The Promise of Home

by Darcie Chan

  The ride to the tall, brick school building on the corner of Main and South Union streets went quickly. The school day, though, seemed to drag on forever. Michael was distracted and spent much of the day staring out the great arched windows of the classrooms. His thoughts wandered from the events of Saturday night in the graveyard, to his mother’s health, and to his father and brother working so far away. It was a relief when classes were dismissed for the day and he was back on the rickety bus to the farm.

  He opened the mailbox before beginning the walk down the driveway, but what he found inside caused him to sprint the distance to the house.

  “Mother! Grandma! There’s a letter from Father!” he yelled as he burst through the front door.

  They were sitting at the table with cups of tea as he entered. His mother’s expression of joy did nothing to hide the dark circles under her eyes.

  “Wonderful! I’ll read it aloud,” she said, and he gave her the letter to open. There was a piece of paper inside, covered with handwriting on front and back and folded around a five-dollar bill.

  “Thank goodness,” his grandmother said when she saw his mother place the bill on the table. “Quickly, Anna, let’s hear it.”

  Michael set his books on the table and straddled a chair backward as his mother began to read:

  March 26, 1934

  To Mother, Michael, and my dearest Anna,

  I hope this letter finds you well, and that my earlier postcard arrived without delay.

  Seamus and I are fine and have been working steadily. A day’s work brings each of us $4, which is the lowest rate of pay for a bridgeworker here, but we are thankful to have our positions. Most of our days are spent clearing debris to make room for access roads to the bridge site. We are both learning to weld so that we may eventually join the ironworkers, whose positions pay more.

  The bridge will eventually connect three boroughs of New York City—Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. It is massive in scope and will surely take a number of years to complete.

  We are staying in Queens, and the place is crawling with workers from all over the country. I have heard others in our tenement say that there are well over a thousand men working on the bridge. All were hired through the local union, even those like us from another state. Much of our first paychecks went to pay rent and purchase supplies and also to buy local names and addresses so that we could be hired on under the requirements of the union. It seems to me an illegal scheme to line the pockets of the union, but it was the only way we would be given work. I pray the $5 I am enclosing will see you through until I am able to send more.

  I believe our positions here will hold out for some time. If all is well at home, we plan to stay as long as possible, hopefully until winter. Of course, you should send for us immediately if the need arises.

  I’ll write as often as I can. Seamus and I miss and look forward to hearing from you.

  With all my love,

  Niall

  For a moment, no one spoke. Michael watched his mother’s face. She held the letter after she finished reading it aloud and stared at it. As her eyes moved quickly through the words again, her hand moved slightly on the surface of the table to feel the thin edge of the money. When she had finished reading the letter a second time, she folded it back into its envelope and smiled.

  “Well, Anna, you look like you’re feeling better today than you were yesterday, and this letter is even more of a relief. Besides, we didn’t properly celebrate Easter yesterday. What do you say we have something special for dinner tonight?”

  His mother turned to his grandmother. “What did you have in mind, Lizzie?”

  “How about chicken stew? One of the old hens has stopped laying. She’s already been through two molts, so she’s about finished. Besides, two other hens are brooding their eggs, so there’ll be plenty of chicks to replace her.”

  Michael’s mouth watered at the thought of eating stewed chicken with rich golden gravy. It was a rare treat indeed, as their current flock was barely big enough to keep the family in eggs.

  “All right. If you’ll go take care of the hen, I’ll get some water boiling to blanch the feathers. Tomorrow we should go into town for gas and groceries. We’re about out of everything.”

  Michael almost skipped out the door to attend to his chores. Splitting and carrying wood, even cleaning out Onion’s stall, didn’t seem so bad now that they knew his father and brother were established and able to send support. His mother seemed to have turned the corner, and other than the troubling unfinished business with Uncle Frank, it looked like everything was falling into place.

  He would complete the school year and work on the farm during the summer. They could plant a huge garden, and when his father sent more money, they could start buying some livestock to build up the place. Having a pig or two and some more chickens would make next winter easier. Onion would have a calf later in the spring as well. They could sell it for additional income or keep it, if it turned out to be a heifer.

  He would do everything he could to help his mother and grandmother throughout the fall. His father and brother would return home, and the family would be reunited and secure. Maybe his father would decide to stay and make a run at farming. Maybe, with the continued implementation of Roosevelt’s policies, the country would be on more stable financial footing by then.

  It was an optimistic outlook, he knew, but it was the first time in a long time that he had any reason to feel hopeful. Such a change, from only a letter and a single bill, he mused. And yet, those flimsy pieces of paper gave him a strange reassurance that everything was going to be all right.

  Chapter 11

  On Monday evening, Emily stopped work in the marble mansion earlier than she normally would have, even though it was difficult to leave the house and lock the door knowing how many projects awaited completion inside. Part of her wished she hadn’t promised her mother that she would come to dinner. But I can’t work all the time, she thought. Besides, she hadn’t seen her nephew, Alex, whom she adored, in over a week, and after days of eating on the run, the thought of a home-cooked meal was especially appealing.

  She was the last to arrive at her mother’s house, which was directly across the street from her own home. The rest of her family had an equally short journey. Rose, Alex, and her brother-in-law, Sheldon, were her neighbors in the little house on the corner lot next door. Her great-aunt Ivy ran the town’s indie bookstore, The Bookstop, from the cute bungalow on the corner lot across the street from Rose’s place.

  It was odd to think that after years of being estranged and living thousands of miles apart, she and her older sister were neighbors and on speaking terms. Even funnier was the fact that her family, with their four residences, had essentially taken over one end of Maple Street. It reminded her of the old Italian and Eastern European neighborhoods in Chicago, where different units of the same extended family often bought up all of the homes on a given street or block.

  The smell of her mother’s exquisite red sauce greeted Emily as she knocked quickly on the door and went inside.

  “Aunt Emily!” Alex said as he came bounding from the kitchen. “You made it just in time!”

  “Good! I’m starving.” She put her arm around the boy’s shoulders and pressed her cheek down against his blond hair. “How’ve you been? Anything interesting going on at school?”

  “I’m going to try out for the school musical next week. They’re doing Oliver Twist. I really liked the book.”

  “And you’ll be able to learn your lines like that,” Emily said as she snapped her fingers. Alex was ten years old and a gifted child with a true photographic memory. He could perfectly recall anything he’d read even once.

  Sheldon was sitting on the sofa reading a newspaper. “I told Rose that if he gets bitten by the acting bug, it’s her fault.”

  “Aunt Emily, did you know Dad first saw Mom when she was onstage in a play?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah, I did,” Emily said.

/>   “That was a looong time ago,” Rose said as she came around the corner from the kitchen. “But it’ll be fun for you if you get a part in the musical. Hi, Em.”

  “Will you and Dad come watch me? And you, too, Aunt Emily?” Alex looked around at the three of them with huge blue eyes accentuated by his glasses.

  “If you get a part, you bet,” Emily said.

  “We absolutely will,” Rose said. “But hey, why don’t you go wash up? Your grandma says we’re ready to eat.” She rolled her eyes as Alex went down the hall toward the bathroom. “The sooner we get her and Ivy out of the kitchen, the better. Mom’s barking orders, and Ivy’s brandishing her cane.”

  Once they were all seated with full plates, Josie turned to Emily. “So, honey, tell us how the mansion’s coming along. You’re always working these days. I feel like I never see you anymore.”

  Rose snorted. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” she said, and the irony wasn’t lost on Emily. Their mother was a workaholic. Josie’s frequent absences necessitated by her expanding real estate brokerage had been their chief complaint while they were growing up.

  With her stomach empty and her mouth full of homemade ravioli and meatballs, the last thing Emily wanted to do was stop eating and talk about the status of her renovation project. If only she could deal with the question and get her mother onto another subject quickly. “There’s a lot to do, but it’s taking shape. The floors are refinished, and the walls that needed it have been Sheetrocked. I’m working on updating the bathroom sinks now.”

  “Ruth told me that Kyle Hansen and Claudia Simon are planning to have their wedding reception there this December,” Josie said. “They make such a cute couple, don’t you think?”

  “They’re real sweet together,” Ivy said with her mouth full. “By the way, this is excellent, Josie. Making ravioli’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it in the end.”

  “It is. Even if the person who’s helping you make it overstuffs the ravioli and then threatens bodily harm with a cane in response to gentle criticism.”

  “A little extra stuffing never hurt anybody,” Ivy said.

  “Except it can cause the ravioli to pop open in the boiling water and ruin the whole batch.” Josie and Ivy glared at each other, but Emily saw a familiar sparkle in her mother’s eyes, and Ivy’s lip twitched like it always did when she was trying not to grin.

  “So, going back to the house,” Sheldon said to Emily with a careful look at Josie and Ivy, “what do you have left to do?”

  Emily gave a little sigh. “Sanding drywall plaster, painting, swapping out plumbing and lighting fixtures. Plus some decorative things and a ton of paperwork to get it ready for inspection.”

  “And I suppose there will be more things that pop up as you go along,” Josie said. “With houses, there are always surprises.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Emily said. “But I’ll get it finished in time for the wedding, no problem.”

  “Claudia came into the bakery this afternoon,” Rose said. “I showed her some of Ruth’s wedding cakes. She seems so nice, but a little naive. Almost like she’s never lived anywhere but Mill River.”

  “She has, though, I think,” Emily said. “When I met her last summer, she said she hadn’t lived here all that long, so she must’ve come from somewhere else.”

  “You’re right, Em,” Ivy said. “She and Kyle are both transplants. I can’t remember where Claudia’s from, but he moved here with his daughter, Rowen, several years ago from Boston. He used to be a big-shot detective.”

  “Maybe he was a detective,” Emily said, “but Kyle hardly seems like a big shot.”

  “Oh, I know,” Ivy said in a more contrite tone. “I just meant that he had a big important job in a big city, and then he came here. I heard it was because he wanted his daughter to have a safer place to grow up after his wife died.”

  “He must like it, since he’s stayed,” Sheldon said. “I’m surprised how peaceful it is here. I never thought I’d enjoy living in a small town, especially after being in New York all those years.”

  “I still miss some things about the city,” Rose said. “The restaurants, and the shows, and the shopping…” Her voice was wistful. “It’s such a unique place, with so many different kinds of people.”

  “The people aren’t all that different,” Josie said. “They’ve got to have some values in common, or Emily wouldn’t be preparing for a wedding between a big-city cop and a small-town schoolteacher.”

  “That’s true,” Rose said.

  “Speaking of cops,” Josie continued, “I ran into that newest one in town a few days ago. What’s his name, Matt? The former Marine? He’s just darling. So polite and good-looking—”

  “—and single,” Ivy added.

  Emily realized where the conversation was headed and felt her stomach drop. She’d wanted to get her mother on another topic, yes, but not this one.

  “You know, Em, I could introduce you,” Josie said, but Emily was already shaking her head.

  “No, Mom, I have no interest in dating anyone right now. I don’t really have time with all the work I’ve got to do.”

  “Oh, but honey, it would be good for you to meet some people and get out once in a while. And Matt seems like a great guy, one who won’t be single for long, if you know what I mean.”

  “Mom, I’ve already met him, okay? And, he was a total—” She looked over at Alex, who was listening attentively. “He didn’t make a very good first impression.”

  “What do you mean?” Rose asked.

  Emily paused, realizing that she had to be very careful about what she said. Her irritation with Matt stemmed from her possession of Ruth’s briefcase. Ruth was her mother’s best friend, and Emily didn’t want to reveal anything at this point about finding and unlocking it. Or, rather, Matt unlocking it.

  “He came into Turner’s on Sunday morning. While he was there, he hit on me, and not in a way I appreciated. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  That shut her up nicely, Emily thought, enjoying the satisfaction of causing her family’s momentary silence. Her mother was staring with an open mouth. Rose, on the other hand, looked at her with raised eyebrows, and Emily knew her sister would press her for all the juicy details at the earliest opportunity.

  “Aunt Emily,” Alex asked after a few more moments had passed. “What does ‘hit on’ mean?”

  Her sister jumped in to answer the question. “It’s a way to describe what a man does when he sees a lady and wants to get to know her better,” Rose said. “He might pay her a compliment—tell her she’s pretty, for example, and ask her to go on a date.”

  “Did Dad hit on you?”

  Rose coughed and nearly spat out the bite of food she’d just taken. Sheldon rolled his eyes as his balding head flushed pink.

  “Well, yes, but in a very nice and polite way. He asked me out for a fancy dinner. Your father was always a perfect gentleman.”

  Too bad Sheldon couldn’t give Matt a few pointers, Emily thought, although she was increasingly impressed by the fact that he had tracked her down later on.

  “You’re really pretty, Aunt Emily,” Alex said with a dimple-inducing smile. “Did the man ask you to go to dinner?”

  “That’s sweet of you to say, Alex,” Emily said. “And yes, he asked me to dinner, but I decided I didn’t want to go out with him.”

  As she turned her attention back to her plate, Emily recalled Matt’s appearance at the mansion, his sincere apology, and his quick, earnest assistance. She couldn’t reveal the later part of their interaction without bringing up the briefcase. She began to feel guilty for casting him in such a negative light without also relaying his attempt to redeem his bad behavior. And, as Emily marveled again at Matt’s skill with the lock-pick kit and remembered his handsome face and mischievous eyes, it disconcerted her to realize that she was feeling something else—something she never expected, and which she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  —


  At promptly one o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, a knock sounded on the parish house door. Father O’Brien snapped his fingers on each side of his head and, satisfied that his hearing aids were functioning properly, opened the door.

  A woman with shoulder-length black hair and a kind smile extended her hand. “Father O’Brien? Hi, I’m Julia Tomlinson. It’s so nice to meet you.”

  “And you as well, Ms. Tomlinson. You made it up here all right, I see.”

  “Oh, call me Julia, please. And yes, I drove up this morning. It was such a beautiful trip, and so wonderful to get out of the city.”

  Father O’Brien smiled. “There’s no place quite like Vermont, and Mill River in particular. I thought we could do the interview in my church office. The furnishings in the parish house are quite old, but the chairs in my office are far more comfortable. I could show you the sanctuary, too, if you’d like.”

  “By all means. My editor wanted me to get a photo of you for the story, and both those places sound like they might make for interesting shots. Lead the way.”

  Father O’Brien walked with Julia from the parish house to the church. Once in his office, he took his usual seat behind the desk. “Please, sit anywhere you like and make yourself comfortable,” he said.

  Julia pulled up a chair and took out a pad of paper. She also removed a small digital recorder. “Do you mind if I record our chat? I won’t share the recording with anyone. I just like to have it on tape to make sure I get my quotes right.”

  “That’s no problem,” Father O’Brien said.

  “Thank you. So, to get started, I have a short list of questions prepared. First, can you tell me a little about yourself? Things like where you were born, where you grew up?”

  “Certainly. I was born up north, just outside Burlington, on my grandparents’ dairy farm. I lived there with my parents, grandparents, and an older brother for several years. Eventually, my father decided to take a job working in a mill in Winooski, and we moved from the farm into rented quarters there.