Cindy Thomson - [Ellis Island 01]

by Grace's Pictures

  “Yeah. Go on.” Owen didn’t care what had transpired between this man and Knox, only that he was willing to give a description. He’d pay Grace another visit and see if this sparked her memory.

  “A wide nose, yeah. You know, what it looks like when a fella’s had it broken.”

  Finally he had something credible.

  “Won’t do you no good, at least for a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ole Goo Goo’s not in Manhattan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Aw, it’s winter, see. He’ll be back early March, but for about a month or so, he’s out of the city.”

  “Where?”

  “Cocaine run. Where else?”

  “You mean he’s the one who brings in the drugs?”

  Taggart turned Owen away from the pub’s entry and whispered, “A deck of the stuff brings twenty-five cents on the street. Sure, he can make a profit by buying it from the druggist and reselling it like everybody else. But Goo Goo sees a big future in the drug, even bigger than opium and morphine. He goes down to South America to buy it all cheap-like and make a bigger profit. He thinks the price on the street’s gonna rise. Know what I’m saying, copper?”

  This was a bigger mess than Owen had realized. “Thank you.” He pointed his notebook at him. “Thank you very much.”

  He hurried to the station house to fill Nicholson in.

  The captain closed his eyes as Owen told him what his contact had revealed. “Well, then. We’ll wait for him to return to the city. No doubt we have to get him now.” He sighed and then looked at Owen directly. “I think he could be right.”

  “I think he’s a trustworthy source.”

  “Yeah, and he’s probably right about this drug becoming a bigger menace than anyone realizes.”

  Owen no longer needed to rush Grace’s memory in sketching Goo Goo’s likeness. The old Owen would have feared this delay would cause the trail to grow cold. But he wasn’t concerned. A prevailing feeling that all would unfold properly boosted his confidence. A good detective is patient, waiting for the ideal moment to catch his suspect. In the meantime it seemed he had been given a breather, time to look into the problem of his father’s business. God’s timing is perfect.

  37

  ON THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY, knowing her mother would arrive sometime in the coming weeks, not even the chilly and gray skies could dampen Grace’s mood. Because it was St. Brigid’s Day, she planned to teach the children how to weave crosses from straw after she picked the girls up from school.

  They sat around the children’s table in the nursery. Even Linden wanted to give it a try.

  “Your mother taught you?” he asked.

  “She did.” It was the one thing she was able to retain in the workhouse. She’d woven the crosses from the bed straw after carefully picking away the bugs.

  “Children make these in Ireland?” Hazel asked.

  “They do. Every February 1. Now hold one piece like this.” She demonstrated, stopping to do Linden’s for him because his chubby fingers couldn’t hold on to the pieces.

  “And St. Brigid’s Day means spring is coming?” Hazel asked, glancing to the window.

  “That’s right,” Grace answered. “It’s when we usually see the first snowdrops in Ireland, a wee white flower that blooms early.”

  “Like scilla and crocus?” Hazel asked, still gazing out the window. She had apparently learned something from her mother.

  “That’s right. ’Twon’t be long before we can plant the coralbells.” Grace gathered up the leftover straw and stuffed it in a bag. “Help me clean this up, so, and then we’ll hang your crosses.”

  When they were done, she tied them with string and each child hung a cross over their bed. Grace put hers over the baby’s cradle. The exercise had kept the children busy for . . . oh, ten minutes or so. They were active and needed to be outside.

  Some days Grace wished the school had longer hours so she had more time to work alone when the wee lads napped, but mostly she was beginning to enjoy the children. Wouldn’t her mother be surprised to know that?

  When Mr. Parker returned home from the office as usual, a quarter hour before Mr. Crawley picked her up, Grace cautiously approached him. “May I have a moment, Mr. Parker?”

  “What is it, Grace? I’ve plenty to worry about without complaints from my maid.”

  Like how to press more rent money out of immigrants? She squeezed her fingers together. “My mother is coming next month for a visit.”

  “From Ireland?”

  “Aye.”

  “I suppose you want time off?”

  “Well, aye. Yes. If . . . that is . . . if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I mind. I’m not sure when my sister will be back.”

  “Could my mother come with me? At least for part of the day? She could help. For no pay.”

  “Hmm. We will see. I’ll inquire of Edith.”

  “Thank you.” She darted out of the parlor before he could create some kind of an objection.

  The weeks that followed were as routine as Grace could have expected, being the nanny of a busy household. Even so, the days drew out excruciatingly long. Mrs. Hawkins had given her a calendar to mark off the days. She had admonished her to remember her late husband’s words: “Count not the days on the calendar, marking them off number by number, but instead note the time spent with those you love.” Grace had been counting the days without her mother. Now she would count them toward an end to that separation. Mr. Hawkins had probably meant something more, though. She’d remember that to ponder later.

  Even though she didn’t know the exact date her mother would arrive, she knew it would be in early March, so when she turned February’s page over, her heart soared. All the city seemed abuzz with talk about McKinley’s second term and the inauguration of New York’s former governor as vice president of the United States. But to Grace, the really important news was that her mother would be arriving any day.

  On the eighth day of March, Grace got word that her mother and S. P. had arrived in New York. Grace had cleaned her room and emptied a corner of her travel chest for her mother’s things. Here, among these Americans in this modern city, Sean Patrick Feeny would not be able to come between Grace and her mother. Finally.

  Mrs. Hawkins met Grace in the hallway and grabbed both her hands. “I’ve prepared a shepherd’s pie, love. I do hope your mother and her husband will enjoy it.”

  “I’m sure my mother will adore your cooking, Mrs. Hawkins.” Grace was tempted to tell her that in Ireland they ate little more than boiled potatoes and gruel. Grace’s mother would be as famished as Grace had been when she stepped ashore. “But the process at Ellis Island takes hours, Mrs. Hawkins. They probably won’t be here in time to eat your meal.”

  “Oh, didn’t Mabel tell you?”

  “The neighbor? Tell me what?”

  “Your mother’s husband telephoned. They are already in New York. After a brief stop to speak to someone at the hospital, they will be here.”

  “What?” Grace should have known S. P. would find a way to get favors and speed through immigration. “Why the hospital? Is my mother all right?”

  “He assured Mabel everything is fine. She wondered also. Now, we just have a few things to get ready.”

  “Special, you are.” Grace kissed the woman’s cheek and then headed to the kitchen to check on the meat pie she smelled cooking. Just as she pulled the Dutch oven out, Grace heard voices at the front door. As quickly as she could safely do so, she set the pot on top of the stove and scrambled down the hall.

  At the front door she saw her. Ma’s face beamed. Running into her arms, Grace was overcome with sobs. “Ma, Ma! I’ve missed you so.” She tried to squeeze her mother tight, but there was a bundle between them. Grace heard a gurgle. A baby?

  Ma lifted the bundle, and Grace saw a crown of bright-red hair. Feeny hair. “Grace, I’d like you to meet your wee brother, Patrick.”

  Grace
looked back to her mother. “What? You were expecting?” As thin as her mother was, and with a heavy cloak and shawl, Grace had not realized her mother was with child when they said good-bye in Dublin. The thought had never entered her mind.

  Ma just smiled and nodded.

  Grace gave the man standing next to her a curt nod and then turned back to her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mrs. Hawkins and Annie gathered up coats. “Please come in by the fire. We will serve tea while you catch up.”

  Grace stood to the side so her mother and S. P. could enter the room. S. P. approached the fire and rubbed his hands in front of it. “Give me the boy, Ellen. ’Tis a bit warmer by the fire.”

  Her mother handed the child over, and Grace watched as the man gently took his son and cooed to him as he rocked him in his arms.

  Grace and her mother sat on the sofa, holding hands. Ma gazed toward the baby. “He’s doing much better, he is. Born with a lame foot. The doctors at the American hospital said there is hope that treatment will enable him to walk. Isn’t that fine, darlin’?”

  That’s why they went to the hospital. Maybe it’s why S. P. agreed to come to New York in the first place. “Fine, ’tis very fine.” Grace took her eyes off the lad for a moment. “Ma, you should have told me.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you, lass. I wanted you to do well for yourself in America, and you have.” She squeezed Grace’s hand. “You have indeed.”

  S. P. had pulled up the stool Annie sometimes used when she mended by the light of the fire and sat on it, cradling the babe. “Walter says you have a fellow sweet on you, Grace. An American copper, he says.”

  “Walter Feeny is a busybody.”

  S. P. tilted his head back and laughed the way only an Irishman can. “Why do you think I chose him to check on you, lass?”

  She wanted to say the man’s nephew was worse than that, but she truly did not want to engage the man. She turned back to her mother. “You don’t have to go to the boardinghouse with him, Ma. You can share my bed here, you and the baby.” She hoped Mrs. Hawkins would approve.

  “S. P. and I have a fine room to stay in, Grace.”

  Grace lowered her voice. “You don’t have to. Not anymore.”

  “Have to what, darlin’?”

  When the Hawk returned with a tea tray, Grace stood. “Ma, I’d love to show you the house and the kitchen. I’m sure the lads won’t mind.” She glared at her stepfather. “Will you, now?”

  “Go along,” he said.

  As soon as they were in the kitchen, Grace repeated herself. “You are safe here, Ma. You don’t ever again have to live with S. P. Feeny.”

  Ma put her palm on Grace’s cheek. “He is my husband, child. I’m not leaving him and my son.”

  “I’m your daughter.” Tears flowed freely down Grace’s cheeks.

  “Oh, darlin’.” Ma wiped Grace’s cheeks with her thumbs. “You are all grown up. Just as it should be. I have my life in Ireland. You have yours here.”

  “But . . . you only married him for me, so that he could sponsor me to come to America.”

  Ma wearily sat on a kitchen chair. “I don’t expect you to understand. But I’m a woman with a mind of my own. I’m comfortable being the wife of an R.I.C. officer.”

  Grace fell to her mother’s feet. “But ’twas a peeler like him who pulled us apart. Don’t tell me you don’t remember. He yanked me away from your arms. He made me march up those stairs in the workhouse to the attic. He is the reason I did not see you for months at a time. Tell me you haven’t forgotten.”

  Ma’s eyes reddened. “I remember, aye. How I wish those things hadn’t happened. My poor babaí.” She looped her arms around Grace’s head and rocked back and forth. A moment later she let go and lifted Grace’s chin. “But you mustn’t blame S. P.”

  “Why did you marry him? Why did you allow him to touch you and give you that child?”

  She let out a breath. “We care for each other. You don’t understand.”

  “He sent me away from you, Ma. S. P. sent me here.”

  “I asked him to. If he hadn’t sponsored you—”

  Grace pulled away and stood at the sink.

  “Grace, if he hadn’t married me, if he hadn’t gotten you out of that place, who knows what would have become of us?”

  Grace covered her face with her hand as she heard wee Patrick crying for his mother, her mother.

  Ma came to her. “Don’t you see I wanted a better life for you?”

  “You don’t have to put up with him, Ma.”

  “Aye. I don’t. He’s not bad to me.” She wiped away her own tears. “And like you, I will make my own choices.”

  Grace pulled her mother into an embrace. “Are you sure? Are you fine? He doesn’t hurt you?”

  “He’s a good provider. He paid for our passage, second class, and for Paddy to see the American doctors. And here.” She drew an envelope from her pocket. “Here is the American money you sent me in your letter, child. I’ve saved it all for you.”

  Grace gasped. “That was for you. I was going to send more, in time.”

  “I know. And no daughter shows that she loves her mother more than to send money from America. But S. P. has his own sponsors now, American ones. They are helping him because he is what you might call an ambassador for them over in Ireland. He works for the British government, yet he secretly supports the United Irish League.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “’Tis because of what he had to do, evict tenants, that he now supports the UIL. They are pushing for reform, for large landowners’ holdings to be split up among tenant farmers. Perhaps one day no Irish children will ever be forced away from their parents again.” She held Grace at arm’s length. “But besides all that, you should see him with that boy. I do believe the child has given the man back his faith in humanity. ’Tis a frightfully difficult job, that of the Irish peeler.”

  “Ma, you could stay here, you and Patrick. We could get a place to live together, the three of us.”

  “You didn’t hear me, Grace. My place is with S. P. And his work is in Ireland.”

  “Well, he could work here in New York. Why would anyone want to go back? You are here now, safe in America.”

  Her mother closed her eyes. “Not everyone’s future is in America, darlin’. Some of us will stay in Ireland. Some of us will work to make our homeland what God intended.” She opened her eyes again. “Not all. Like you. But some. Like me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “’Tis not like before. Folks have hope now. The crops are prospering again. S. P. himself is an important force there, Grace. The link between the common Irish folk and the British law. He is not who you might suppose him to be. He and Walter are raising money here in America for the Irish. That’s why we’re here right now and will stay through St. Patrick’s feast day, for the parade.”

  “Walter? It can’t be good if he’s involved. You don’t know him.”

  “True enough, I don’t know the man. But we were able to visit you because of those American benefactors.”

  “I don’t know all about that.”

  “’Tis true, thank the good Lord. Have you not heard of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City?”

  “I know there are police marches uptown, but I don’t pay attention. They do not appeal to me.”

  “No matter. But you’ve got to trust me. Ireland’s my place. Yours is here. As much as it breaks a mother’s heart to do it, she’s got to let her girl grow up and take flight like the wild goose.” She squeezed Grace’s hand. “And you’ve made me proud, you have.”

  Grace liked that, making her mother proud. Grace, an American family’s nanny, a resident of Hawkins House. She pondered whether it was possible that God could have ordained all of this. She imagined herself to be a transformed swan, free to be who she really was and not what her father had told her she was.

  Grace linked arms with her mother. “Help me get
to know my wee brother, so.”

  Grace did not find it any easier to look S. P. in the eye, but seeing Patrick made her think of Douglas, a baby who no longer had his mother. Grace’s mother took the infant and retreated to the kitchen to nurse him. Grace had thought of Ma as only being hers. But Grace wasn’t a child anymore. Hadn’t she been trying to convince herself she was as strong and independent as any American woman? The time had come to let her old life go like feathers in the wind. The wild goose taking flight.

  38

  OWEN HAD SPENT WEEKS poring over his father’s account books. Even consulting with Blevins had not turned up a major crisis in the business. Finally he came to a conclusion and made the difficult trek uptown. Waiting to tell his mother he would not be taking over his father’s company would not make delivering the news any easier. Best to get it over with.

  When he arrived, he found his father sitting in a rocker next to the front window, muttering.

  “The bankers, Father. Give me their names and I’ll talk to them.”

  The man’s face tightened. “Bankers? What bankers? I’m so very tired.”

  “Father? Tell me which bank has threatened foreclosure.”

  John McNulty shook his head.

  Something wasn’t right. Owen did not sense the man was out of his mind. He seemed to be playacting. Owen motioned for his mother to join him in the hall, and he shut the pocket doors for privacy. “I think he needs medical attention, Mother.”

  Owen’s mother bristled. “No. They’ll stick him away in some institution.”

  “I don’t think so. The doctor said he could be evaluated and that you should consider going to Florida.”

  “What? Whatever for?”

  “Rest and relaxation, of course. I’m going to mention the idea to Father.”

  She blew out a breath and fingered the cameo at her neck. “You’ve forgotten about the bankers, I suppose.”

  “No, I haven’t. Mother, have you spoken to these bankers?”

  “Of course not. Your father handles the business.”

  “Tell me, does it make sense that after all the years he has done business with the bank, they would so suddenly foreclose?”