I smothered a scowl. “That’s almost exactly what our aunt Susan wrote in her letter.”
We’d never met Aunt Susan, our only known living relative, but her damning reply to my query said it was “absolutely impossible” for Lilah and me to come live with her family. The courts deemed it untenable for a girl of seventeen and her sister to be left to their own devices, so Aunt Susan’s rejection had been the last shoe dropping, booting us into the Children’s Benevolence Society Home three months ago.
“Your aunt sounds like a wise woman.” Miss Pimsler patted my arm. “We must trust things will happen as they are meant to.”
I bit my lip on a cynical retort, and moved back down the aisle. Miss Pimsler and Aunt Susan could trust in fate or destiny or starlight wishes all they wanted. I’d rely on myself.
My dreams of college had disintegrated, but in seven months I would turn eighteen. And I’d find a way to get us back to New York. There was work available for those willing to do it, as I well knew. Washing and mending had given us grocery money over the last year while I finished school. I could take that up again, and hire on as a shopgirl in one of the downtown stores, or join the typing pool at an office.
I slipped back into the grubby seat, considering my options. Lilah had returned her papers to the trunk and sat peering out at the open fields whipping by, her expression one of hopeful anticipation. “I think it will be wonderful to have a new mother,” she said.
“Don’t say that.” My heart pinched at her casual tone. I pictured my mother, her cheeks bright with cold, laughing as the two of us skated together on the frozen pond in Central Park. “No one can replace Mama.”
Lilah’s voice dropped with an earnest ache that stole my breath. “Maybe not for you,” she whispered.
My annoyance drained, leaving only dregs of sadness. She didn’t know the Mama I’d adored. Lilah’s one and only memory of our mother was of her white face in a satin-lined casket, with our baby brother, who’d outlived her by only a few hours, cradled in her arms.
With a shriek of brakes, the train lurched and slowed. Ash and cinders drifted in through the window. “Children,” Miss Pimsler announced, “we’ll arrive in Wheeler soon.” The other young passengers, a couple of dozen in number, turned toward the squat woman. She stood at the front of the car dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief. “Gather your luggage. Let’s all do our best to make excellent first impressions.”
I glanced down at my trunk and the two worn carpetbags that held all our worldly goods. We’d lost our home when Papa’s medical practice failed, and I’d sold everything else to pay rent on a series of wretched tenement apartments.
The other orphans—I still couldn’t believe we were counted among them—collected their scant belongings, smoothing travel-mussed hair and straightening wrinkled clothes.
I shouldered my carpetbag, handed Lilah’s to her, and tucked the trunk under my arm. We stepped into the station, where a porter materialized from the dispersing cloud of steam. “Take your trunk for you, miss?” he asked, each vowel stretching like a lazy cat.
“No, thank you. I’ll manage.” I moved through the haze of coal smoke toward Miss Pimsler, my nerves swarming with countless worries. Everything was out of my hands now.
It was completely unacceptable.
Shuffling into a haphazard line, we set off on the short walk down a dusty trail into town. I felt my cheeks redden as I pictured how I must look, a nearly grown girl who should’ve been allowed to manage her own affairs, forced to go begging among strangers for a place to stay.
Shaking off the dour thoughts, I surveyed the town of Wheeler as it sat baking in the fierce sun. A handful of weathered buildings bordered a central square. In its center, an imposing redbrick courthouse rose over a spreading lawn, a small tin-roofed jailhouse squatting by its side. Across the dusty street stood a white clapboard church with a steeple that pierced the clear sky.
And at the edge of the grassy court square loomed a wooden platform.
“Wonderful!” Miss Pimsler exclaimed, directing us to leave our trunks beside the church. “It’s much easier for families to choose their new children when they have a good view.”
My blood tingled with humiliation, then flashed to hot anger as we plodded up the rickety platform steps like horses at a stockyard. We stared out over a gathering crowd. Solemn quiet descended over the square, and those who did speak cloaked their words in whispers. Each of us on the platform was being scrutinized, our merits and flaws silently parsed. Lilah’s purposeful stride slowed. She tucked her hand in the crook of my arm.
Once we lined up along the stage, the milling townspeople ventured up the steps. A well-dressed man and woman neared. My heart thudded too hard and fast, then stuttered when they passed us by, stopping in front of a tiny redheaded girl of no more than four or five. Back at the orphanage, I’d overheard Miss Pimsler say older children were harder to place. Regardless, none of us had a say in where we ended up. If no one here wanted us, we’d be shipped off on another train to another state.
Sweat trailed between my shoulder blades, as much from nerves as the heat. I stared out across the square at a dark stand of trees in the distance, their silhouettes jagged against the painfully bright sky. A savage longing for New York—anywhere in New York, even the orphanage—throbbed in my chest. But there was no going back. Not yet, anyway.
I exhaled slowly, willing the tension out of my shoulders. My mother had lived in the area, or so Miss Pimsler said. The thought comforted me, somehow. Lilah and I would find a place for ourselves here, too, until we could go back north. “We’re going to make the best of this,” I said. Lilah nodded, her furrowed brow relaxing. “We’re together. We’ll be fine.”
My attention snagged on the shrewd stare of an older man looking up at me with narrowed eyes. Perhaps it was the bald head, or the slight underbite that gave his jaw a bulldog quality, but for whatever reason, I felt sure he was not a person to be trifled with. I swallowed against the unease climbing up my throat.
The man crossed liver-spotted hands on the brass head of his cane and shifted his scrutiny to Lilah. She slid her hand into mine.
He mounted the steps, still watching us, his cane thumping with a hollow sound. Piercing gray eyes darted from me to Lilah with an unsettling air of expectation. “I’m Mr. Reuben Lybrand. What’s your name?” He flung the question at her like a grenade.
“Lilah Pruitt.” She squared her narrow shoulders in a show of confidence, but her hand in mine trembled.
I felt an instinct to step back, tugged by an instant distrust of Mr. Lybrand. If he took a fancy to us, we’d be packed up and taken to his home like auctioned furniture from an estate sale. We had no voice in our own futures. The indignity of it burned behind my ribs.
Mr. Lybrand rapped the end of his cane against the platform and called over his shoulder into the milling crowd. “She’s over here.”
A woman lifted her head in response to his gravelly voice. My attention glided over her magnolia-trimmed hat and ivory dress, coming to rest on an elegant face and eyes the color of a midwinter sky. Despite the heat, her skin remained fair and unflushed. She drew near, wisteria perfume wafting around her slim figure. The hair peeking from under her hat—even her long lashes and finely arched brows—was of the fairest silvery blond.