Anna felt Jack’s hand touch her lower back very lightly, as if to urge her closer. “Brother Anselm, may I introduce Dr. Anna Savard. Anna, Brother Anselm knows everyone who has anything to do with orphaned or abandoned children in the city.”
“I was once an orphaned boy myself,” Brother Anselm said to Anna, gesturing to a chair. He was of middle size, a little bowed with age but still strong. She wondered what it meant that the detective sergeant called him Brother, if he was something less than or more than a priest.
He was watching her as she watched him, with an open curiosity. “You lost your parents very young, I think.”
Anna paused, alarmed for no good reason.
“No need to worry, Jack hasn’t been telling stories. It was just an intuition. Children who experience that kind of loss at a very young age sometimes develop a brittleness, for want of a better word.”
“I strike you as fragile?”
“Christ save us, no.”
Before Anna could pursue this odd conversation, he turned to Jack and pointed him to the other end of the kitchen. “Tea would be welcome.” And then his attention was back with Anna. Jack went to carry out this command as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a detective sergeant of the New York Police Department making himself busy in the kitchen.
Brother Anselm said, “I was ten when we left France. Typhoid struck six days out of Marseilles and took my mother and father and three brothers. I arrived with nothing, not even English.”
Anna could hear the French in his English now, the rhythm that gave him away.
“And when was that?”
“In the year 1805. When this”—he gestured widely, to take in the whole neighborhood—“was all farmland. I’m here on Sundays to say mass for the sisters. In return for a meal.”
“You are in very good health for a man of eighty-eight years. Were you taken in by the sisters as a boy?”
“Eventually,” he said. “But enough of my history. Tell me about these children you’ve taken on, and the ones you’re looking for.”
She began to tell the story, trying very hard to summarize facts without investing too much of her own opinion or emotions. As though she were telling another doctor a patient’s case history, making sure she had all the information that could possibly be relevant.
Jack put a tea tray on the table with its stout teapot and cups, a small jug of milk, and a chipped sugar bowl. Without instruction he poured for all of them, holding up the milk for Anna’s approval or rejection.
“Well trained, isn’t he?” Brother Anselm said with an indulgent smile. There was clearly a long-standing friendship between these two that could tolerate such teasing. All his comment got from Jack was a lopsided smile.
When Anna had taken a sip of her milky tea, she folded her hands in her lap to continue with the story. Brother Anselm watched her while she talked, his gaze never wavering even when Jack added a comment.
“So the girls are with you and your aunt,” he summarized.
“And my cousins,” Anna finished.
“Tell me again what Sister Mary Augustin said to you about the boys.”
Anna gathered her thoughts. “She said that the paperwork had gone missing. A Sister Perpetua was still searching for it that afternoon without success. She said that paperwork sometimes does go missing with so many children passing through.”
“That’s true,” Brother Anselm said. “It’s hard to imagine the number of children on the street, and yet only a portion of them ever are taken into an orphanage. I worked with them for sixty years and nothing we did ever seemed to make a dent. Paperwork and children both disappear without a trace.”
“That sounds very ominous,” Anna said.
“Sometimes it is ominous,” Brother Anselm said. “There are people who look for every opportunity to take advantage of children. Slave labor, or worse. Surely you know of these cases, as a physician.”
“My cousin Sophie sees more cases of that kind than I do.”
He raised both eyebrows at once. “And who do you treat?”
“I’m a surgeon,” Anna said. “My patients are usually women of childbearing age or older. Do you think that the Russo boys were—” She sought a word that she could say out loud. “Taken? Abducted?”
He shook his head. “There’s no reason to assume the worst. If I had to guess—” But he paused.
“I won’t hold you to it, whatever it is,” Anna said. “Please just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“First I want you to tell me what you fear most. That they are dead? That you may never know what became of them?”
Anna met the detective sergeant’s eyes. She wondered if he would think less of her. “Neither of those things,” she said. “What I fear most is having to tell Rosa that I’ve failed.”
The sounds of an argument in the street spiraled to a fever pitch and fell away while she waited for some comment.