Chapter 20
Maggie’s lips parted soundlessly as she scanned his face as if looking for clues, her mind spinning in useless circles. “You?” she finally managed, moistening her lips as he continued to gaze at her steadily, the expression in his eyes sorrowful but resolute. “But… why?”
“I need a change.” He turned to stare down at his hands, his fingers laced tightly together between his knees.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to be had up north,” he continued.
“I’m not talking about panning for gold.
But… land, maybe, for anyone who wants it.
It’s all federal land now, but Alaska is so big and wild, and I’ve heard that just about anyone can go up there and have their own acres?—”
“You want to be a farmer?” Maggie asked, still incredulous. He’d never spoken of such ambitions before. “In Alaska?”
“I want to be something,” Brendan returned, heat in his voice. He looked up, his eyes flashing, before he continued in a quieter tone, “I don’t want to make a fortune, but I want to make a life. More than I had here, and more than I had in Chicago.”
The kind of life he’d had in New York, he meant, Maggie knew.
The kind of life that she’d taken from him, where he’d had his own prosperous business, a comfortable home, respect and friendship from his neighbors and customers.
Brendan had always insisted it had been his choice to leave New York behind and go with them to Chicago, but right now it didn’t feel like that.
“But what about Jessamine?” she blurted, and Brendan kept her gaze, unblinking.
“What about her?” he asked quietly.
“I thought… I thought that the two of you…” Maggie couldn’t bear to finish.
“What’s between Jessamine Conant and me isn’t worth staying for,” Brendan told her flatly. A faint blush touched his cheeks, but he didn’t look away. “Jessie and I both always knew that.”
Maggie was the one to glance away first, embarrassed as well as disappointed by his admission.
So she had been right; there had been something between Brendan and Miss Jessie.
She’d suspected for a long while, of course, but the confirmation of it still stupidly hurt, even though she knew she had no right to feel anything at all.
She’d had her own romance, doomed as it had been, with Theo Stein, and that kiss, brief as it had been with Philip.
“But Alaska,” she finally said faintly. “It’s so far away?—”
“That’s what I want,” Brendan cut across her. “I want to get away from… from all this. From everything here.”
“I thought you were happy?—”
He let out a disbelieving snort. “Happy? No.” He fell silent for a moment, his head bowed.
“Content, maybe,” he allowed. “After… after everything that happened with Holmes in Chicago… You know he’s been arrested again?
” Maggie nodded; she’d seen the article in the newspaper, and had wondered if Brendan had, too.
“They’re going to investigate his building in Chicago,” he continued.
“They’re calling it a murder castle now.
” His throat worked, and he continued in a low voice, “God only knows what they’ll find.
How many people—how many innocent young women—he killed in that hellish place, and hid away in the cellar or some cupboard or?—”
Maggie heard the bitter regret in his voice and she ached for him. “Brendan, don’t?—”
He shook his head to keep her from saying anything more, and she fell silent.
“Helping out at Jessie’s… oh, I know it wasn’t the same,” he said.
“It wasn’t remotely the same. Yet somehow, anytime I showed some chancer the door, or stood up for one of those young girls…
it felt like I was making it right, just a little, not enough, never enough, for what happened in Chicago.
But I could live with myself, at least, if only just.”
“Brendan.” Maggie laid a hand on his arm. “You mustn’t blame yourself. The man was a crazed killer?—”
“And some part of me knew it,” he cut her off once more.
“Not the whole, not even half, but… I knew something was wrong.” He drove one hand through his hair, his head bowed, his voice still full of bitterness.
“I knew it, and I stayed anyway.” He dropped his hand as he shook off her hand from his arm.
“I don’t know if I’ll find what I’m looking for in Alaska.
Maybe I’ll never find it, but… I want a fresh start.
I need one. And Jessie—she understands that.
She always knew I wasn’t going to stay a handyman in a brothel forever, God help me. ”
“But…” Tears filled Maggie’s eyes and she did her best to blink them back.
“I might never see you again.” Did anyone ever come back from Alaska?
It seemed like a vast, endless ocean of land that swallowed people whole.
“And Danny and Da,” she continued, her voice catching.
“They’re going, too? I might never see any of you ever again? ”
Brendan smiled sorrowfully as he gave a little shrug. “I don’t rightly know, Maggie. I’ve never been there before. It’s a long way, but…” He shrugged again, letting that thought trail off into silence. Into nothing, because Maggie knew he was agreeing with her.
She rose from the sofa, her fists bunched in her skirts as she crossed the room, her body trembling with emotion. “And their minds are made up?” she asked, whirling around to face him. “All of you, your minds are made up to do this thing? To go?”
Brendan nodded slowly. “I reckon so.”
She let out a broken sound, half sigh, half sob. “There’s nothing I can say that would make you reconsider?”
“Maggie…” Brendan reached one hand out toward her before letting it fall to his side. “You have your own life here. Your nursing… your friends…” He trailed off as Maggie simply stared at him.
She had her nursing, but what else? She had no real friends—Wilhemina had been her closest one, and she was moving to Monterey.
The other nurses were friendly enough, but Philip was in Berlin and Adelaide was so busy, in an entirely different world from her, with a different social circle, greater aspirations…
What did she really have here? What kind of life?
For a moment, she let herself picture what her life might look like if she was offered a position at the hospital—living in the nurses’ quarters, working ten- or twelve-hour days, only to fall wearily into the bed at the end of every single one, alone. Always alone.
“I like nursing,” she said quietly. “I like knowing I’m making a difference in the world. To help patients, to see their lives improve, is… well, it’s wonderful. But…” She found she couldn’t finish, didn’t want to tell him how lonely she’d been.
She turned to stare out the window; night had fallen, and she went to close the drapes, pulling them across with a rattle of their rings. She remained with her back to Brendan, facing the curtained window, her head slightly bowed. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
“May I see them, at least?” she finally asked. “To say goodbye?”
“It would be too dangerous, Maggie, I’m sorry. The gang is looking for them, and they’re out for blood. Danny and your da have already arranged to board City of Pueblo at dawn tomorrow.”
She turned to face him, hiding her shaking hands in her skirt and trying her hardest to keep her voice steady. “And when does it leave?” she asked. “This ship?”
“Ten o’clock or thereabouts, on the morning tide.”
And they would all be on it. Da, Danny and Brendan. Everyone she knew and loved in the whole world.
Maggie nodded slowly, knowing there was nothing she could do but accept what Brendan was telling her, this twist of fate that that capricious creature had handed to her once again.
God help her, why did it have to be so hard?
“I’m sorry,” Brendan said again, quietly. He looked as if he was going to say something else, but then he simply shook his head. “I should go,” he said instead. “There’s a lot to do to be ready for the voyage.”
Maggie nodded jerkily, unable to speak past the lump forming in her throat. Too close to tears, she didn’t dare blink.
Brendan stared at her for another long moment.
“Maggie…” he began, looking torn, and for a second Maggie thought he would embrace her.
He took a step toward her as if he would, and she tensed in expectation, but then he simply shook his head again, seeming both resigned and resolute.
“Goodbye,” he said, and he walked out of the room without hugging her or even shaking her hand. Without even looking back.
That was it, then, Maggie thought numbly. The end of everything that had ever been between them, after so many years of both friendship and disappointment, of affection and hope.
She remained in the sitting room, staring sightlessly ahead, until Wilhemina and a few of the other nurses rushed in, eager to know who the gentleman caller was and what had happened between them.
“He’s going to Alaska,” Maggie replied lifelessly. “My brother and father, too.”
“Oh, Maggie!” Wilhemina exclaimed. “All that way?” She gave her a quick hug. “But you can visit, can’t you?”
Visit Alaska? She supposed she could, and yet she had the terrible, certain fear that once her father and brother and Brendan headed into that wild and unknown territory, she would never see them again.
She’d read stories in the newspaper of Alaska, that great, empty land once known as Russian America, whose inhabitants called the rest of the country “Outside.”
She thought of how her father had disappeared from New York, and then from Chicago, and had, in his own way, been slipping away from her ever since, and Danny, too.
They were her family. Brendan was, as well, even if things between them were so lamentably strained.
Could she really let them go without even a farewell?
Did she have any choice?
“Maggie?” Wilhemina asked gently. “You can visit, you know. People take tours up to Alaska, I’ve heard.”