Chapter 23 Abby

23

ABBY

“The inmates of this home are not your playthings,” Charlotte said forcefully. “They are not your daughters.”

They sat in the office, Abby behind the desk, Charlotte and Euphemia opposite her in the two visitors’ chairs, which somehow made her feel more vulnerable. Three cups of tea had turned cold before them, untouched. Worse, even, than Charlotte’s harsh words was Euphemia’s silence, the fact that she hadn’t looked Abby in the eye since Miss Rhoades revealed her secret.

“I have never considered them dolls, or daughters,” Abby retorted, her face flushed despite the chill air coming from the window. “I didn’t send Faith Johnson out into the cold today. She made the decision to leave, without telling anyone.”

May hadn’t turned up for dinner, either, Miss Rhoades had reported, but Abby wasn’t ready to tell Charlotte that. The whole scenario felt dizzying. Abby needed some time alone to make sense of it all.

Charlotte set her ear horn in her lap. “But you took it upon yourself to hide Miss Johnson in the tower. And yet you say, in your view, she had nothing to do with the murdered madam?”

Euphemia shifted her square-framed glasses higher on her nose as she studied the floor. Abby opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She’d been prepared to turn Faith in to the police herself—hadn’t she?—just a day before. Perhaps it was her own stubbornness getting in the way now, preventing her from cooperating with Charlotte. The way Charlotte had contacted the detective behind her back, the way they’d stormed in here like torch-bearing villagers hunting a witch—none of it sat well with Abby.

Maybe she did see the girls in here as her daughters, but did she protect them to a fault? It must have been easy for Charlotte to see Abby’s devotion in a negative light—Charlotte, who’d been blessed with so many children of her own.

Charlotte stood up, favoring her bad knee, her ear horn dangling in her hand. “This had better not be a repeat of what happened with Delia. You don’t need another girl’s death on your conscience, Abby.”

At last, Euphemia picked her head up, her expression shot through with sympathy.

“That was unnecessary, Mrs. Van Cleve,” Abby said. She struggled to keep her voice steady. “Delia, too, acted of her own accord.”

Charlotte turned at the door. Abby couldn’t be sure she’d heard her. “For your sake and hers, I hope the girl, Faith, has found safety far away from here. And I hope you will dismiss Miss Rhoades with all dispatch.” She set her lips grimly and nodded at the two other women, then left.

The air in the room felt notably flattened in Charlotte’s wake. Abby and Euphemia were left to sit in uncomfortable silence. Abby could sense her friend’s embarrassment on her behalf, or, worse, her pity. Other than Abby, only Euphemia knew the significance of the madam’s missing eyebrow, not to mention the fact that Abby had hired Miss Rhoades by herself, had gone to St. Paul to meet her, that she alone had failed to examine the woman’s background properly. Abby had instantly taken a personal liking to Miss Rhoades; she’d wanted Miss Rhoades to be the right fit.

“I can be the one to speak with Miss Rhoades, if you’d prefer that,” Euphemia said. “I’ll offer her two weeks’ pay.”

“No. No, it’s my duty, I hired her.” Abby pressed her fingers to her temples, feeling the ridges of bone under her thin skin.

“Thank you,” Euphemia said, sounding relieved. “You must remember what Charlotte said,” she added, a hint of reproach in her tone. “We simply cannot offer to serve as a reference. Our reputation…”

“ We cannot serve as a reference?” Abby’s voice rose, higher than she intended, and she watched her friend flinch. “What’s become of us, Euphemia? Our entire mission demands we accept girls as they are, without asking questions, then return them to the world on the premise that they’re worthy of a second chance. If we don’t believe it’s true of Miss Rhoades, can we claim we believe it of any of them?”

A vein pulsed at Euphemia’s temple. She wasn’t one for confrontation, as Abby well knew. She could count on one hand the number of times they’d spoken sharply to each other in twenty-five years. “I share your concerns,” Euphemia said quietly. “But hiring a former sporting woman…You know how it looks, Abby. Besides, Miss Rhoades was not honest with us. Would you have hired her if she had been?”

Abby wanted to say yes, but when she stared into the depths of her conscience, she wasn’t sure. “You’d best go home, Euphemia,” she said gruffly. “The weather’s not likely to improve. I won’t be far behind you.”

Euphemia stood, a bit shakily. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you home? My man brought the Concord coach.”

Abby shook her head. “I should take my time in talking with Miss Rhoades. You go home and have a restful sleep.”

Euphemia nodded. She reached out and grasped Abby’s hand, her fingernails digging into Abby’s palm. Abby swallowed the lump in her throat and squeezed back.

When Euphemia had gone, Abby locked the door to the office. She kept a nightgown and a thick quilted dressing gown in the wardrobe, along with a white silk nightcap. There was a bed in the infirmary that would be comfortable enough for the night. It had been years since she’d slept here, when another of her favorites had gone missing. Her heart beat at a clip as she changed into her nightclothes and stashed her black dress and underthings into a drawer. She took the lantern from the desk and made her way into the darkened hallway.

Miss Rhoades was coming down the stairs, holding a flickering candle in a brass carrier. Abby could scarcely look at her. Her conversation with Euphemia hammered at the inside of her skull.

“Are you staying the night, Mrs. Mendenhall? My, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“I’ll stay in case the girls return,” Abby said. “Any sign of May?”

“No, ma’am. Nor Faith. I’m beside myself.” Miss Rhoades came close and lowered her voice as a group of inmates, also in their nightclothes, went past. “The mercury’s well below freezing. I checked the closet, and they took two coats, but still. Those poor girls.”

Abby agreed, yet still felt an automatic urge to project authority, to be the voice of law and reason. “They may not be so innocent, especially Faith. Take care to remember that.”

A strange look passed over Miss Rhoades’s face. “Surely, whatever she’s done, you don’t think she deserves to freeze to death, Mrs. Mendenhall.”

She absolutely did not. The very thought made her want to collapse. “Of course not.” Her fingers found the simple silver cross she wore around her neck and worked the smooth metal. “Miss Rhoades, we need to speak this evening. After the inmates have gone to bed.”

Miss Rhoades’s face fell. “I figured we would.” She opened her mouth to say something else, but then Pearl came up and squeezed her arm.

“A group of us are heading to the parlor,” she told Miss Rhoades companionably, with a quick glance at Abby. “Won’t you come tell us a ghost story?” She seemed at ease with Miss Rhoades, as if the two were peers, leaving Abby to wonder how many of the inmates guessed at Miss Rhoades’s history, or knew by instinct.

Abby laughed lightly. “Why, we’re almost a month from Christmas Eve.”

Miss Rhoades patted Pearl’s hand. “Certainly, Pearl. I can tell a ghost story.” They turned to walk toward the parlor, Miss Rhoades at the last second beckoning to Abby over her shoulder, as if she were an afterthought.

Through the big front-facing windows of the parlor, Abby could see that the wind outside had grown teeth, snipping and snatching at the bent-over trees. The glass of each window was caked in snow, the whole building creaking and settling with each gust. Nearly all the inmates, thirty of them at least, poured into the room, bearing blankets and bed warmers, and took their seats in twos and threes on the carpet, huddled around the fire. Abby remained standing by the door, hip bones tired, knees aching. The girls glanced at her and muttered to one another, and she found herself pulling her dressing gown more tightly around her neck. Despite its thickness, she felt strangely exposed, naked. She wondered if they felt that her presence spoiled the occasion, if they acted differently when she wasn’t around. They remained quiet as they watched the matron settle into a big chair beside the hearth, listening to the wind whine like a wraith as it whipped around the tower.

“It sounds like her ,” someone sitting near the fire muttered. Leigh, one of the kitchen apprentices. She crossed herself. Dolly appeared beside her and rubbed her shoulder, both staring at the floor. No one else said a word, but the girls cast wary looks at one another. Kindling crackled in the fire.

Miss Rhoades brought a lamp close to her and turned the key so the flame lit her face from beneath in shades of gold, casting the sharp angles of her features into shadow.

“Will you tell ‘The Signal-Man’?” Pearl cried, from her place on the settee.

The matron shook her head. “Thought I’d tell a new one today, girls.”

The wind gave a shriek of approval, and the inmates huddled closer under their blankets. Miss Rhoades waited a moment, eyes closed, catching her breath. At last, her shoulders relaxed, and just before she began to speak, she caught Abby’s eye.

“There once was an old woman,” Miss Rhoades said, still holding Abby’s gaze, “who lived with her two daughters beside a lake of ice.”

Abby’s limbs froze. As Miss Rhoades dove into her story, Abby had the sensation that her soul had abandoned her body, left it stiff and lifeless. Her spirit seemed to hover near the ceiling of the room, over the enraptured figures of all the girls, until she burst out through the roof and could see the scene for herself: the battered wooden cottage; the ragged coast of the lake, crusted in frozen tides; and, finally, the woman and her two daughters, their hair long and as black as magpie feathers.

Miss Rhoades had told her once that her mother came from Donegal, and Abby could hear just a hint of it now in her storytelling, a lilt to Miss Rhoades’s voice, hypnotic and foreboding.

“The mother and her daughters were poor, but happy. They sustained themselves on the fish that lived in the lake, and as soon as the girls were old enough, the woman taught them to bait a line, to drill holes in the ice,” Miss Rhoades intoned, her features licked by the flames. “She warned her daughters that in early winter, the thin surface ice would only hold if they remained close to shore. The younger girl, called Roisin, was obedient and quiet, and stayed close to her mother. She preferred to read by the fire or sit in a chair by the window and watch birds swoop over the lake. But the elder daughter, Eimear, the old woman’s favorite, didn’t believe the laws of nature applied to her. She ventured farther and farther, onto thinner and thinner ice, until one winter solstice, the ice cracked under her feet, and she plunged through.”

A few gasps rippled through the room, a muffled giggle.

“The woman made Roisin hunt with her for Eimear’s body, deep into the year’s longest night, even as Roisin begged to return to the cottage. When the mother found Eimear, dead, floating beneath the sheet of ice, she threw her head back and wailed. After her tears dried, she realized her mistake. She’d drawn Roisin too far onto the thin ice and had also lost her to the lake. And now the old woman found herself alone.”

The wind raised its voice, and Abby was startled back into her body. An electric lamp in the corridor flickered. A few of the girls squealed. Abby could remember her eldest brother telling Christmas ghost stories, when she was a young girl, and feeling as the inmates must: wrapped in pleasant fear, huddled under a warm blanket while winter raged outside. She didn’t share that sentiment now. She felt conspicuous, out of place, as though she’d intruded on a moment that should be experienced by the inmates alone.

“On the other side of the lake,” Miss Rhoades continued, “there lived a witch. The old woman and her daughters had always avoided her, but when she came the first evening of the new year—first in the form of a squall, banging at the old woman’s door, which in time became a fist, an arm, a body draped in rags—the mother let the witch inside. She demanded to be served hot tea and biscuits, the last of the old woman’s food, for she’d been too deep in her grief to do any fishing at all.

“?‘You may have your daughters back,’ the witch promised the old woman, ‘on one condition.’ The witch could refashion them into being, using the clay of the earth and the water from the lake. But their mother must forbid them to leave the cottage. If they did, they’d melt back into the landscape, and she’d lose them all over again. The old woman hastily agreed, and in the morning, when she woke, her girls were there.

“They looked the same, save for their eyes, which had turned a solid, pale blue. The woman was relieved when Eimear laughed and teased her for eating all their stored food, and Roisin curled up by the window, picking up her book where she’d left off. But when their mother went close to her daughters, she could see how they’d changed. Eimear’s skin was cold to the touch and would begin to melt if the old woman laid her hand there too long: she’d been remade out of solid ice. Roisin’s complexion glittered like thousands of tiny diamonds, and when she spoke, her whispered voice came out gritty and rough, for the witch had built her out of sand.”

No one said anything now. It was only a story, but Abby felt her heart pounding in the fragile cage of her chest, thinking less of Eimear and Roisin than she was of May Lombard and Faith Johnson.

“Because the girls had been fashioned of magic, they remained unchanged even as spring arrived. Eimear didn’t melt when the old woman flung the windows open to let in the south wind, but the girl quickly grew restless. She begged her mother to let her go outside, and of course the old woman said no. Eimear wept, her hot tears working tracks into the ice of her cheeks, and she flung her body at the door in an attempt to knock it from its hinges. The old woman devised more and more desperate bindings, to keep her daughter in: a metal cage meant for a hound long since dead, a rope attaching her wrist to her bedstead. But nothing could keep Eimear contained for long.

“At last, in her desperation, the old woman built a fire just outside the cottage’s only door, thinking that would hold Eimear back. Eimear stood in the threshold, watching the fire burn. By now her tears had worn grooves so deep in her cheeks, you could see through to her bones. The old woman stood on the other side of the flames, praying she could keep her daughter with her, forever. She was puzzled when Eimear waved, a sad wave of goodbye, and stepped right into the fire. The old woman screamed, but she was too late: in a puff of steam, her elder daughter was gone.”

Miss Rhoades paused in her story to take a long sip of tea. The girls were quiet. Abby touched her own face and realized she’d been crying, like a child. She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

“As her daughter evaporated, the old woman heard what sounded like a sigh of relief on the wind, and a tinkling like Eimear’s laughter. She looked back to the door of the cottage and saw Roisin standing there, smiling up into the clouds. As Roisin hovered on the threshold, the breeze picked up wisps of sand from her arms and her face, lifting them into the wind. The old woman cried her name, begging her to stay inside, and a frown crossed Roisin’s face. She stared across the fire at her mother, and with a sad little smile, she followed in her older sister’s footsteps and walked into the flames.”

At Abby’s feet, the girl called Leigh had her thin arms wrapped around Dolly’s shoulders, their heads touching. Miss Rhoades took another drink, holding the cup and saucer in her hand. Her eyes sparkled in the light of the fire. “Well, the old woman went into the cottage, once again alone and devastated. She understood why Eimear had run away, but Roisin! Her little one, her dependable child—the old woman had never imagined Roisin would leave her. She realized she’d largely ignored Roisin, all these years, so distracted she’d been, worrying after Eimear. And then she heard a knock at the door.

“She went to answer it, and there stood Roisin, a look of calm on her face. Heat wafted from her as she cooled. The old woman stood by, dumbfounded, as Roisin came inside to sit at her bookshelf as though nothing had happened. The mother ran to her daughter’s feet and wept, her head in Roisin’s lap. Roisin’s legs felt firm and solid. The old woman realized then what had happened: the fire had turned her staid little daughter of sand into the strongest tempered glass.

“?‘The witch was wrong,’ Roisin told her mother. ‘I can come and go as I please now. But I’ll stay in the cottage with you if you’d like my company. There’s just one thing I must do first.’

“Of course, the old woman was terrified to let her daughter back outside. What if Roisin was mistaken, and she’d blow away, grain by grain of sand, if she left the cottage? But the woman remembered what had happened when she tried to force Eimear to stay, and she let Roisin go. And Roisin, now made of glass, did not blow away. She climbed the highest bluff overlooking the lake and built a cairn of stones, which the old woman presumed was for Eimear. Roisin stood for a while, overlooking the lake, smiling out at the blue water. Then she climbed down and came up the path to the cottage, her skin sun-browned and gleaming, and she folded herself into her mother’s embrace.

“They went on to live there for many happy years. And sometimes, when a spring storm blew in from the lake, they thought they could still hear Eimear’s laughter.”

Miss Rhoades looked at Abby as she spoke the last lines of the story, and Abby was glad she’d wiped the tears from her face. She gave Miss Rhoades a little nod.

“That was a lovely story,” Abby said, her voice hoarse. “What’s its title?”

Miss Rhoades gave a little laugh. “I don’t know. I made it up myself.”

“It wasn’t really a ghost story,” Pearl commented, her voice piercing the room’s trance.

The matron shot her a look of amusement. “Well, I’ll have to do better next—”

Everyone jumped as the front door of the home blew open and hit the jamb with a bang. Abby was the first to get to the foyer, Miss Rhoades close behind her, the girls screaming and clutching at one another, slipping in their stocking feet as they clamored to see.

“It’s Eimear,” someone muttered, setting off a ripple of nervous giggles.

“It’s nobody,” Miss Rhoades said, holding the knob, wisps of snow whirling past her. “There’s no one there.”

“The wind must have forced it open,” said Abby. The electric light on the front porch swung back and forth, blinding her. Before they shut the door firmly, she squinted toward the far side of the street, a sea of blackness, the trees and sidewalks obscured from her view. Anyone could be standing there, and she wouldn’t be able to see him. But he would be able to see not only her, but also the matron, and the cluster of inmates behind her. Not playthings, but people, all of them women, with graver concerns than sand, ice, or snow.

—

It took until nearly midnight for the house to fall quiet. The inmates, riled by Miss Rhoades’s story and Faith’s and May’s disappearances, filled the air with edgy laughter and muffled shrieks for hours until, finally, the last of them had gone to bed and put out her lamp. Miss Rhoades came downstairs, yawning audibly, to find Abby at the sidelight window beside the front door, still staring out at the street.

“You intended that story for me.” She spoke to Miss Rhoades without taking her eyes from the road. When Miss Rhoades sputtered a denial, Abby shook her head. “You believe I’ve…I’ve interfered too much in the lives of my favorites.”

“No, I don’t, ma’am.” Miss Rhoades sighed. “What’s happening now, May and Faith going missing—it isn’t the same as with Delia.”

Abby bit back a quick response. Her throat made a guttural sound, close to a sob. No, it wasn’t the same as with Delia; Delia had committed no crime. But Abby had tried to cage her, in a sense, and, just like tonight, it had ended badly. Twice, Delia had run away from the Bethany Home, which would tolerate no laudanum use within its walls. The second time, when Abby had found her in an opium den, asleep, so sickly-pale she appeared to have been pickled in brine, Abby had taken her back to her own house. She’d placed Delia in her mother’s old room, the sunniest in the house, given her their best goose-down pillows and comforter, and attempted to fatten her up with meat pies and ice cream. Junius had been wary at first, but he’d warmed to her, in those three months she lived with them. He’d seen her potential, too: the way her eyes lit up when they engaged her in philosophical debates; her clear, steady voice as she read the Bible; her gifted watercolors, the brush strokes as dainty as a mouse’s footprints.

Abby had lied to the Sisterhood of Bethany then, too. She’d told herself she’d forgotten to change the ledger, in which she’d listed Delia as a runaway. When Swede Kate called on them to help her with Delia’s death inquiry—after Delia left Abby’s in the middle of the night, in search of the easy flow of morphine in a place like Kate’s—Charlotte had been flabbergasted to learn Abby had been keeping Delia at her home.

“I put Delia in harm’s way,” Abby told Miss Rhoades now. “She’d have been safer here, with you, rather than kept and coddled in my home.”

Miss Rhoades shook her head. “Delia wasn’t a child, and neither are Faith and May. They must be allowed their free will.”

Abby narrowed her lips, watching the street. If she’d been consistent in her enforcement of the rules, she’d have sent May back out into the world when her year was up. The girl wouldn’t have had time to get to know Faith Johnson, and perhaps she’d have been better off for it.

“I have a confession as well, Mrs. Mendenhall.”

Abby turned toward the matron, whose eyes gleamed. “Miss Rhoades, please.” Abby took her hand. “You’ve bared your soul enough for one day, you needn’t say more.”

Miss Rhoades shook her head. A tear slipped down her cheek. “I was the one who called the Representative about Faith being held in the tower.”

Abby stiffened. She was still holding Miss Rhoades’s hand. The urge to drop it was strong.

Miss Rhoades sniffed. “I thought it might be the way to get your attention, to convince you to free her. I never anticipated Mrs. Van Cleve bringing the police, or what would follow. I didn’t…” She wiped her eye with the lace edge of her sleeve. “I didn’t mean to cause everyone such trouble.”

Abby held her breath. She’d been given strict instructions to give Miss Rhoades the sack, and now she could do so without reluctance. She stood quietly for a moment as the matron dabbed her nose, listening to the grandfather clock tick in the parlor. Miss Rhoades kept it wound, polished, and dusted. She had given many worthy years to this institution, all with an energetic commitment to its mission, always in good cheer.

Had it been so bad, what Miss Rhoades had done in alerting the press? Had Abby in fact needed someone to sound the alarm, to offer a check against the imperious way she sometimes ran this place?

“What’s done is done, child,” Abby said, softly. There was more she wanted to say, with her defensiveness riled, but she let it go. What was done was done.

Miss Rhoades could only reply with a nod, and an attempt at a smile, and Abby realized, after a beat, that she’d just spoken to the matron as though she were one of the inmates. She wondered if Miss Rhoades could hear a hidden message there, a sign that she couldn’t be allowed to stay in her position of authority much longer.

In any case, Abby was tired. She longed to retreat for the evening. Her muscles, held tense since early this morning, felt rubbery. Still, she went on standing there with Miss Rhoades, side by side, the two of them peering out at the road, hoping they might see two little figures returning in the snow, holding on to each other for support.