Again, the deliberate care with the name. And the boy’s name was different from the one the man had called out in the depot.
Kerry cocked her head at the man and smiled. “New names for a new place?”
Aunt Rema turned her head slightly and rolled her eyes. “There’s times when a gift can come off as just a big pain in the donkey’s shank.”
No, Kerry wanted to argue. Never a gift.
There’d been her poor momma, always in bed and often too sad to move from a string of babies born smaller than cornhusk dolls, and just as still. And her daddy: not a bad man when he was sober. But so very different when he was not.
Like the whiskey seeped into his brain and relit every glowing coal of betrayal—every collapse of grain prices, every humiliation when a merchant demanded cash instead of barter. All that scorched through his blood and settled, so far as Kerry could tell, in his right arm.
Kerry learned young to hear when her father’s stride was hitching—a stumble or slide. The faintest blur of a word.
To know when to snatch up the twins and run.
So, no. Not a gift. Just a survival skill she’d never asked to learn.
The not–Marco Bergamini opened his mouth as if he’d defend himself—and his name, which she’d challenged. But then he touched the brim of his cap. “It is the pleasure.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” Kerry returned as he swiveled away.
She leaned up close to her aunt’s ear. “Rema, why would that man have a sketch of the Biltmore?”
“Mighta told you his ownself if you hadn’t just shy of accused him of making up his own name.” Rema dropped her yarn. “Near up to home, and I plum forgot what I brung.”
She unwrapped a red cloth, the aroma of fried ham and cinnamon wafting throughout the coach. From her feet, she lifted a large Mason jar and unscrewed its metal lid.
“The sweet milk’s not been cold for some time, but I don’t reckon it’s gone blinked, chilly as my feet tell me they been on this floor.” She plunged a broad knife into a smaller jar filled with fried apples. After slipping a slice of salt pork and a knife blade of apples inside two biscuits, she handed one to each of the twins. Then one to the reporter and three to Kerry, who passed two to the not–Marco Bergamini and his brother, just rousing.
Rema nodded toward the child. “Poor little thing’s got to have the mulligrubs by now, long as he’s traveled.”
“So hungry that he’s despondent,” Kerry translated. And the two Italians looked relieved.
“How very kind,” said the reporter. But he offered his back.
Rema frowned. “Well, son, it was a hog who’d got some real age on him and not much lust left for the living, if that helps your squeamish.”
Kerry opened her mouth to explain to her aunt, but the reporter gave Rema a smile that mollified her. “Thank you, madam, for wanting to share.”
Kerry bit down on the apples and salt pork and the biscuit that melted away in her mouth. Then squeezed Rema’s shoulder.
“Don’t have none of these,” Rema said, “up there in that briggity city.”
The older of the Italians, having propped Carlo up to eat a biscuit, now bit into his own. “Oh,” he said, more groan than word. “Mio dio.”
Looking pleased, Rema picked up her knitting. “Well, mio dio yourself, hon.”
Her needles clicked. Outside the colors were dimming to gray, but inside the car, hanging bulbs swung, yellow and warm. The train clacked and clattered, all of them in the first car lulled into silence. Fingers of late-afternoon sun reached through the windows as they hurtled along.
Kerry tried to make herself plan what she’d be needing to say. How’re you feeling today, Daddy?
So far so good.
I hear you’ve quit drinking. All these years after driving Momma into her grave. You selfish bastard.
She sighed. Not good opening lines after two years away.
She’d like to see him grovel for mercy. Beg for forgiveness.
Which Johnny MacGregor, come hell or high water—and then a heap more of hell—would never do.
Kerry felt the rock and the rattle of the train beneath her, its comforting sway on the wide bends as they climbed higher into the Blue Ridge Mountains. To her left, the man with his little brother and the rolled paper tube clutched to his chest slumped lower into his seat. Head drooping, he fell asleep.
Out the window, blurred bands of green formed themselves into trees as the train began slowing. A passenger shambled into the aisle. Kerry felt her body relax for the first time since the cable arrived.
Then, suddenly, a screech of the train’s brakes, its whistle blasting. A lurch.
To her left, the Italian cried out in his sleep and grabbed for his little brother.
“No!” He lurched to his feet. “No!”
Chapter 3
The shriek of a steam whistle cut through the dark. A ship, it must be. Just approaching the wharves.
Or . . . no. Not a ship this time.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t make his mind clear. Sparks swirled, singeing his arms.
They had him trapped. Just a matter of moments now before their faces appeared, torchlit and raging.
“Nico,” he murmured. “Stay close to me.”
The very ground under him vibrated, another wave of men swelling behind the first, all of them livid.
Even through the cloud of his fear, he could smell the tar and pitch, the brine and sweat.
“Mafia rats,” one of them sneered. “Goddamn lying garlic eaters.”
“Who killa the chief,” another mocked. “Filthy dagos.”
Alone, he might have escaped. But he’d made a promise.
Behind the shipping crates where they crouched, he pulled his brother closer.
More shrieks, more quaking beneath him.
It all happened at once: the whistle, the rumblings. Grabbing for Nico, he leaped to his feet. His body ramming now into something ahead, he tumbled backward.
And jolted awake.
It was no longer dark but twilight, as if time had spun backward to wrest the sun up from where he’d watched it sink into the bay. There were no longer torches blazing. Only a weak wash of gold over some bright-colored trees and a glowing glass bulb swinging from the ceiling a few feet away.
He’d fallen back onto a bench. Not on a ship this time, but a train.
Not crossing an ocean, but careening through mountains.
Half standing, his weight balanced on one leg, little Nico opened one eye from sleep. Seeing Sal there, he squeezed his eyes shut again and slumped back.
Nico was used to these outbursts.
But the same couldn’t be said for these strangers.
Every passenger in the railcar had turned to stare—from beneath hat brims and behind black-and-white newsprint barricades. The slick, colored magazine pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book flickered as a heavyset woman in mauve stole frightened peeks around its sides.
He’d lit a fear in them, he knew. Not only with his lunge just now but also before that. Just by his presence, even when he said and did nothing at all.
Behind them, the door whacked open, and Sal jumped. But it was only the conductor stalking up the aisle.
“All off here for Old Fort! Black Mountain next stop!” He stopped to scrutinize Sal. “Tickets?”