Secret Sisters

by Joy Callaway

  Dedication

  For my son, John

  Epigraph

  I solemnly pledge my loyalty to the sisterhood of Beta Xi Beta until the end of my days. I promise that above all else, my purpose will be to foster equality and intellect among women—for a chain of linked hands is mightier than the most menacing army.

  —The Pledge of Beta Xi Beta

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Advance Praise for Secret Sisters

  Also by Joy Callaway

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  I had always thought Christmas pudding a disappointing choice for a celebration. Most were either gummy or hard and our elderly neighbor’s was the worst of all, yet Mother had always served it on Christmas Eve anyway. “Here’s to us. We may not be rich, but we’re rich in what matters.” She’d said the same thing every year, whispering it in my ear as she handed me the white china saucer painted with holly leaves.

  Realizing I was holding my train ticket in my hand—a train ticket I wouldn’t get to use—I set it down on the window sill. I blinked back tears, grasping at unpleasant memories—the way the crunch of stale currants made my teeth hurt, the way my father had rolled his eyes the first time I’d cut a slice for my stepmother, Vera, and my stepbrother, Lucas, the year after Mother passed away. It didn’t help. Nothing could change the fact that I couldn’t get home, that a blizzard had taken the last trace of my mother at Christmastime.

  Pulling the lace-edged cuff of my wool nightgown into my palm, I stretched my hands out to the steam heater. I could barely see out of the dormitory window. It was early yet and frost shuttered most of the pane except for a small edge at the bottom cleared by the steam. Normally, Lily and I had quite a view from our attic room—of Old Main’s limestone tower down the hill, the south side of the old brick wall surrounding campus that Archibald Whitsitt had originally constructed as a settlement fence back in 1793, and the tiny line of buildings that comprised Whitsitt’s Main Street in the distance. Today, I could only make out the snow gathering on the dormitory’s roof and rising up the trunks of the ancient oak trees lining the drive down to campus. Even if the snow stopped, even if the trains were still running, I would never be able to procure a coach to the station in this weather.

  I turned around, my gaze falling on the small leather trunk I’d packed the night before and then on the cherry armoire I shared with Lily. The door was open, displaying three of my ensembles and two of hers—all in drab winter shades of gray and brown. Lily’s hunter green velvet costume was missing. I sighed and sank down on my single bed, fiddling with a fraying star patch on my quilt and leaning against one of the short carved posts at the foot. Lily’s bed, identical to mine, was made up neatly, her grammar textbooks stacked on the table between us. Where had she gone? Surely not far. It would be impossible to venture out in this weather and she had planned to stay on campus for the holiday anyway. The New England Home for Little Wanderers wasn’t exactly a home to return to and Vera had insinuated that she and my father and Lucas were quite cramped enough without a house guest.

  “Come along, dear Beth, our Christmas tea awaits.” Lily danced into the room, holding two sprigs of evergreen. She extended one of them out to me and inhaled the other and at once it occurred to me that perhaps missing my train was meant to be.

  “What tea?” I asked. “And where have you been in this storm, I—”

  “I know that you must be so disappointed, what with the blizzard and all, but Cook Evans kindly left a feast in the ice box and two baskets of pastries—same as last year—and we have the whole place to ourselves. It’s like living in a mansion, really.” I knew it wasn’t true, that last year she’d been lonely and quite frightened in the dormitory all alone. Even our warden, Miss Zephaniah Stewart, departed north to visit distant relations in Michigan for the holiday. But this year was different. This year, we had each other, and since neither of us really had anyone else, I was glad for it. Lily breezed past me and extinguished the oil lamp on the table between our beds. She smelled like wood smoke and her dress was dotted with ash.

  “Perhaps it is, though I doubt most mansion owners have to stoke their own fires,” I said. Lily laughed behind me, a breathy whisper of merriment. Reaching into the armoire, I found a plain gray morning frock. Discarding my nightgown, I plucked my corset from the back of the wardrobe, fitted it around my middle, and sucked in as I did up the hooks in the front.

  “I guarantee they do not,” she said. I stepped into my skirt, pushed my arms into my sleeves, and turned to face her as I fastened the silk buttons at my wrists. She twirled the sprig of evergreen, the extinguished wick piping a trail of gray smoke up to the slanted roof behind her. “Several times each week in the winter, I’d walk into the Schraffts’ house and hear Mrs. Schrafft mentioning that it was frigid, that the morning fires were already dwindling to embers, and would one of the maids be called to tend them,” she continued. When Lily reached fourteen, the orphanage had allowed her indenture as a maid at the home of the Boston confectioner William Schrafft. Every cent she made went back to the school, so money was hardly Lily’s motivation. She simply loved to be among the kind family and work in their grand library. The room was easily the most untidy one in the house, but she never minded cleaning and organizing there—she had always been fond of books—and it was through this familiarity with the Schraffts’ library that she had decided to pursue library economics at Whitsitt.

  “Tending hearths!” I scoffed, trying not to laugh. “I’d rather die than get soot on my Charles Worth ensemble.” I tipped my chin up as I untangled my braid, held my hairdressing comb to the back of my head, and looped my locks through it.

  Lily grinned.

  “The peculiar thing is, they weren’t like that at all. It seemed to me that they simply didn’t know how and didn’t find it necessary to learn.”

  “Of course they’re lovely people. I’m only speaking in jest,” I said. I glanced at my trunk, thinking I should unpack it, but then decided that I’d have plenty of time for that after Lily and I had had our tea. As we started to depart the room, Lily caught my arm.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Making you stay to rewrite the term paper was wrong. Professor Pearson should have to both apologize and find some way to get you home.”

  “He should,” I said. I could feel disappointment bubbling up once more and forced it away. Professor Pearson had offered me either a failing grade or the option to stay a day after college dismissal to rewrite it. I had no choice, really. I couldn’t fail. So I’d remained, writing frantically and watching from our attic window as other women stepped into waiting coaches that would take them home. I’d turned in the final paper yesterday evening, shoving it into Professor Pearson’s already crammed mailbox in Old Main, not knowing that I should have hastened home to Chicago while I had the chance.

  At once I thought of my father. Regardless of whether or not he cared about my presence at the family table at Christmas, he’d be wondering about me, worrying if something tragic happened when I hadn’t been among the crush of people getting off the train. I’d yet to
send a telegram, in part because I hadn’t thought of a lie to explain my absence yet. Father didn’t know he was to have a physician for a daughter, and I didn’t feel I could tell him I was late because of a medical class. I had no doubt he’d be outraged, but he’d never taken the time to ask after my course of study. I figured he ignored the professors’ periodic reports, simply paying the tuition and assuming my options were suitable for a young lady.

  “Professor Pearson absolutely should apologize,” I said again, figuring I’d come up with something and get a message to Father as soon as I could. “But you know he won’t. It’s only more of the same. If you’ll remember, in my hygiene course, I was forced to sit at the front of the class beside Professor Young, in medical theory, Professor Blackwood continually referred to me as Nurse Carrington . . . and you’ve experienced much of the same.”

  Lily rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll never forget the scavenger hunt my cataloging classmates sent me on. I spent three hours searching Richardson Library for textbooks that didn’t exist and missed the first class entirely.”

  I remembered the incident well. Lily had been marked as absent, though it was clear the male students had told her the wrong titles. We unfortunately had this sort of conversation more often than we should. Lily and I stepped out of the room and she paused to lock the door behind us, though the measure was entirely unnecessary.

  “Sometimes I wonder if it’s futile to study medicine or library science here. Why does Whitsitt even offer secular majors if they only want women to study divinity?” she asked, starting down the spiral staircase to the gathering hall. Everett Hall had looked the picture of holiday cheer only two days before from the evergreen and fruit wreath affixed to the entry, to the eleven-foot-tall tree in the gathering room adorned with candles that twinkled in the evening, to the garlands swirling the thick oak railing. Now, bits of garland and an unadorned tree were the only traces of festivity that remained. I ran my hand over a small strand of swag left dangling on the turn between the second and third floors, wishing the Women of Whitsitt—the divinity school’s social club—had waited until after the holidays to take down their decorations. Then again, they had paid for the flourishes and spent hours festooning the place, so I suppose they were more than entitled to take pieces home to their families.

  “It does seem that the divinity students are favored,” I said as we reached the main floor. “I wonder if they experience anything unpleasant at all. They all seem quite jovial, flitting about to chapel or to weekly prayer meetings or to worship or to philanthropic work at the church.”

  Snow was still falling. The two expansive windows flanking the front door were frosted but clear, the wide front porch shielding the panes from the accumulation steadily climbing the steps. A trunk was propped beside the door on the antique oriental rug. Above it, a pin board featured Miss Zephaniah’s conduct requirements—a ten o’clock curfew, no gentleman callers past eight, absolutely no spirits of any kind, no costumes of unfavorable length, no hats in the gathering room. Next to it, Whitsitt’s student schedule was outlined—a six o’clock waking time, breakfast at the campus cafeteria, classes from eight until eleven-thirty, lunch, classes from twelve-thirty until five, followed by mandatory chapel at the Unitarian campus church followed by dinner at six and study hours from until nine.

  “The divinity girls have each other,” Lily said. “Thirty-three of them to our nine, and they’re so often granted permission to alter their day in the name of philanthropy that they have a chance to know each other. Our schedules are so regimented and busy, I couldn’t tell you anyone’s name except yours and that peculiar girl from Chicago who—” Lily stopped short as the hallway of locked doors gave way to the twenty-five-foot ceiling of the great room and Miss Mary Adams, the subject of our conversation. She was reclining on the tufted floral longue in front of Lily’s fire wearing her signature black frock, a half-devoured petit four clutched between her fingers. She looked startled at our entry before her face broke into a grin, and she stood, sweeping the white cake crumbs from her skirt onto the knotty pine floor.

  “The rumor must be true,” she said, her words echoing through the vacant expanse. She took another bite of Lily’s petit four without apology. “You’re the girls Miss Zephaniah’s locked in the attic finally freed.” Lily and I looked at each other and I laughed.

  “Not quite. Lily Johnston and Beth Carrington,” I said, gesturing to Lily and then to me. “I’m rather handy with a lock in any case.”

  “Mary Adams,” she said, though of course we already knew her by her wardrobe, the same sort of funeral attire her famous suffragist mother, Judith Adams, donned in Chicago. She wore black every day as a symbol of mourning for the women trapped in meaningless, voiceless lives. Women like my mother. “You’re rather handy with dead bodies, too, if the reports about you are accurate,” she continued, withdrawing her black derby hat adorned with crow feathers. She didn’t look away, but met my gaze straight-on, clearly curious herself.

  My mouth went dry at the notion of a dead body, though I knew that next year in surgery I’d have to face a cadaver. No wonder the other girls seemed to balk whenever I approached. They likely thought I spent my evenings uprooting graves in the Green Oaks Unitarian cemetery.

  “They’re not . . . true, I mean,” Lily said, sighing, as she glanced at the half-eaten tray of petit fours. “Beth can’t even stomach mice. Her friend Will Buchannan was the pledge-appointed mouse catcher for Iota Gamma last year and she would—”

  “Did you hear what happened?” Miss Adams interrupted, her-black gloved hand catching Lily’s arm. She leaned in as though telling a secret, as though there were a reason to be discreet in a vacant dormitory. “The board pardoned that imbecile, Mr. Simon. After four straight weeks of absences from class. Can you believe it? I don’t know what power Grant Richardson and Iota Gamma have over the board, but to convince a group of able-minded alumni that somehow a month’s absence should be excused? I can’t imagine.”

  Lily and I sat down in twin yellow armchairs boasting a lovely carved rose motif along the rails. The fire was blazing, and I pushed away from the heat.

  “I can believe it,” I responded. Grant Richardson, president of Whitsitt’s only permitted Greek organization, the son of a coal tycoon and the nephew of a congressman, was a powerful force. “It seems that Mr. Richardson does about anything he wants. Whitsitt instated the ban on Greek organizations and secret societies in ’Seventy-four, and yet, only four years later, Mr. Richardson arrived on campus and somehow convinced the board to allow Iota Gamma to come out of secrecy.”

  Miss Adams reached for another petit four—a chocolate one this time, neatly decorated with a pink rose. My stomach growled.

  “The ban is quite silly anyway, if you ask me,” she said between bites. “I know that nearly every school balked after that boy Mortimer Leggett died during the initiation ritual at Cornell, but the fact that colleges believe every fraternity is a devilish Masonic breeding ground only demonstrates their oblivion.”

  “Surely you’re not saying that because you believe the Iota Gammas are angelic,” Lily said, finally reaching for her tray of desserts. “Just because their practices were approved by the board doesn’t mean they abide Christian principles when they aren’t being watched.”

  I didn’t much care personally what anyone thought of the Iota Gammas. They had little to do with my studies. True, they were a force on campus and my best friend from home, Will, was a brother, but that was about as close as I came to any sort of involvement with them. As far as I knew, their practices were innocent. I couldn’t imagine Will participating otherwise—not that he was a saint by any stretch of the word, but he wasn’t a heathen either.

  I plucked a vanilla cake from the top of Lily’s tray and took a bite. The butter cream was perfect, and it took everything in my power to chew politely instead of devour.

  “No. Angelic isn’t the word I’d use to describe those scoundrels. I’m only s
aying that banning these sorts of clubs only stifles the creativity of the students . . . in my opinion.” Mary sighed and leaned back against the chaise longue. She looked as if she’d clearly intended to go somewhere, with a dainty sprig of holly berries pinned behind a large black jewel outlined in gold at her neck. One didn’t dress with such care to sit alone in the Everett Hall gathering room.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “Rather than home, I mean.” Miss Adams’s hooded brown eyes snapped to mine, a smile on her lips.

  “That imbecile Mr. Simon . . . and others, I suppose. They thought it would be humorous to tell me that female students were required to polish the instruments before dismissal. Since Professor Deal had departed for Milwaukee, I didn’t have anyone to ask and didn’t want to risk the marks for not doing it. Luckily, Professor Gram happened to walk by the music room last night and nearly had me written up for startling him.” Miss Adams laughed, propping up her black kid leather boots on the stone hearth. “It was quite hilarious, actually. He was going round extinguishing the hall lamps when I called out. His eyes were round as saucers. But now I’ve missed my train and Mother will be alone this year. Of course she could impose at a friend’s, she very well could, but she keeps to herself around Christmastime. My father died the day after, eighteen years ago, and it’s still a day of mourning in our house.”

  The notion seemed strange, a woman like Judith Adams who did so much good for other women having nowhere to go.

  “I wish there was a way to get both of you home,” Lily said softly, her eyes cast toward the fire. I reached over and squeezed her hand.

  “I’d rather be here with you,” I said.

  “Now that I know Miss Zephaniah hasn’t had you locked in the attic all this time, why are you two still here?” Mary asked.

  At once, I told her everything: about how hard I’d worked on my original midwifery term paper—spending long hours at Richardson Library, interviewing mothers from Whitsitt’s head cook to the woman working the soda counter in town—and then how Professor Pearson had deemed it a failing study, giving me a chance to rewrite it with a “physician’s eye less partial to the female condition.”