Chapter Eighty-Three
“GO,” ROSENBACH TOLD ADA. “PACK UP YOUR THINGS. I will leave it to you to inform Quaritch why I can no longer employ you.”
Ada’s face flushed, her eyes were moist. Perhaps she had this coming all along. Unmarried, pregnant, and alone. If she had confessed these things when she first came to see Rosenbach in Philadelphia, he would have thrown her out then.
A hand shielded her stomach. She could take the daggers flying from his eyes, but her thoughts now were to protect her child. She needed money. A roof overhead. She did not want to give up the one thing she loved most in the world now.
“Please,” she implored. “It was a mistake to write to her. But I had my reasons.”
“Reasons? What reasons were those?”
“I… wanted… to…” The words choked in her throat.
“You wanted to do what?” She could see he was envisioning all the future books he presumed she wanted to sell directly to Mrs. Widener, eliminating him as the middleman.
His relationship with Eleanor Widener was potentially damaged.
He could not see the truth—how obvious it seemed to her as she stood in front of him—that she was frightened and was with child.
“It isn’t what you think,” she finally said, her voice cracked like glass.
He took a deep breath and looked down at his desk. “I’ll pay you through this week because I’m a gentleman,” he said. He lifted his hand, signaling her to leave.
Ada walked out. Gentleman, she thought to herself. There was nothing gentle about any of this. He had cast her out into the storm.
Love. It grew like a vine with a thousand different tendrils.
Before Harry, Ada had only loved books. She found a sanctuary in them, earned a living from them.
It had forged a bridge between her and those beyond her modest background.
Would Harry have ever fallen in love with her, had she not loved paper and ink as much as he?
She knew the answer would have been no. Books had been her world up until now.
She had read all types with all kinds of endings.
The happy ones. The sad ones. But few authors had ever thought to depict the most difficult endings to bear.
The ones that happened every day in the real world without anyone taking note.
The quiet ending. Based on what every artist, poet, and romantic knows to be the death knell of art. Pragmatism.
Ada’s wrapper was damp from perspiration by the time she finally reached the boarding house. The fasteners were so tight they cut into her skin.
She knocked on Fanny’s door.
The woman opened it and already knew what Ada was going to say.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” Fanny said softly.
Ada nodded. “I need to go where you went. I don’t remember the name.”
“St. Anne’s Home for Unwed Mothers,” she said after she led Ada inside her room and closed the door.
“I don’t want to do this, Fanny.” Beads of tears rolled down her cheek. “But I have no other choice. I lost my job today.”
Fanny was quiet. “Even if you were able to work another month… or even two, you would have a lot of other challenges sooner or later. The baby won’t stop growing.”
She gripped her hand tightly around Ada’s. “And that’s actually a beautiful thing.”
“I wanted to write a different ending to my story,” Ada said through her tears. “I wanted his mother to read my letter. I wanted her to have mercy on me. I wanted the two of us to find a way to raise this child together so it could be loved.”
“I know…” Fanny put an arm around her. “I know.”
“But now what choice do I have?”
“They are kind there. They even gave me a lock of her hair when she was born.”
Fanny tapped a small locket around her neck. “I never take it off, so she’s always with me.”
“We can go tomorrow after I’m done at the factory. I’ll bring you there myself.” Her voice softened. “I don’t want you to have to do this like I did. It’s not right to have to go through it alone.”
The next day Ada gave her notice to the landlady, making an excuse that she had to return to London sooner than she’d expected. Part of her was relieved that Mrs. McFay was more concerned with losing a tenant and the income it brought in than remarking on her thicker middle.
She packed her suitcase. It was light. She had arrived in New York with nothing but the clothes given to her on that terrible night after she’d been rescued and, of course, the garment she cherished most, Harry’s dinner jacket.
The few new items she’d added over the past few months now fit easily into the leather valise.
It was easier not to ask Fanny too many questions. It was more tolerable to live through it one movement at a time. So after Fanny returned from work, they boarded a trolley car and walked a few blocks in an area that was unfamiliar to Ada.
The office inside St. Anne’s Home for Unwed Mothers was steps away from its orphanage. A small brick building with a white statue of the Madonna holding an infant Jesus outside its door.
“It’s this way.” Fanny gestured her toward a side entrance that was shaded by trees.
Bare walls. Brown furniture. The dark crucifix behind Sister Alice Rose’s desk was a not-so-subtle reminder to anyone who sat down that life and sacrifice were always entwined.
“Your name please,” Sister Alice Rose asked.
“Ada Lippoldt,” she said.
“Father’s name.”
Ada remained silent.
“You wish for him to remain unnamed?”
“Yes. He has passed. So there is no need.”
Sister Alice Rose looked up. “Are you certain?” she asked. “It will remain sealed in our files, never to be shared.”
“I need to think about it,” Ada said.
“Very well,” Sister Alice Rose said. “Then we only need the last bit of information.” She looked down at her notes.
“Date of conception?”
“April 14th,” she said.
“The day before the Titanic sank,” Sister Alice Rose said. “I only know that because we received two orphans from the ship.”
Ada held her tongue. The child’s conception had probably happened minutes before the boat had struck the iceberg.
But those were the details of her story she had no intention of sharing.