Cindy Thomson - [Ellis Island 01]

by Grace's Pictures

  “I can’t find my blue hair ribbon and Carolyn Feeny always has a blue hair ribbon. I have to have mine!”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I need my blue—”

  “No. Who always has a blue hair ribbon? Feeny, did you say, lass?”

  “Yes. Carolyn Feeny.” She narrowed her gray eyes. “Why?”

  Grace put a hand on Hazel’s back and turned her toward the stairs. “In the top right drawer of your bureau.”

  The girl was halfway up the kitchen stairs when Grace called to her. “Is Miss Feeny’s father or uncle, or grandfather, perhaps, a policeman?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Which?”

  “Maybe all of them.” She trudged up the steps.

  Grace rubbed her tired eyes. Half the police force, maybe more, was Irish. But this was no coincidence. S. P. Feeny’s nephew was on his way to interrogate her. She could feel it in her bones like the return of blustery winter.

  Hazel reappeared, blue ribbon dangling from her hand.

  “Give me that, lass.” Grace quickly tied it in the girl’s long, wavy brown hair. “Does Carolyn Feeny go to your school?”

  “Teacher’s pet.” Hazel stuck out her tongue.

  “Now don’t be like that.” Grace could not force a harsher reprimand. She knew what Feenys were like.

  “I don’t like her at all. She is always raising her hand when Teacher asks a question. Way before anyone else can think of the answer.”

  “Be patient and work hard. Your teacher will understand that you are a smart lass, Hazel Parker. Just as bright as the Feeny child.”

  As they began the hike to the school, Grace tried to remember the faces of the children she’d seen there before and the adults who escorted them. But she’d never before considered the possibility that a Feeny could be among them, so she wasn’t sure. Today she’d look. She’d examine every face, looking for the roundness, the ruddy cheeks, the shifting eyes.

  She saw it right after she’d dismissed the girls.

  “Ouch, Miss Gracie. You squeeze my hand too tight.”

  “Sorry, Linden.”

  “Let go.”

  She certainly would not. Not with someone so closely resembling her mother’s husband only a few feet away. “Let’s go. Hurry. I have more baking to do, laddie.”

  They scrambled up the steps to the brownstone moments later. “Go get the pencils, Linden. You can draw at the kitchen table while I bake.”

  “Yes, Miss Gracie.”

  She pulled off his coat and mittens and he hurried off.

  Breathe. He hasn’t found you yet. He doesn’t even know where you are.

  She set Linden’s drawing gallery up and began assembling the ingredients for bread.

  “Grace, come here,” Mrs. Parker called from the other room.

  “I’ll be back in a moment, Linden. If Auntie Edith comes back with the caraway seeds, ask her to leave them on the counter for me.”

  He nodded and continued his drawing of a man with a disproportionately sized head and arms sticking out where ears should be.

  Grace answered the mistress’s call from the parlor. Alice Parker lounged on the sofa while the baby slept in a cradle nearby. “I can’t seem to find coralbells.” Scores of catalogs lay scattered around the room. Mrs. Parker tossed one onto the pile. “See what you can do, Grace. I’m going to take a nap.” The woman rose, her nightgown rumpled and her expression sullen. She waddled slowly toward the stairs.

  “How are you feeling today?” Grace spoke to the woman’s back.

  She turned slowly. “Like it’s all a waste.”

  “What do you mean?” The baby stirred. Grace went to the cradle and patted his back.

  Mrs. Parker’s gaze fell to the child and then back at Grace. “You are a better mother than I am.”

  Stunned, Grace tried to argue.

  “No, no. It’s true. One cannot give love when one is as unlovable as I am.” She turned back to the stairs.

  Grace hurried toward her. “That’s just not true, Mrs. Parker. You are their mother. They love you.”

  The woman turned her gray face toward Grace. “I’m afraid I just don’t care.”

  “Wait.” Grace hurried over and snatched up a seed catalog. “Look.” She flipped to a page of line-sketched daisies. “When you don’t feel love, you turn to what’s beautiful, don’t you? I know you do, because I’ve done that myself.”

  Mrs. Parker walked to the mantel and took a deep breath, fingering the evergreen branches. “I suppose you are right. Nature soothes me. Every time I plant a seed and am rewarded with a bloom, I feel gratified that I’m a part of the process, a contributor to the beauty somehow.” She turned toward Grace, gripping her gown to her neck. “Sounds foolish, doesn’t it?”

  “Nay. Not foolish at all, ma’am.” Grace scooped up the baby. He nuzzled against her. “Don’t you see? ’Tis the same. These children are beautiful creations. God created the flowers you delight in and also these children. And you are certainly responsible for bringing them into life, no less than the garden you tend. They are lovely. Look at them. I know when I do, my soul is uplifted.”

  For the first time Mrs. Parker smiled. “And why is that, Grace? Why do innocent things of beauty inspire us?”

  “Reverend Clarke, in his sermon on Sunday, said that becoming childlike will draw one closer to God. He said Jesus himself told his disciples so. I don’t know about such things. I only know what I see, but maybe . . .” She hesitated.

  “Go on, Grace. I’ve never heard Reverend Clarke’s sermons. Tell me.”

  “I’m not the one to be explaining such things, ma’am. Perhaps Mr. Parker—”

  “No, no. You tell me what you think.”

  Cornered. Like that toad in a jar again. “I . . . uh . . . I just see something remarkable in the children’s faces. Maybe we need them as much as they need us.” Grace placed Douglas in her arms.

  “I’ll take him upstairs to his crib,” his mother said, cuddling him under her chin.

  When the mistress left, Grace turned back toward the hall and encountered Mr. Parker’s sister. “Well done, Grace. Well done.”

  “You heard?”

  “Indeed, and McKinley himself could not have offered a more poignant speech and certainly no truer one.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know if it helped.”

  “Well, we often don’t know. We just have to do our best to encourage others.”

  “I must get to the bread now.” Grace’s heart soared as though sunbeams shot through it, enlightening the truth and chasing away the lies she had allowed to fester there.

  The woman followed her into the kitchen and patted Linden’s shoulder. “A fine artist you are, my boy.”

  The lad beamed.

  “I think you should take your paper and pencils up to the playroom and draw the general’s portrait, don’t you?”

  “The one Miss Gracie made for me?”

  “Yes, the clothespin one.” Auntie Edith saluted like a soldier. “Every good general has his portrait made.”

  “He does?”

  “Of course.”

  Linden grabbed his things and headed for the back stairs. “I’ll do a good job. You’ll see.”

  “Of course you will, sonny. You’re a Parker, after all.”

  When he was gone, the woman chuckled and began measuring the flour for Grace’s bread. “I am afraid my brother has not done well by his wife.”

  A shiver ran up Grace’s neck. She should not be having this kind of conversation. She remembered the reverend’s wise advice. “He is a good provider. Nothing else is my business, Auntie.” The woman had insisted Grace address her the same way the children did.

  “You might say that, but truly, my dear, you run this household. You know this family intimately.”

  “I . . . uh . . . My job is to . . .”

  “Fiddlesticks. I think you should know a few things. That way you will be more prepared to carry out your dutie
s.”

  Grace didn’t want to listen. She stirred the batter with abandon.

  “It concerns the children, Grace.”

  Grace had been trying to compensate for the lack of parental affection in this house. Edith might be preparing to correct her for that. Perhaps that earlier compliment had not been what she’d thought. Grace bit her lip and dropped the seeds into the batter.

  Edith wiped her hands on her apron and leaned against the sink. “My brother was an only son, and our father put high expectations upon him. I’m a bit older than George, and I noticed these things. He was a sensitive little fellow, and our father believed he had to toughen him up. I’m afraid he chose harsh words to do that, always telling the boy he was not measuring up. Father thought that would make him try harder.”

  Tears sprang to Grace’s eyes. “’Tis the way most fathers are, I believe.”

  “Ah, probably so.” Edith untied her apron and hung it near the back door. Then she seated herself in the spot Linden had vacated. “But in George’s case, it only served to make him emotionally withdrawn and bitter. I study human behavior, being a scholar. I don’t ascribe to many of the modern philosophies, but I know what I see and observe. Since I’ve been here, I’ve become concerned about his family. Do you know what I mean, dear?”

  She did. “I know my place, Auntie.”

  “Oh, indeed. I’m not asking you to jeopardize your job, dear.”

  When Grace placed the loaves in the oven, Edith gestured toward a chair. “Sit a moment. You have time.”

  Grace took the chair opposite her. She liked Edith, but now she was wondering if she’d misjudged her. She had a soft, nearly creaseless face, and unlike Grace’s, this woman’s hair stayed neatly twisted into a bun, and her starched neckline gave her a proper, polished look, the way a school matron should appear.

  “Dear, I just wanted to make sure you understand my concerns. I’d hate for Linden to learn to be such a disconnected human being. He’s such a loving, happy child now.”

  “He is that.”

  “You’ve done a marvelous job thus far with the children, Grace.”

  Grace’s face flushed warm. “I don’t know about the girls. They quarrel quite a bit.”

  Edith clicked her tongue. “Girls are different. Don’t I know that. At my school there is a squabble about some minor issue nearly every hour. But girls are emotional. It’s their nature.”

  A long pause followed. Grace rose to pour them some coffee. She tried not to be emotional. Her own father had despised tears like Mr. Parker. A sign of weakness. She set a cup in front of Edith.

  “But boys are taught not only to restrain their emotions, which is critical in business dealings, of course, but also to restrict heartfelt expressions. I’ve heard my brother scold his son for trying to hug him.”

  Grace stiffened, remembering having been struck once for trying to merely touch her father’s hand.

  “You are a breath of fresh air for these children, Grace.”

  Oh, how she hoped so. Grace lifted her cup. “As are you, Auntie.”

  They toasted with their cups and laughed.

  “But I’ll be gone in a few days, Grace. I just wanted to encourage you to keep loving these little ones and showing kindness to their mother. Someone has to. Otherwise . . .” She paused.

  “Otherwise what?”

  “Well, let me just say that in my occupation I have seen girls who were neglected in childhood bloom into productive, happy adults under the proper care and tenderness. That can happen here as well, with you as these children’s nanny.”

  The coffee, and Auntie’s words, warmed Grace down to her toes. Grace had learned so much at the Parkers’. Life was different in America, but in many ways people were the same, both good and bad. She had once thought leaving her mother would be the end of feeling connected and loved. But there was another force at work, the source of the warmth streaming inside her right now. Others radiated the kind of affection her mother had for her, and that amazed her. You are important.

  When Grace picked the girls up from school, Hazel could barely contain her excitement. “Carolyn Feeny wants to come to my house to play.”

  Holly bounced on the balls of her feet. “Can I play too?”

  Hazel shrugged. “Do you think Mother will allow it, Miss Gracie? She just has to.”

  Grace glanced around but didn’t see a Feeny face. “I thought you didn’t like that lass, Hazel.”

  “Well, she’s being nice now. Pleasant, so . . .”

  “Are you sure you want her to visit?”

  “Yes! If Mother says no, all the other girls will think I’m aloof.”

  “For the love of St. Michael, child, where did you hear such a word?” Grace hurried them along, hoping to avoid meeting any senior Feenys, even the lass’s mother.

  “Carolyn Feeny uses lots of big words. She said if you find words in the dictionary and use them, people will know how smart you are.”

  “A ruse, that is. Don’t be trying to be someone you aren’t, dearie.”

  “But will you talk to Mother, Miss Gracie? Please?”

  “I will, so long as you get straight to lessons when we get home.”

  Grace was surprised to discover that Mrs. Parker was amicable. She had secretly hoped Mrs. Parker would not approve. “So long as they entertain themselves upstairs, it’s fine.”

  Carolyn Feeny, a flaxen-haired girl bearing no resemblance to the Feeny Grace knew, appeared on the doorstep. Grace smiled at her. “Hello.”

  “I’ve come to see Hazel.” She pointed behind her to the sidewalk. “My cousin walked me over.”

  “Oh, delightful.”

  The man tipped his hat back, and Grace saw that he bore the same moon-shaped face and red hair that S. P. had, the face she thought she’d glimpsed earlier on the walk to school. And he was dressed in New York police blue.

  “A word with ye, ma’am?”

  Grace led them in just as Hazel scrambled down the stairs.

  “Do you like checkers?”

  The two girls disappeared upstairs before Grace could turn back to the other visitor.

  “Are you Grace McCaffery, by chance?”

  She wanted to lie but thought better of risking her position for being untruthful with guests. He’d never believe her anyway. He’d been looking for her. “I am. Did someone tell you my name?”

  “I knew yer stepfather back in Drogheda. Ole S. P. Feeny.”

  She swallowed hard. “Are you Officer Feeny, then?”

  He bowed. “Walter Feeny, at your service. Was just about to pay a visit to your boardinghouse, but you saved me the trouble, lass.”

  “You should know I’ve no fondness for that old peeler.”

  He laughed. “Is that the way of it? Well, so. Just a moment, please?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “After ye.”

  He pulled up a kitchen chair, making himself at home. “He’s supposed to be related to me, so I hear. Don’t know him well, I don’t.” He stretched his neck like a goose, taking note of her. “I think I’ve seen ye before, Miss Grace McCaffery.”

  She turned toward the sink. “You’re mistaken.”

  “Ye might be missing the red petticoat now but ’tis herself all right. I’d know yer pretty face anywhere. Ye were with those Dusters, now weren’t ye? Carrying a box camera? That was yerself now, wasn’t it?”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t get coy.”

  “Dusters? I don’t know what that is.”

  He squinted at her. “Ye mean it, don’t ye?”

  She turned, hands on hips. “S. P. sent you to check on me. I am fine. I have written to my mother. There is no need for any other questions, Officer Feeny. What time will you pick up your cousin Carolyn?”

  “In the park. At the aquarium. I saw ye talking to a fella called Smokey Davis.” He snapped his fingers. “A known criminal, don’t ye know?”

  “I di
d not know. I’m friendly enough to folks.”

  “Well, ye can’t be too careful out there, miss. But ye can count on me. I’ll not be mentioning this wee . . . uh, indiscretion to the Parker family. Wouldn’t want this to cost ye yer position here. I hear Mr. Parker is quite . . . uh . . . sanctimonious when it comes to his family. And since ye did not know to whom it were ye were talking . . .”

  “Thank you.” She might have gritted her teeth, but she got the words out.

  He stood and placed the chair back against the wall. “Well, I would appreciate it if ye’d repay me for this kind turn I’m doing ye. Just a dance or two.”

  She faced him, her hand at her throat. “Excuse me?”

  “At the maid’s dance on Thursday. Over at the Hibernian Hall near yer boardinghouse. Ye know the one?”

  “I do.”

  He lowered his chin. “See you then, aye?”

  “Well . . .” A trapped toad once again. “I will be there.”

  When he left, she doubled over with nausea. Things had been going well, but now a peeler—named Feeny, no less—had the power to threaten her job.

  24

  WITH THE INFORMATION Owen received from the pawnbroker, he was eager to get back to work. But unfortunately a disturbance at a canning facility in Chinatown took up his time for days. And with daily visits to his father and phone calls back and forth, he had not been able to follow up on his tip. A week later he was determined to get back on the Dusters case. But first there was the organizational meeting at headquarters. Walter Feeny walked close to Owen as they traveled on foot from the precinct closest to headquarters. Owen didn’t think Walter suspected anything, but he hadn’t expected the police chief to turn up at Miss Amelia’s either. Owen constantly had to watch his step.

  “Surely ye like Irish music sessions, being that yer family is from Ireland,” Walter Feeny said as he and Owen maneuvered past a strolling accordion player singing “Rosie O’Grady.”

  “I suppose so.” The truth was, not much of the old country was in Owen’s upbringing. Only memories of his granny’s brogue and her kind spirit. None of his surviving family had ever been across the sea.