Sometimes when she smiled in a certain way, a dimple fluttered to life in her left cheek. It was there now. “That’s kind of you.”
He was wondering if she was really oblivious to his interest in her when she said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but it would be better if you don’t come to the door with me. If Rosa sees you she’ll pin you down with a million questions.”
He might have said I can answer questions, or I’m not ready to leave you yet, but neither of those things would move him toward his goal. A goal he had somehow formulated without much conscious thought, but one that had already put down roots. He had to clear his throat to speak.
“I’ll send word tomorrow, or the day after, unless work gets in the way, and then it might not be until later in the week.”
“Generally I’m in surgery in the mornings,” she said. “We both have schedules to work around.”
He took her hand as if to shake it and ran his thumb over the cool silk of her glove to feel the warm skin beneath it, stroking the cleft where palm met wrist. She started but didn’t pull away. He wondered if it was possible for her to stop herself from blushing, or if it was a battle she always lost.
After a moment he passed her leather satchel back to her, and she turned and walked away. Jack watched her go, her pace picking up. Then she stopped and turned back, as if she had forgotten something important.
She called, “If your man yesterday had been French, what would you have said to him then?”
He laughed.
“You don’t know!”
“Maybe not,” he called back. “What part of France?”
9
BY THE TIME they had spent four nights in the house on Waverly Place, the little girls had settled into a routine. “Give children a clock to live by,” Mrs. Lee said. “So they know what’s coming, when it’s coming, how long it will last. They’ll take comfort in that knowing.”
To Anna’s surprise it was a comfort to her, too. Wherever she was—in surgery, with students, in an exam room or a meeting—she could look at the clock and know where the girls were and what they were doing. She knew, for example, that when Margaret went in to wake the girls at eight, Lia would be confused and tearful. She would let Rosa comfort her, and then she would spend some time being comforted by Margaret while she was made ready for the day. By half past they were at the breakfast table.
Over the course of the day Lia sought out every adult on a rotating schedule to ask questions about Sophie and Anna and when they would be home.
“She’s worried about people disappearing,” Sophie said. “She wakes up missing her mother and father and brothers. It will take some time for her to realize that we won’t disappear too.”
An outsider would see a sunny little girl curious about everything; enthusiastic about the meals put before her, the toys brought out of storage in the attic, the chickens that roamed the garden; full to bursting with questions that poured out of her in a tangle of Italian and English. Lia listened closely to every conversation whether it included her or not, and fished out words she didn’t recognize to present like small puzzles. Butcher? Bustle? Weeds? Sneeze? Swallow? Slippery? Between Rosa and Aunt Quinlan she got the answers she wanted and by the third day Anna thought she had gained at least a hundred new words in English.
Rosa’s mood was far more subdued. She was thoughtful, observant, and quick to be helpful in the way of children who are unsure of their place and desperate for acceptance. Lia knew how to ask for and accept comfort; Rosa could do neither. In fact, Rosa seemed to wake up for the first time on their second full day, when she realized that Anna and Sophie were talking about finding her brothers. They began to organize the search for the boys by writing a classified advertisement to put in the papers. Rosa asked Sophie to read it to her twice.
Anyone with accurate information about the location of two missing children will receive a generous reward once they have been returned safely to their family. A boy of seven years called Anthony and his brother, three months old, called Vittorio. They may still be together, or have been separated. Both boys have dark curly hair and very blue eyes. Both went missing on Monday afternoon, March 26, near the Christopher Street ferry. Please write with details to Mrs. Quinlan, P.O. Box 446, Jefferson Market Post Office. All letters will be answered.
Rosa could not have asked, but she was relieved to find that there would truly be a search for her brothers. The advertisement was the first step, but it was the letter writing that fired her imagination.
From Father Anselm and the city Directory of Social and Health Services they had identified almost a hundred places that had to be considered. A dozen or so Anna planned to visit personally, and the rest had to be contacted by mail. Rosa sat and watched them write letters as she might have watched a play on a stage, produced for her alone to enjoy.