Chapter 35
Golden leaves fell around my boots as I strolled down First Avenue.
People were out and about, enjoying a sunny but crisp day.
Everywhere I looked, life was happening: A man sold red apples from a wooden cart.
Children played ball on the sidewalk. In a nearby alley, a housewife scrubbed her family’s clothes inside a tub of soapy water.
And I was returning to Bellevue Hospital.
When Nin left last year, I barely made it back to the city in one piece. The first place I went was Bellevue. Sister Helen took me in like a concerned grandmother, lamenting my tale of woe that I’d brought back from Riverbend.
I didn’t tell her half of what I’d experienced. I didn’t even mention Nin. But I told her enough, and she believed me enough to send two hired Pinkerton detectives to Tarrytown to suss out what had happened.
They confirmed that Riverbend Manor was empty, having to rally Tarrytown’s mayor and a police force to get inside the mansion.
They found Mrs. Culpepper’s corpse and brought back stories of the occult memorabilia housed in Voss’s rooms. It was enough to convince Sister Helen, so when the detectives also brought word of the body of Charles Voss found miles away at the Jansen estate, it was merely icing atop my already gruesome tale.
Sister Helen accepted me back with open arms, and she accepted responsibility for sending me upstate in the first place. And before I knew it, I was back into the routine at the hospital, and grateful for it.
The work distracted me from my heartache.
Mostly.
All the lessons with Sister Helen and the doctors, all the graveyard shifts, working until my feet were covered in bruises and blisters… they kept my head emptied of everything but my lessons and my patients.
But deep into the evenings, when I walked the wards alone with nothing but my chatelaine and a new lantern that the hospital had given me, I thought about that final night at the manor. All the horrors of it.
And all the beauty in the moments with Nin.
And I couldn’t help but talk to him inside my head, like I talked to my mother.
So I prayed to him. Often. It was only a one-way conversation, just as Nin had warned. But it gave me a strange kind of comfort to tell him what I’d been doing.
To assure him that I wasn’t giving up hope.
Even on the nights when I didn’t know if that was completely true…
Now, as I continued to stroll along First Avenue, the sight of an elderly nun drew my eyes to the big, black gates in front of Bellevue Hospital. I picked up the pace and gave her a little wave as I approached.
“Nurse Molly, right on time, as usual,” Sister Helen chimed cheerily as I caught up with her. She gestured toward me. “Look at you, my dear. You already look as confident as any of the nurses I met in Europe when I traveled with Florence Nightingale.”
“Do I?” I said, a little breathless from my walk. “Perhaps that’s because I cannot wait to hold my nursing diploma.”
Graduation was next week, but Sister Helen was allowing me to pick up my diploma early, as I wouldn’t be in New York City for the ceremony. In fact, I was catching a train after my meeting with the good sister.
“As eager as ever.” The nun beamed, guiding me outside the hospital gate. “Come, child. I was just heading back to my quarters. Walk with me and tell me how it goes with your career plans. Did you take any of my advice?”
I nodded and fell into step beside Sister Helen, matching my stride to hers as we walked a familiar path—back to the stables that held my former quarters. “Yesterday I went to the Women’s Medical College inside the New York Infirmary, as you suggested.”
“Did you, now? I’m so pleased, Molly. Was Dr. Lozier there?”
I nodded. “She was glad to receive me, and she spoke very highly of you.”
“She’s a wonderful woman, so bright and dedicated.
Perhaps there aren’t many of us who want to be doctors now, but I think, with programs like hers—and like ours—we will see more of us in these positions.
Will you be one of them? What did you think about it?
Being a physician instead of a nurse will take a whole new set of skills, but if anyone can do it, it’s you. ”
It was nice to hear the praise from her. I felt my cheeks warming and admitted, “It’s certainly an exciting thing to consider.”
The female doctor I’d met with the day before was the first I’d ever known, though she’d said that there were more like her in Canada and overseas. If I took her up on her offer and registered for classes under a special sponsorship that would pay my fees, I could be a physician too in a few years.
And it truly was a marvelous thing to think about. I would finally be able to learn about all the drugs I’d been administering.
However, I was told that the sponsorship came from one of the wealthiest people in the state, a Dutch railroad tycoon named Vanderbilt, who was rumored to have consulted spirit mediums after his wife died and had become obsessed with arcane matters.
One of the spirit mediums told him to sponsor a new female doctor, apparently.
And sure, maybe this was just “an amusing story,” as Dr. Lozier had said.
But I wasn’t taking a chance that another Lavina might cage me.
Besides all that, there were a few niggling details that bothered me about the medical school, such as that the entire teaching staff there was male.
Dr. Lozier herself didn’t teach. She only ran the program, and part of me worried that it would be Bellevue all over again: an invaluable experience but in the end, somehow, not completely satisfying.
Nothing had been—satisfying. Not since Nin had left.
As Sister Helen and I walked, I shared a little of what I thought about the Women’s Medical College with Sister Helen, sparing her my most cynical thoughts, and she gave me her opinions about it and information about another women’s medical college in a nearby state, which I was grateful to receive.
But by the time we’d made it to the corner where we turned to reach the stables, I found myself making an internal decision to put the medical degree on hold. Just for now.
To Sister Helen, I merely said, “I will consider it all, and I will absolutely let you know where I end up.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and touched my shoulder. “If you ever want a full-time nursing job at Bellevue, all you have to do is come to me. We’re set to open the new children’s wing next year. You would be wonderful with children.”
I wasn’t sure about that.
“Thank you,” I told her. “Truly, Sister Helen, thank you for everything.”
The nun patted my arm and smiled. “That you can find it in your heart to forgive me for sending you upstate to that ghastly business…? Oh, Molly. I always knew you were special. It’s been a pleasure to teach you, my child.”
We embraced briefly, and she pulled out a simple leather portfolio, opening it to show me its contents. Sitting there was a thick piece of parchment filled with elegant, scrolling words that read:
Bellevue Hospital
Manhattan, New York
This is to certify that
Molly O’Rinn
has completed the required
one-year program of courses,
instructions, and practices in the
Bellevue Training School for Nurses.
The rest of the words blurred when my eyes brimmed with unshed tears. I looked up at Sister Helen, and her own eyes were watery with emotion.
“Keep in touch regularly,” she finally said, squeezing my shoulders. “And I mean that. I know where you’re taking that train to, and it still worries me.”
“And I’m so grateful to have someone fussing over me. This won’t be like the last time. I told you, I have people there who will be looking out for me. And I can leave whenever I’d like.”
I smiled at her, and after a storm cloud seemed to pass over her eyes, she finally nodded and released me.
And after I’d slipped my new diploma into my luggage bag, I hailed a hansom cab that took me to Grand Central Depot, which funnily enough had been built recently by none other than the man who was paying for that medical college sponsorship.
The fates love to weave us in circles, Mammy always said.
That afternoon, I gently stroked her gold claddagh ring while the train I took out of the city raced past rolling hills of gold and bronze, heading upstate along the Hudson. Back to where it had all started, to Tarrytown.
This time, when I stepped off the train at Tarrytown’s railway depot, someone was there to meet me: an attorney. He’d contacted me a couple months after Voss had died to inform me that I had inherited Riverbend Manor.
It was an absolute shock.
Lavina had changed Charles Voss’s will that day. He’d left everything to me—the house, the property, and what little funds he’d had to sustain it all.
I couldn’t make sense of why, not at first. But it didn’t take me long to realize that Lavina had merely been planning for the day when she’d take possession of my body and use it as a vessel for her soul.
I suppose she expected to be walking around in my skin, so stealing the Voss fortune and transferring it to me was really just her leaving it for herself.
But as I shook the attorney’s hand on the train platform in Tarrytown, I didn’t care about any of that. All I wanted was to hold the deed in my hand as I took a covered phaeton carriage to Riverbend—at a much more civilized pace than my first ride out there.
Trees were casting long shadows by the time the manor appeared on the cliffs over the Hudson. The sight of it stabbed at my heart and filled me with roiling emotions that had no direction. At least until we pulled up to the gates, and I spotted the front door opening. Then my heart warmed.
“Schwester Molly.” Mr. Hoffmann cheerfully greeted me when I stepped out of the phaeton. “It is truly wonderful to see you.”
“You too. So glad you tracked me down at the hospital. I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Molly!” Filomena raced from the house and threw her arms around me. “It’s been so long. You look older! You finally graduated!”
Filomena and I had been corresponding through letters.
Mr. Hoffmann had given me her family’s address in Albany, where she’d gone after leaving here that awful night.
When the lawyer had contacted me about the inheritance, Mr. Hoffmann and Filomena were the first people I told.
They’d moved back a week ago, while I was finishing my coursework at the hospital.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked both the servants. “It’s difficult to return to the place where you were held prisoner.”
Mr. Hoffmann patted my shoulder. “Things will be different now. Now you will be the master, and things will be better.”
I certainly hoped that was true.
As we made our way inside, I took several steadying breaths and cast my gaze around the foyer. The guardian statues of Apollo and Artemis stood tall. And Agnes Voss smiled from her oil painting beneath the sweeping grand staircase.
“How does it look?” Filomena said. “Like you remembered? Should we tour the halls together and start making a list of everything you’d like to change? Repairs that need to be done, all that? More staff to hire…?”
“Oh, come now, Filomena,” Mr. Hoffmann said good-naturedly. “Let the girl get settled first. Where will you sleep, Schwester Molly? Will you be taking the master’s old quarters?”
I hadn’t truly thought about it.
But as we walked through the home, my spirits lifted, seeing all the things that I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about too much in the city.
The beautiful view of the Hudson, the cozy comfort of the servants’ dining room, and even the menagerie when we climbed the curving staircase to the second floor.
When we entered the master’s quarters, however, I was cautious and guarded. Voss’s big bed was still here, all the tasseled pillows and rugs. All the occult books.
Mine, I thought. You didn’t win, you wicked witch. It’s all mine now.
“Should we remove all of these?” Mr. Hoffmann said as I casually thumbed through the pages of a tome filled with spells that claimed to summon beings from other realms. Demons and angels, gods and monsters.
“Not yet,” I told the butler.
I knew in my heart that I would be a different caretaker than Lavina ever was. No aegis border to keep us all here, no slithering traps in the crypt. No body swapping.
But Lavina had unintentionally bequeathed the entire occult library to me. Inside it, there might be more information about the Nightlands. About Nin’s family. Who knows, maybe I’d even find the exact grimoire she’d used to summon Nin.
As I walked around the desk, I could feel the ghost of his presence. If I closed my eyes, I could almost hear his voice inside my head. The thrill of his breath on my neck…
I still believe in us, I told him inside my head. Show me what I need to do to bring us back together. Please, Nin.
A flash of red fluttered outside the balcony doors. When I peered through them, I was pleased to see that the goat pasture was empty. A single figure strolled down the path that led around the house, and when she looked up, my heart lifted to see Bethany waving back at me.
Bethany Cross, I thought as she raced around the manor to come inside. You are a sight for sore eyes. Then I noticed a cardinal perched on the balcony’s railing.
“There’s that bird again,” Mr. Hoffman exclaimed as I headed to the French doors and opened them. “Oh, how it pestered the master.”
I recalled the cardinal that had made all the fuss when I’d first tried to get into the outhouse stairs in the garden out back.
Surely this wasn’t the same bird; however, it didn’t move when I approached it.
It merely hopped along the railing, looking at me.
When I reached for him, the cardinal flew into the air, dropping a single red feather that floated down into my palm.
Nin’s last words echoed in my head.
Look for us in the night sky. Our story is unfinished. I will find you again, Molly O’Rinn.
I would wait for that day.
And I’d pray.
And hope.
But if he couldn’t find me? If he couldn’t get to me?
I’d just have to find him.