Chapter 3
Maggie rose from her seat on unsteady legs while Danny froze for one stunned second, and then rushed joyfully to their father, who laughed and nearly stumbled back as his son threw his arms around him.
“Da!”
“Now, now, my boy, and isn’t that a fine welcome!
” Their father chuckled as he clumsily returned Danny’s hug, stroking his hair briefly before he put his hands on his shoulders and set him apart from him.
“Let me have a look at you,” he said. “And sure, if you aren’t a man now! When did that happen?”
“I’m sixteen, Da,” Danny said, ducking his head as he wiped his eyes. He seemed embarrassed by his emotional display, but he was grinning as he turned back to gaze at their father in joyful wonder.
Maggie was more circumspect in her study of the man they hadn’t seen in over nine years.
When he’d first come in, all she’d seen was that same dimpled smile, the twinkle in his dark eyes, the way he so carelessly strolled into any room and occupied it entirely, just as he always had, just as she’d remembered.
Now she noticed other things—the silver streaks in his rumpled hair, the deep grooves from his nose to his mouth, the patch of graying stubble he’d missed on his jaw.
He wore a raggedy, stained long john shirt underneath a pair of suspenders, with a pair of wool trousers that had been patched more than once.
He smelled of whisky and sweat and he’d lost weight, seeming scrawny rather than bursting with vitality and vigor as Maggie had remembered.
Or were her memories, the rose-tinted reminiscences of a doting child, faulty? Had her father always been this shabby, this… pathetic? The thought felt mean-spirited, yet Maggie could not keep herself from it. He was a shadow of the man she’d once known.
Declan turned from Danny to smile at her. “Maggie, a chroi, come give your da a hug.”
Maggie glanced at Jessamine, who was eyeing this reunion thoughtfully, a faint smile on her face, although her eyes were narrowed in speculation. Maggie doubted the madam missed much.
“Hello, Father,” she said quietly, and walked forward to briefly press her cheek against his grizzled one before stepping back.
“And haven’t you turned into a beautiful young lady!” Declan exclaimed. “Miss Jessie, have you ever seen such a lovely lady? And there are certainly plenty to choose from, around here, aren’t there now!”
He chuckled, while Maggie flushed at the comparison. “Da,” she protested in quiet reproof.
“Your children are the spitting image of you, Declan,” Jessamine remarked, smoothing over the awkward moment with natural ease.
“Danny has your eyes, and Maggie your chin.” She turned to Maggie, and she thought she saw a flicker of compassion in the older woman’s eyes.
“I approve of a strong chin,” she told her kindly, and Maggie instinctively pressed a finger to the cleft in her chin that she’d always struggled to like, worried it was too mannish.
“But you must all wish to get reacquainted,” Jessamine continued as the maid, Evie, came in with a tray bearing a pitcher of lemonade, some glasses, and a plate of scones.
“Let me leave you to yourselves for a few moments.” She gave Declan a humorous look.
“You know we shall need the room back at noon!”
“To be sure, to be sure,” Declan replied, smiling. He seemed utterly unfazed by having his children visiting him in a brothel, of all places.
Maggie had a sudden urge to cry, which she didn’t understand.
This should be a joyous occasion, but somehow it only felt sad, and worse, pointless.
Looking at her father now, she wondered how on earth he would be able to help them, never mind provide for them, as she’d once hoped he might.
They’d come to San Francisco with nearly nothing; she’d lost most of her savings along with her millinery shop in Chicago, and the rest had been spent on their train fare.
She had nothing but a few crumpled dollars to her name and, while she knew Brendan had some money saved, Maggie was reluctant to be dependent on him yet again.
He had already given them so much, and it had clearly cost him dearly.
She did not want to presume on him any further, especially considering the confused state of their relationship.
They were no longer estranged, but were they even friends, never mind something more?
Once Brendan had wanted that, and then he hadn’t, and Maggie had never let herself follow the persistent longings of her heart.
It would be easier all around, Maggie knew, if she and Danny did not have to depend on him anymore.
But where then did that leave them with their father?
“Maggie, come pour us some lemonade, darlin’,” Declan entreated. “Although I wouldn’t mind something a wee bit stronger to go with it!” Chuckling only a little shamefacedly, he slipped a flask from his hip pocket while Maggie’s heart sank further.
If her brother thought anything was amiss with their father, he didn’t note it. He was grinning as Maggie poured the lemonade, while their father splashed a generous measure of whatever spirit was in his flask into his own glass.
“Sláinte!” he toasted them both and then downed his drink in one go.
“Now that goes down nice and smooth,” he remarked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, before setting his glass down on the tray with a clatter.
“But come and tell me what you’ve been up to, my darlin’s.
You don’t know how glad I am that you finally found me. ”
“Are you?” Maggie asked rather tartly before she could think better of it. “When you didn’t leave us any forwarding address, back in New York? I’m amazed we found you at all.”
Declan gave a theatrical, and Maggie suspected, unrepentant, wince.
“Ah now, Maggie, I’d had a wee bit of trouble there, hadn’t I?
Couldn’t be letting anyone know where I was, not for a spell, at any rate.
But I gave you my address when I could, didn’t I?
” he continued in a cajoling tone. “I supposed San Francisco was a good enough distance from the Whyos, and so it seems it was, and it’s all come aright, since you’re here now. ”
“You were with the Whyos?” Danny exclaimed.
He sounded impressed rather than alarmed, which was especially irritating, considering his own brush with that notorious gang, that had cost both Maggie and Brendan their livelihoods, and very nearly their lives.
But now it seemed a point of pride to her brother.
Resisting the urge to throw up her hands at both her brother’s and father’s ways, Maggie reached for her own glass and took a sedate sip.
She should have known Danny would have his head turned by the father he’d hero-worshipped from afar.
She just hoped it didn’t lead him into making reckless and rash decisions yet again.
“Ah, well, not with them,” Declan replied with an uneasy laugh.
“But they’re not ones to cross, that I can assure you, and I learned that the hard way.
But enough about that.” He turned to Maggie, his ready smile slipping just a little, no doubt at the stern look she felt tightening her face.
“Maggie, pet, tell me what you’ve been up to.
Don’t you look smart! Like a true lady.”
“We’ve been looking for you,” Maggie replied. She wasn’t about to share the many sorrows and joys of their journey all the way from Ireland to here, the triumphs as well as the tribulations. None of it mattered anymore.
“Maggie’s been working as a milliner,” Danny interjected, sounding proud of her for perhaps the first time in his life. “Made all sorts of fancy hats, some were even seen at the World’s Fair, don’t you know!”
“Danny.” Maggie pressed her lips together as she shook her head. “Not now.”
“Were they, now?” Declan asked, a gleam in his eyes as he leaned back to appraise her. “Did you make that hat you’re wearin’, then?”
Maggie brushed the brim of her modest straw boater, its only embellishment a pale pink ribbon.
“Yes, I did,” she admitted. “But I left that all behind when we came to San Francisco.” She gave her brother a quelling look before turning back to their father.
“We came here with very little, Father.” She stopped abruptly, feeling as if the words she wanted to say, but knew she couldn’t, were choking her.
She wanted to ask her father if he’d thought about them at all when he’d left them in Ireland after their mother had died, and then abandoned them yet again in New York.
He must have known they would have had nothing when they’d arrived, and yet he hadn’t been able to stir himself on their account at all.
Well over a year had passed before they’d discovered an address for him, and then it had been all the way across the country!
When she considered the matter, Maggie really was amazed they’d found him at all.
And despite his seeming good cheer, she wondered if their father was pleased that they had.
“Ah, Maggie,” Danny said, “you could start again with all that hat business, here in San Francisco. Isn’t it the Paris of the West, like you said? You could open up another shop, make more of them fancy hats and sell ’em to all the well-to-do ladies.”
As if such a thing could be so easy, Maggie thought bitterly. If it were even desirable, which it no longer was.
“That time has passed, Danny,” Maggie stated quietly. She turned to their father. “What about you? How did you end up all the way out here in San Francisco?”
“Ah, well…” Declan scratched his cheek as he laughed uneasily.
“I didn’t set on a plan, as such. But like I said, I’d run into some trouble back in New York, and that led me to Chicago.
I would have settled there, sure enough, but…
” He trailed off with another uncertain laugh, shrugging as he ran his hand over his stubbled jaw, his gaze downcast.
“Did you know the druggist, H.H. Holmes?” Maggie asked abruptly, and her father looked up in blank surprise.
“A druggist? Can’t say that I did.”
She nodded slowly, unsurprised. So Holmes had lied about his association with her father, just as she’d suspected, a small treachery on top of far greater and more terrible ones, to worm his way into her and Brendan’s lives.
As for what had taken her father from Chicago to San Francisco… did it even matter now? It would have been gambling or cards or petty crime, maybe a woman. Something nefarious and of ill repute, undoubtedly, that had him moving on yet again.
A sigh escaped her as she lowered herself onto a sofa across from where her father sat sprawled, Danny perched next to him.
“And here?” she asked. “How did you come to be living at this… establishment?”
“Miss Jessie’s?” A grin split their father’s face. “Isn’t she a peach? A true gem. The Diamond, they call her, you know, on account of the crystal.” He nodded toward the chandelier above them.
Maggie gave a little shake of her head. She didn’t doubt Jessamine Conant’s reputation among a certain section of society, for the woman certainly seemed both gracious and beautiful, but she knew they needed to discuss a far more pressing matter.
“Are you… working here?” she asked bluntly.
Declan nodded happily. “I do odd jobs and suchlike for Miss Jessie and the girls. A handyman, I suppose. I always was a jack-of-all-trades!” He chuckled. “I get my room and board in return, up in the attic. It’s cozy up there, and out of the way. Suits me just fine.”
Maggie nodded slowly. A room in the attic of a brothel, and, it seemed, with no other pay. She’d suspected something like that, but she still felt dispirited.
“Then we can’t stay with you,” she said, pointing out the glaringly obvious.
She had enough money for a few nights in a boarding house, maybe a week, but no more.
And what then? She supposed she could try to get a job in one of the city’s department stores, the way she had back in Chicago, but she had no reference, as she’d been dismissed from her position at Marshall Field and Company.
The other kinds of jobs she could get—working in a factory or sewing piecework—seemed dismal prospects indeed and would barely make enough to keep a roof over their heads, if that.
Why, oh why, Maggie wondered, were she and Danny always on the brink of poverty and near penury?
She knew it was at least in part her own fault—her outspokenness had rarely done her any favors—and yet she still felt the deep injustice of it all.
It felt like fate, or Providence, had been capricious in its dealings with the O’Halloran family.
And what about Brendan? He had more means than she did, perhaps, but she didn’t want to cast him out, considering they’d come all this way together. Could he stay here, if they did? Would he want to? She wished she knew his mind, but he’d been near silent ever since they’d gotten on the train.
She stared blindly ahead, trying to think of a plan. They’d find somewhere to stay for the night, and look for jobs in the morning, and then…
“What do you mean, you can’t stay here?” Declan demanded. He sounded affronted, sitting up straight in his chair, his sunken chest thrust out. “I’m your father, ain’t I? Your da, and you’ve come all this way to be with me, so you have. Of course you’ll stay with me. I won’t take no for an answer!”
Danny grinned in delight while Maggie could not hide her expression of deep dismay. She already knew it would be near impossible to refuse her father… but how could she possibly stay in a brothel?