“Wow. An orphanage. Wouldn’t that mean an adoption at some point?”
“Not necessarily. And birth and marriage certificates, and even adoptions, were not as standard as they are now.”
“I’m still confused about how this is going to help with my parents,” Meri said.
“It might not,” Jillian admitted. “But it might, depending on what we find.”
Meri scratched her hairline. “I don’t know. It seems … interesting but far-fetched.”
Jillian took three slow breaths, waiting for Meri’s thoughts to further congeal. She hadn’t noticed the line in Meri’s forehead before, a worry line if ever she’d seen one.
Jillian leaned toward Meri. “Is there no one in your family who would stand with you?”
Meri ran a tongue across her bottom lip. “Maybe Pru.”
“Pru?”
“My sister.”
“Is she a doctor?”
“A resident. OB-GYN.”
“What kind of doctor is your brother?”
“Neurologist. Two years into his own practice.”
“Does your sister like medicine?”
“I’ve never asked her.”
Right. Not a relevant question in the Davies family.
“Do you think she’s a safe person for you to talk to?” Jillian asked.
Meri nodded slowly. “She would tell me the truth.”
Jillian stood up. “Call her. Soon. If for no other reason than to let someone in your family know you’re all right and what’s really going on.”
Meri blew out a slender shard of a breath. “I’ll try.” The response sounded politely noncommittal to Jillian.
“We can touch base later in the day.” Jillian couldn’t force Meri to call Pru, but maybe Meri would surprise her.
Jillian called Annabel Rosario three more times before getting an answer. Finally, a weary alto voice carried across the miles.
Yes, she could confirm the name of her father, though she hadn’t known him well. She hadn’t even seen him since she was three, and he died when she was nine. All the information matched Jillian’s findings.
No, she knew next to nothing about his family. After her parents split up, she only knew her mother’s relatives. She’d run out of money, had to drop out of college except for a class here and there, and was working as a teacher’s aide in a day care center. At least she got to be around children. It wasn’t the same as being a pediatrician, but it was something.
The pounding on Jillian’s front door disturbed the endorphins flooding her brain at the thought of how Annabel’s life was about to change.
“Hold on,” she told Annabel. “Someone’s at my door. But I have more to tell you. Please don’t hang up.”
She ran down the hall and opened the door. Meri fell in.
“I called Pru.” Meri spoke with a breathlessness Jillian did not attribute simply to the walk—or run—from the Inn. It was the winded gulping of distress.
Jillian held up a finger and pointed to her phone. “Let me just finish this call.” She took Meri’s elbow and guided her into the living room, to the comfortable purple chair with the ottoman. With her eyes on Meri, she resumed her conversation with Annabel.
“I imagine you’d go back to school if you could.”
“It would take a miracle. I’m trying to get some loans. Then there will be medical school to think of, and the astronomical debt that comes with that. Maybe I should just be a teacher. But that’s not why you called. I don’t understand why you tracked me down.”
“Are your grades pretty good?” Jillian said.
“Very. Ms. Parisi-Duffy, this is feeling a little weird.”
Jillian took a breath. “You might want to be sitting down.”
“Is this bad news?”
“I don’t think so, no. But it might make your knees wobble.”
In front of Jillian, Meri’s head was in her hands. But Jillian couldn’t hang up on Annabel now. Neither could she let Meri out of her sight.
“Your father had a great-uncle,” she said. “His grandfather’s brother. He was quite elderly and passed away recently, leaving a house and a life insurance policy. There are no other living heirs. That’s why we were looking for you.”
“I don’t understand,” Annabel said.
“You are the heir.”
Silence.
“This is a scam.”
“No! It’s not.” Jillian gave the name of the law firm handling the deceased’s estate along with a website and phone number. “I’m a genealogist who was hired to find the next of kin. Once I report that I have made contact with you, you can expect a call, followed by a registered letter, from the law firm about settling the estate.”
“The estate?” Annabel echoed.
“You can go back to school,” Jillian said. “If you have the grades to get into medical school, you can be a pediatrician.”
More silence.
Then tears. “Is this for real?”
“Absolutely. The packet from the law firm will include a family tree. You can at least know something about where your father came from.”
Now Meri was crying. Tears in stereo. Jillian made sure Annabel had taken down the law firm’s information before ending the call.
“I’m a horrible person,” Meri said.
“No, you’re not.” Jillian sat on the ottoman and put a hand on Meri’s leg.
“I don’t know who you were talking to, but I heard enough to know you just gave that person a future as a doctor.”
“I gave her news of an inheritance. If she chooses to use it to become a doctor, and really does have the ability, that’s up to her.”
“Meanwhile, I’ve been trying my best not to have to be a doctor.”
“It’s not your calling. It might be hers. You’re trying to find your own future. What you do have in common is you both want to help children. I know that for a fact, and I haven’t even met Annabel Rosario.”
Meri threw her head against the back of the chair. “Pru said that if I don’t want to be a doctor, then don’t.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you called her.”
“She also said the rest of them are closing in. That’s what she said. Closing in.”
“What exactly did she mean?”
“They’re almost here, Jillian! Our phones are all on the same family plan, so I figured they were using the location feature to find where my phone was. Even if I ditched my phone somewhere, they would go to the last place they found it.”
“But you haven’t ditched it.”
“No. And they know that, because I’ve turned it on a few times. Pru said they’re booking flights.”
“All of them?”
“I’m not sure. Not Pru. I know she’s not coming. Even if residents could get time off for a family crisis, she wouldn’t think this merits an intervention.”
Jillian wondered why Nolan had not yet responded to the commotion and come down from his second-story office. He would know what to say to Meri before she completely fell apart.
“Meri, you could have gone anywhere,” Jillian said. “You could have driven anywhere in the US. But you came to a little mountain town in Colorado that you’ve been to before when you were a child.”
Meri squeezed her eyes closed.
“Why here, Meri?”
Tears leaked down Meri’s face in a slow trail from behind closed eyelids. “Because this is the last place I remember being happy. I was eleven that summer. When I was twelve they started sending me to camps to make sure I would excel at all the sciences necessary to be a doctor. I just wanted to feel that again before it all came crashing in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Memphis, September 9, 1878
Eliza jumped from the straight-back chair where she had been keeping vigil outside Sister Constance’s room.
“Has she wakened?” Eliza peered through the crack in the doorway at Mrs. Bullock, who had relieved Mrs. Vaughan for the night in nursing Siste
r Constance. In the next room, Sister Thecla lingered in her own illness with her own nurse.
Mrs. Bullock laid a cool cloth on the nun’s forehead and glanced over her forehead at Eliza. “No. I believe we must let her wake on heaven’s shores.”
On the bed, Sister Constance moaned. Her pitch rose and fell slightly, but it did not approximate words.
“I must come in, Mrs. Bullock,” Eliza said. “If this is truly to be the end, let me say goodbye.”
Mrs. Bullock crossed the room and put a hand on the door. “Dr. Armstrong does not think that wise. It was my mistake not to be sure the door was closed. You have not slept properly in four days. At least go to the parlor and rest.”
The door closed, and Eliza’s chest seized. Heaven’s shores. As a good Christian, she ought to take comfort that Sister Constance—and probably Sister Thecla as well—would soon see their blessed Savior. But what a grievous hollow their absence would leave in this world.
Already St. Mary’s was spinning in the loss of Father Harris, dean of the cathedral, in the Savior’s arms three days now.
And now the sisters.
Eliza shuffled toward the kitchen. Someone was always there these days, if only to brew a fresh pot of coffee or sit in bewildered shock between chores or calls. Every moment close to the failing sisters, rather than down the street or blocks away wondering what was happening, was prized. Every sound from their rooms made the house inhabitants lurch.
Sister Clare sat at the table, bleary eyed, a tin mug in front of her. “There’s plenty.”
“I thought you might have gone to bed.” Eliza took another tin mug from the cupboard and filled it.
“How does anyone sleep with a broken heart?”
“Exhaustion?”
“I am beyond that point.”
“You must guard your own health.”
“You as well.”
“Did I hear Sister Frances’s voice?” Eliza raised tepid coffee to her lips.
“She came and went quickly,” Sister Clare said. “She wants so much to be here while the sisters are ill and would gladly take longer shifts to nurse them, but most of the children at Church Home are ill. Dying, truth be told. We may have to help her get the undertaker to respond to her pleas. Do they really think she can just leave their little bodies wrapped in blankets on the porch for the flies and maggots to feast on?”
Eliza put her head in her hands. “It is only the ninth of September, but we need the miracle of an early frost to bring an end to this madness.”
“Perhaps we should ask Father Dalzell to lead us in prayer.”
The priest from Louisiana had arrived Saturday, determined that St. Mary’s should not be without a pastor for even one Sunday, though there was barely anyone to attend services. Father Schuyler had arrived from New York the day before as well.
Eliza blew out breath. “I cannot help wondering if it is wise for anyone else new to enter Memphis.”
“We must come,” Sister Clare said. “People are dying—hundreds every day now. I have no regret that I came, just as you have no regret for staying when you could have left.”
Eliza could not dispute this assessment. Her telegram to her mother had been making just this argument. So far Sisters Ruth, Helen, and Clare had remained healthy, but many others who arrived from northern states to serve as nurses and doctors in the Memphis epidemic had dropped ill within days after arrival and themselves required care—ultimately adding to the burden of the exhausted medical system rather than relieving it. Where the balance lay, Eliza did not know.
“Will Sister Constance make it through the night?” Eliza asked.
Sister Clare shrugged. “I have often judged these things wrong.”
“You should rest.”
“So we are back to that, are we?”
“Why don’t we both go to the parlor?” Eliza stood. “We can freshen our coffee cups first. At least it will be a comfortable place to hold vigil.”
Sister Clare nodded. In the parlor they found Sister Hughetta sitting, pale and still, with Miss Murdock. No one had been to bed and, it seemed, no one had any intention of going to bed as long as Sisters Constance and Thecla were on the brink of death. Eliza had been home only for the briefest of times in the last few days, her greatest motivation to be sure she did not miss communication from Callie or indication that she might have been in the house—some sign that she was well.
But there was none. Eliza left a note in the kitchen that the sisters were ill. If Callie came home, she would know where to find Eliza.
She would not allow herself to picture Callie writhing feverish in damp sheets. Except of course she had. Eliza blinked and did what she’d been doing for days—replaced that image with one of Callie whole and upright and nursing her sister back to health. Many were sick. Not everyone perished.
The wick in the single lamp lit in the parlor burned down, and no one rose to adjust it as the gathered women absorbed the moans of Sister Constance that filled the house, though in decreasing volume, and the hours wore toward daylight.
The knock on the front door roused Eliza, and she realized she had dozed off on the sofa across from where Sister Constance had conceded to her illness. No one sat on the infected piece of furniture, covered in a sheet, which would likely be hauled out for burning. Everyone startled at the sound of someone at the door. Miss Murdock was first to jump up, while the others rubbed their eyes. Eliza focused on the clock. It was barely six in the morning.
Miss Murdock was back in a moment with a priest. “Father Dalzell.”
“Good morning,” he said. “I met some of you when I arrived. I greet you all in the peace of Christ and the love of many in Louisiana who are praying for our brothers and sisters here in Memphis.”
“Thank you, Father.” Sister Clare stood. “May we offer you some refreshment?”
“It is I who have come to offer the refreshment of Christ’s body to Sister Constance,” he said, “if she would like to commune.”
Eliza stifled a gasp with the realization she had not heard moaning for quite some time. Surely Mrs. Bullock would have come to the parlor if the sister had passed.
“I will go inquire,” Sister Hughetta said.
Both nuns left the parlor together. When she saw that the priest meant to go as well, Eliza joined the entourage.
Mrs. Bullock allowed admittance for the priest but cautioned the sisters to keep their distance and left the door ajar.
Eliza put three fingers to her lips. Surely he has come too late for this.
“Dear Sister,” Father Dalzell said, “I have come to bring you the Blessed Sacrament of our dear Lord. Do you desire to receive it?”
“Oh, so very much!”
Eliza grabbed Sister Hughetta’s hand. How was it possible that Sister Constance’s voice was so clear and her countenance so bright after a night of moaning? Yet it was so. As she received communion, she gave every response the liturgy required.
Miss Murdock announced that she had prepared breakfast, and Mrs. Bullock shooed everyone toward the kitchen, including Father Dalzell, with the certainty that Father Schuyler would soon arrive as well. And Eliza knew Mrs. Haskins would turn up as soon as she’d had her own breakfast. The pantry must open even while the Sisters House cared for their own and held a vigil of prayer in their hearts.
Sisters Clare and Hughetta did their best to set the importance of the calls that must be made, with only the two of them to make them now. When Mrs. Vaughan arrived for her daytime duties, moving between the two sickrooms, Mrs. Bullock took the advice she had been dispensing to everyone else and retired to her room for a few hours of rest, leaving Miss Murdock to manage in the kitchen. Father Dalzell and Father Schuyler plunged in for their first full week of work in Memphis. Eliza admired their commitment to provide pastoral care and be hands for whatever task was needed—filling jars of broth in the kitchen, distributing food in the pantry, sorting the correspondence and financial records that Sister Constance had to abandon.
The day was as unrelenting as all the days had become. Intermittent reports came of how the ill sisters were, but with no encouragement. Sister Constance asked for one book and then another but sent them both back because she could not read. Then she fell into unconsciousness. Right from the start both sisters had been too ill to be told that the other was sick as well.
Eliza handed out one packet of relief goods after another, hour after hour. Father Dalzell agreed to find his way to Church Home and see what he might do to relieve the dire situation there. Father Schuyler had the greater challenge of organizing goods to transport out to Canfield. The horse and carriage could be made available during a certain window of the afternoon. A wagon would be better, but there was not one to be had. Eliza caught Father Schuyler standing stunned on the street corner in front of the cathedral as wagons of coffins, both empty and full, rumbled by and the magnitude of what he had volunteered for sank in.
“I knew what I read in the newspapers,” he said, “and in Sister Constance’s letters to us in New York. But to see it with my own eyes—to smell it in the street—it is difficult to explain.”
“Yet the love of Christ compels us,” Eliza said.
“Yes. Yes. I cannot find a wagon. The carriage will have to do.”
And this was the day. And this was the heartache. And this was the grief.
Eliza refused to go home. And she would not be banished to the parlor. She took up her post in the straight-back chair between the rooms of Sister Constance and Sister Thecla.
“Alleluia! Osanna!”
The cry came at midnight, and Eliza knew these were Sister Constance’s final words. After this came only another night of moaning. By seven in the morning, the bells began to ring for Sister Constance.
Mrs. Haskins turned up with her daughter-in-law in tow.
“I heard the bells,” she said. “I know you will want to be with the sisters today.”
“You are a dear.” Eliza’s voice caught.
“How is she?”
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