The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

Having deposited my bag in the cubby, I followed Sister Angelique down the staircase and through a door at the end of the downstairs hallway. It had been surprisingly cold in that building and the sun on my face felt welcome. We crossed an area of gravel on which lines of laundry hung limply in the hot afternoon sun. On my left a wing jutted out from the square main building and from an open upstairs window came the sound of a baby crying. I looked up at it. Sister Angelique frowned. “I don’t know what they think they are doing, leaving the window open like that. I’ll speak to them.”


Beyond the gravel we could hear the sound of voices coming from between the rows of plants in the kitchen garden. They fell silent as we came past a trellis of pole beans and I saw three young women, all heavily pregnant like myself, busy at work picking the beans.

“It seems as if there was more talking than picking going on here,” Sister said, peering down at a half-full basket. “I hope you will set a good example to our new girl. Her name is Molly and she comes from Ireland.”

They were staring at me with blank, unfriendly faces.

“I thought we had no room for another girl,” one of them said. “All the beds are full.”

“Blanche will be leaving us in the morning,” Sister said, “and tonight she has been transferred to the sisters’ guest room to prepare herself for going out into the world.”

“Blanche?” A tall angular girl asked. “Is she really ready to go then?”

“Blanche needs to pull herself together and get on with life,” Sister said. “Anyway, this is not for you to query, Peggy. I have made my decision and that is final.”

“Don’t we get a chance to say good-bye to her?” a frail-looking, little scrap of a girl asked.

“Better for her if you don’t. She would only get emotional again and that is not good for her. Now, back to your work. They are waiting for more produce in the kitchen, and you need to show Molly how things are done.”

“We’ve almost finished, Sister,” one of the girls said hastily. “Three buckets full this afternoon. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“How about the raspberries?” Sister asked. “Are they all picked?”

“No, Sister. We were going to get to them next,” the same girl said.

“You’ll find the birds have eaten them all if you don’t get a move on. You, Elaine. Take Molly and make sure those raspberry bushes are stripped by the end of the afternoon. You other two come and help them as soon as the beans are finished. And pick carefully. Don’t crush them, you hear?”

“Yes, Sister,” they muttered.

She turned on her heel and stalked off.

“Old cow,” one of the girls muttered.

“Careful, Elaine. She might hear you. You know she’s got unnatural powers of hearing.”

A tall, rather striking-looking brunette tossed back her head. “What do I care? What can she do to us after all? We’re only here for a few more weeks. And I’m actually paying for the privilege.”

“You are paying to be here?” I blurted out.

She turned those amused dark eyes on me. “I was a bad girl,” she said. “Got rather tipsy at a party and let a boy take a few too many liberties. Unfortunately I’m betrothed to someone else and he wouldn’t have taken kindly to walking down the aisle with a girl with a large belly.” She laughed and the others smiled nervously.

“You’re still going to marry him?”

“Of course. His family is rich. I’d be a fool if I didn’t. However, he’s in the Navy and luckily for me his ship is deployed to the Philippines for a year. So he’ll return. I’ll greet him on the pier and he’ll be none the wiser.” She looked at me with a smirk. “I can tell why a bed suddenly became available, can’t you, Aggie?”

“Why?” the frail-looking one asked.

“Because Sister has her redhead at last.”

“Oh, of course.” They were all smirking now.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my face turning red under their scrutiny.

“She’s been waiting and waiting for a redheaded baby,” the striking girl called Elaine said. “You don’t see too many of them.”

“What does she want a redheaded baby for?” I asked. Although I knew that I wouldn’t be here and that my child would be born within the safety of my own home, I felt a jolt of fear go through me.

The scrap of a girl, Aggie, leaned closer to me. “She’s got a couple waiting for a red-haired baby. And you can bet your life the donation will be most generous.”

“So you’ll probably be all right,” Elaine said. “A fellow Irishwoman and a redhead. She’ll probably make sure she takes good care of you.”

“Doesn’t she take good care of all the girls?” I asked innocently.

Elaine moved closer. “She leaves it mostly up to Sister Angelique, and let’s just say that one has her favorites and her nonfavorites. Me, I’m fine because I am paying to be here and because I could leave whenever I wanted to. But if you cross Sister, or she thinks you will probably have an ugly baby, she can make your life hell.”

“She didn’t seem too nice to Blanche,” I said. “I felt terrible. I certainly didn’t want to turn anyone out of her bed for me and I told Sister I could sleep on the sofa in the common room until someone left, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”