“On my way!”
Anna looked at Jack with something like bemused resignation, and she was right; because they had been here before, the Malones felt obliged to inquire about their journey, their health, their newly married state, their feelings on the weather as it had been in the city and what might be to come here, and then in great detail about the girls, who Jack introduced at their wards.
“Italian,” said the younger Malone. “I never would have guessed it.”
Jack bit back what he might have said: Imagine our surprise to get Italian orphans who aren’t filthy and diseased! Because he saw the confusion on the man’s face, his inability to reconcile the little girls he saw before him with what he had heard and read about Italian immigrant hordes ruining the country.
It was Anna’s hand on his arm that made him pull himself together and end the conversation with a curt nod.
One thing the Malones didn’t ask, to Jack’s relief, was their destination. When they finally climbed into the little rig, with the four of them squeezed together in on one seat, he set the placid old piebald mare off at a quick trot. Anna, busy with the girls, didn’t look up at him until they were on the road north toward Mount Loretto, and Jack was glad. She hadn’t seen the odd pale rectangle on the side of a building where a sign had been taken down, but Jack remembered it.
EAMON MULLEN
GENERAL BLACKSMITHING, HORSESHOEING,
PLOW AND WOODWORK
Maybe the sign was being repainted, he told himself. Maybe Mullen had moved his business to a bigger space somewhere else in Tottenville. And maybe, he had to deal with the possibility, what he had interpreted as a turn in their luck was nothing more than the eye of the storm.
? ? ?
SOMETHING WAS WRONG with Jack, something other than young Michael Malone’s careless insult. Anna saw it in the set of his jaw, in the line of his back. The girls sensed it too, because they were quiet. They were hardly out of town when Lia climbed into Anna’s lap, not looking forward but pressing her face to Anna’s shoulder.
Then he pulled to the side of the road under a stand of oak trees and tried to smile.
“I need a minute.” Jack secured the reins and jumped down, trotting back the way they had come to disappear behind a stand of bushes.
The girls seemed almost to relax, assuming, as most people would, that Jack’s distracted mood and sudden leaving had to do with nature’s call. But Anna knew somehow that it was something else entirely. He had walked off to gather his thoughts and his courage, because he knew something, had heard or seen something that she had not.
She wanted to go talk to him, but the girls would be terrified to be left alone even for a few moments in this strange landscape of fields and pastures and orchards with so much at stake just a few minutes away. For years she had trained to be able to make fast decisions in difficult situations. With a scalpel in her hand some part of her mind took over, made decisions and acted. But this was foreign to her, this kind of need, and she was at a loss.
Jack climbed back up onto the seat and took up the reins. He hesitated for a long moment and then he turned to the girls.
He said, “I have a feeling that the family we’re going to see isn’t going to be there. That they’ve gone away. I want you to be prepared for that possibility, both of you. Once we know whether I’m right, we can talk about what to do next.”
It took considerable effort, but Anna held her questions back. When they turned onto the narrow lane that would take them to the little house near the beach, her stomach gave a lurch and climbed into her throat. The girls looked stunned, like children who have passed beyond fear to a protective numbness.
In the first few seconds it seemed that Jack had been wrong. The house wasn’t deserted; the front door stood ajar, and the sound of someone chopping wood came from somewhere behind it.
Jack looked at Rosa and then at Lia, his expression not exactly grave, but solemn. He said, “Wait here. Mind me now, you need to wait here.” Then he squeezed Anna’s hand and was gone.
? ? ?
WHEN JACK JOINED the police department one of the first and hardest lessons, one that he still struggled with, was something obvious. In his case, at least, anger was far harder to manage than a gun. As he walked toward the front door of the cottage, he reminded himself that he was not here as a police officer. He had no right to ask questions, much less demand answers. That thought was still in his mind when a woman came to the door.
Two facts presented themselves immediately. This small, dark-haired woman was close to giving birth—her hands were folded across the great expanse of her belly—and she was not Mrs. Mullen.