the other. Auntie had two new great-grandchildren, one born in Boston to her grandson Simon, the other to her granddaughter Lily in California.
“A great-granddaughter named for my mother,” her aunt said, with considerable satisfaction. “But we’ll run out of nicknames for Elizabeth if this goes on much longer.”
When the tea and sandwiches were finished and Sophie was having trouble keeping her yawns to herself, she got up to examine a new photograph. Rosa and Lia, sitting side by side in the garden with a riot of roses over their heads.
“There’s one of Tonino, too, in my little parlor,” her aunt said.
Sophie said, “It’s odd that they aren’t here. I keep waiting for them to come rushing in. I’d like to go visit them as soon as possible. Anna, would that be possible, a trip to Greenwood?”
Both Anna’s dimples came to the fore, which only happened when she was best pleased. “We could all go,” she said. “A weekend outing, like the one you missed last June. I’ll talk to Jack about it and see how quickly we can get it organized. Conrad, will you come with us this time?”
“Not this time,” he said. “There’s a lot to do about the estate and I want to get it all sorted out as quickly as possible. Before the newspapers can manufacture any fresh outrage.”
Sophie had put the newspapers out of her mind while she was in Europe and wished that she could continue to do so. She would have said just that, but Anna got up to look out the front windows.
“Elise is home. She had her interview with Minerva Griffin this morning. And see, by her expression it went well.”
In fact Elise was smiling when she came into the room and headed directly for Sophie, both her hands outstretched. “You’re home.”
“I am,” Sophie said, grasping the offered hands. “Let’s have a look at you.”
This young woman, slender but wiry, with a short mane of red hair and an expressive face, had been a nursing sister with the Sisters of Mercy until Anna took note of her. Her cousin would deny it, but Sophie had seen it happen too many times to be denied: in a room full of people, Anna would gravitate toward the ones that had a spark of true intelligence that had gone unnoticed or unappreciated. It was what made her such a good teacher and won her students’ trust.
Elise Mercier had that spark of real intelligence, but she was also funny in a charming, unselfconscious way, once she let herself relax. She had been very good with Rosa and Lia, with an almost instinctive understanding of how to deal with Rosa’s frustration and anger. And according to Anna’s letters, she had been a great friend while Sophie was gone.
Elise said, “It’s very good to have you back, but at the same time I am so sorry for your loss.” She looked toward Conrad and smiled at Pip sitting on his lap. “Mr. Belmont, it’s very nice to see you again, too. I take it that’s Pip.”
“It is,” Sophie said, her voice coming hoars
e. “Elise, sit down and tell us about your interview with Mrs. Griffin.”
Elise waved a hand as if to shoo the suggestion away. “You must have better things to talk about.”
Aunt Quinlan said, “We can listen while we eat Mrs. Lee’s cake. You take a slice, too, Elise. I swear you have got to stand up twice to throw a shadow.”
Elise still hesitated. “It will bore you.” And: “Mr. Belmont, have I said something funny?”
He said, “Minerva Griffin is many things, but boring is not one of them. I’ve known her for all my life and she still surprises me on a regular basis. Did she bark or bite today?”
Elise managed a grim smile as she took the plate Anna passed to her. “A little of both, but I can’t complain. She’s going to keep me on as a scholarship student.”
“Then you made an impression,” Anna said. “She often makes students wait a couple days to hear her decision.”
“I think it wasn’t so much the interview that won her over,” Elise said, “but what happened before it. That fancy new building of French flats on Seventeenth burned down this morning, did you hear?”
“On Seventeenth Street?” Conrad leaned forward. “Close to Third Avenue?”
“Where that actress is living,” Mrs. Lee added. “The one who played Juliet last year when she’s old enough to be Juliet’s mother.”
One of Mrs. Lee’s hobbies was to follow the theater gossip in the newspapers, and to present the best bits to them at the table along with the food she prepared.
Sophie smiled, remembering this. “I missed you, Mrs. Lee. Every day.”
“You’re home now,” she said gruffly. “That’s what counts. Now tell us about this fire, Elise. Was that the building, with the actress?”
“Yes,” Elise said. “Just across the street from Mrs. Griffin. Nobody was injured, from what I understand.”
