In rehab, the counselors had asked her lots of questions about her mother’s death, suggesting that Bailey “process” it. She’d fought back, insisting that being left alone at eighteen had toughened her up. There was no need to process anything. The facts were the facts: drunk driver plus Garden State Parkway equaled Bailey packing up her things and starting freshman year at Parsons with hardly a peep from her dad. She’d kept busy with classes and socializing and exploring every dark crack of the city, until Tristan hired her and pulled her into the fabulous world of Crespo & O’Reilly.
Cafe Luxembourg was practically empty this time of day, the waiters standing in pairs chatting in order to fill the empty hours between the lunch and dinner crowds. Melinda wasn’t there yet, so Bailey took a booth seat where she had a good view of the door. It wasn’t long until Melinda swept in, wearing a jumpsuit with enormous shoulder pads, her blond hair in perfect swirls down her back, as if she walked in a bubble that protected her from the humidity that plagued the common man. She threw the Barneys bags she was carrying on the floor and held out her arms.
“Cousin!”
Melinda. Her last hope.
CHAPTER FOUR
London, September 1884
Mr. Birmingham gave a low growl when Sara gave her notice.
“Think you’ll find something better over there, do you?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, and instead made suggestions for a trouble-free transition and offered to interview her successor. The staff threw a small party on her last day, but it had a desultory air. She packed up her bedsit and that was that. On to a new continent.
During the eight-day journey from Liverpool to New York City, Sara spent as much time up on the ship deck as possible, to avoid the stench of seasickness from her cabinmates below. To her surprise, the incessant rolling of the ship didn’t bother her at all, and she found the week off to be something of a delight. She read in peace in one of the deck chairs, with no schedule and no Mr. Birmingham to tell her what to do or when to do it. It was all she could do not to stow away on board and enjoy another week instead of disembarking.
From her favorite spot on deck, she could see over to the first-class passengers, barricaded by a gate, as they wandered the decks in their gowns and were fussed over by the waitstaff. Some of the sharply dressed servers made their rounds with goblets of lemonade on gleaming silver trays. Others brought sugar cookies still fragrant from the oven that made Sara’s mouth water. But she didn’t mind the meals in the second-class dining room, and every morning carried a weak broth and tea to the women in her cabin who were unable to move from their beds. A moan was the most she could hope for in response to her bright greeting.
On the last day of the voyage, a gray drizzle fell as the ship made its way into New York Harbor. The city was made up of a mishmash of buildings crowded together like a mouth with too many teeth. She imagined the ones on the edge of the waterfront being pushed into the sea as more and more popped up to fill any crevices. One dark church spire erupted from the rooftops, and she overheard another passenger say it was Trinity Church. She’d be sure to visit, thinking it might be a calm place where she could gather her thoughts during an afternoon off.
The passengers in steerage had to wait until they reached Castle Garden to be processed, but with her second-class ticket, Sara was provided the dignity of an onboard inspection and interview. The confusion on the docks made her anxious once she stepped off the ship. The smell of rotting fish and fried oysters overwhelmed, and everyone seemed to be shouting at the top of their lungs. Newspaper boys, street urchins, and vendors called out in abrasive accents, the vowels all wrong and flat. Everyone seemed to know where they were going and were intent on getting there in the fastest way possible, stepping into the middle of the street even though a wagon was bearing down, and narrowly missing being hit. London was a pastoral village compared to this.
Through the riot of noise, she heard her name. A driver in a fine black carriage stood up, yelling above the din. She waved back and let him help her climb inside, admiring the burgundy velvet interior. She eyed the driver through the rear window to ensure her trunk was securely fastened to the rear, and then settled in. They drove through town and kept on going, until vacant land and fields outnumbered the buildings.
She knocked on the roof to get his attention. He twisted his thick torso around to see her. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Are we going to the Dakota? The new apartment house?”
“We are indeed.”
“But it appears we’ve left the city.”
“This is all New York City, ma’am. You can see the markers for the streets.”
Indeed, even if the streets were no longer paved with granite, they remained regularly spaced apart. “But there’s nothing here.”
Around her was treeless farmland and cattle grazing in muddy fields. It was as if the landscape had been flattened by an enormous gust of wind and only now was coming back to life with tired shanties and sad barns. This was New York?
They carried on. Outside, a pretty young girl walked down the street, followed by a gang of boys who tossed pebbles at her. The girl whirled around and ran at them and they scattered into the street. When Sara was younger, her face had garnered more attention than she would have liked, but now her features were less of a liability. No one mistook her for an innocent maid, and her aquiline nose and raised eyebrow worked in her favor as a tool to stare down unruly sorts, whether a shifty janitor or a haughty guest.
New York wasn’t going to frighten her.
Yet as the carriage swayed up the wide avenue with an empty park on one side and a wasteland on the other, her heart sank. In London, you could wander the squares and see loveliness; you just had to know where to look. Nothing was lovely here.
She shifted to the other side of the carriage and stuck her head out the window. An enormous building, the color of butter, seemed to have been plopped down on the flat landscape by a giant, like something you’d find in a German fairy tale. She counted nine stories with windows that a man could stand in and not reach the top pane, and a complicated gabled roof lacking any consistent pattern.
“Is that it?”
“Sure is. They’ve been working on it for years.” The driver turned his head and shouted back at her. “Built by a fool named Clark.”
“Why is Clark a fool?”
“It’s a monstrosity in the middle of nowhere. No good families would dream of living here, I tell you. Can only imagine what sort will end up inside. Lucky devil died before he could see it finished.”
She’d pictured a handsome building like the Langham smack in the middle of the city, surrounded by shops and parks, where broughams with well-matched pairs of horses pulled up to discharge their passengers. But this place was dismal, the streets still unpaved. She should have asked more questions about the owners, the location. If the driver were correct, the clientele would be ignorant of the niceties. Fine linens. Good manners. A certain distance from the staff that made the role of housekeeper manageable.