Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
A DDY HEARD H OWARD give a cry of joy. “You must be Mr. Thomas!”
“Are my children here?”
“Yes! Yes, they are!”
Addy sprang to her feet, her heart wild with excitement. Mr. Thomas was a stocky man in his early thirties with broad shoulders and a burly chest that threatened to pop the buttons off his woolen sea coat. His brown hair and beard were the same color as Jack’s. He dropped his seabags inside the door and pushed past Howard, running toward Jack, who had awakened.
“Papa? Papa!”
Mr. Thomas lifted Jack from the chair, clutching him to his chest, whirling him around. The boy’s laughter filled the room. “I knew you’d come, Papa! I just knew it!”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away, son. I’m here, now. I’m here.”
Tears blurred Addy’s vision as she watched the joyful reunion. Howard closed the door and came to stand alongside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Can you believe this?” he asked. His voice sounded choked.
“No. It seems like a miracle!”
Jack’s father set him down, then dropped to his knees in front of the chair. Tears coursed down his face and sparkled in his bushy beard as he pulled Polly into his arms. He tenderly held Polly’s head against his chest and hummed a tune in his deep voice. Polly gave the widest smile Addy had ever seen as she clung to her papa.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Thomas,” Howard said. “Welcome home.”
“Thank you. God bless you!” He rose and sank down in the chair as if too overcome to stand. The children scrambled onto his lap and he encircled them with his arms, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as if offering a silent prayer of thanks. Then he looked up at Howard and Addy. “God bless you for watching over my children. God bless you both.”
“We’re glad we could help,” Addy said.
“Did you go to our house, Papa?” Jack asked. “Some lady is living in our house!”
“I know, son. And it’s a very sad thing indeed.” He gazed tenderly at his children as he spoke, touching their hair, their faces. “I went there first thing after my ship docked, and the new Russian family gave me this address. Then the family across the hall came to the door and told me you and Polly were just there earlier today with your friends.”
“We had a big Christmas dinner while we were waiting for you, Papa.”
“So I heard. Your friends are very generous people.” He looked at Addy and Howard again and smiled.
“I’m so glad you found us,” Addy said.
“It took some doing to get here—I walked part of the way and ran for a good bit until I finally found a fella with a carriage who was willing to help me out.”
“I knew you would come home, Papa. I told everybody that you would, but no one believed me. They thought I was an orphan!”
“Jack never stopped believing and praying for your safe return,” Addy said.
“And I lit a hundred Christmas candles.”
Mr. Thomas ruffled Jack’s hair, then kissed the top of his head. He sighed as if carrying a terrible weight on his shoulders. “The neighbor told me about your mother.” He pulled the children closer, rocking them, as if afraid he might lose them, too. A sob came from deep inside his chest. The room fell quiet for a moment.
“We’ve lost your mother, Jack, my boy. Our sweet, sweet Krystyna. I should have been there. I wish I had been. Now we’ve lost her.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Thomas,” Addy said.
He looked up at her and nodded, then turned back to the children. “But I promise I’ll never go away again. Ever. I’ll find a job here in the city and take care of you myself, from now on.”
“I’ll be happy to help you in any way that I can,” Howard said.
“Me, too.” Addy’s mind was already racing with thoughts of how she could help the family get back on their feet. Howard could try to help Mr. Thomas find a job, and maybe she and Mrs. Gleason could watch little Polly while he was at work and Jack was at school.
“Hey, you gotta open your Christmas presents, Papa!” Jack said suddenly. He slid off his father’s lap and retrieved the presents from beneath the tree. Addy watched as he opened them. The leather gloves—Howard’s gloves—fit him perfectly. So did the hat Mrs. Gleason had knit. The children had made him a little tray like Howard’s but with their handprints on it.
“Ah, this is wonderful, Jack. Thank you.” He planted a kiss on each of the children’s cheeks. “Now, I have a little something for you, too. Fetch my bag for me, son. The smaller one.” Jack hurried to the front doorway where his papa had dropped his seabags. He strained as he lugged it into the parlor. “Aye, that’s it.” Mr. Thomas unbuckled the straps and pulled out a little stuffed bear with shiny button eyes for Polly. She smiled with delight and rubbed the soft fur against her cheek. Jack’s eyes went wide when he saw the folding pocketknife his papa had brought him.
“This is mine?”
“Yep. I’ll show you how to use it, son. But be careful, it’s sharp.” Next, he pulled out a cigar box filled with more than a dozen finely-carved wooden animals.
“Wow! You made these, Papa?” Jack fingered a plump bear while Polly reached for a little cat.
“Aye, just for you and Polly. I’ll teach you how to whittle and you can make them, too.” He watched his children examine their gifts, and it seemed as though he never wanted to stop gazing at them. Then he looked up at Addy and Howard and said, “How can I ever thank you for taking such good care of them for me?”
“There’s no need, Mr. Thomas. We enjoyed having them.”
“Please, call me Rob.”
Addy watched them for another moment before asking, “Are you hungry, Rob? Can I fix you something to eat?” Then she suddenly remembered the mounds of food at the tenement and gasped. “Oh no! Is there anything left in our pantry, Howard?”
“I’m sure we can find something,” he said, laughing.
They moved downstairs to the kitchen. Howard made coffee and fried some bacon while Addy scrambled eggs. Rob sat at the kitchen table to eat with a child on each knee. Jack had his arm around his papa’s burly shoulder while Polly stroked his soft beard. All three of them seemed reluctant to let the others out of their sight.
“You were gone a long time, Papa,” Jack said. “Where did you go?”
“Well, we picked up cargo in the Caribbean, first,” he said, talking between bites, “then crossed the sea to Liverpool. We hopped between quite a few ports over there, places like Rotterdam and Hamburg, then finally returned to New York. I never should have gone away at all,” he said, shaking his head. “But your mama and I decided that I could make more money working on a ship, and then we could afford a doctor.” He looked up at Addy and Howard, who were seated across the table. “Krystyna had rheumatic fever as a girl and it weakened her heart. That’s probably why the dysentery killed her.”
“We’re so sorry, Rob. Your neighbors at the tenement spoke very highly of her.”
“She was a good woman, and a wonderful mother. She didn’t care about hiring a doctor for herself, but she’d hoped that we could find one who could help Polly. She had a very high fever when she was a year old, and after that we noticed that she couldn’t hear anymore.”
“I know a doctor we can ask to examine her,” Addy said. “Dr. Matthew Murphy was a friend of my grandmother.”
“I would be very grateful. Krystyna and I talked it over,” Rob said as he continued to eat. “And we decided that I would go to sea one last time. But it meant I would be away for months. I never would have gone if I’d known that I’d never see her again.” His voice choked to a whisper.
“She’s in heaven with Jesus and the angels, right?” Jack asked.
Rob cleared his throat. “Aye, she most certainly is. We’ll see her again, someday. But, oh, how we will miss her until then.” He hugged his children again. “I thank God that I didn’t lose Jack and Polly, too. Pawloski told me that I would have lost them forever, if it hadn’t been for the two of you. I owe you a lot. I’ll never be able to repay you.”
“It’s mostly thanks to Jack,” Howard said. “He came to us for help and wouldn’t give up until we found Polly and you. He’s a remarkable boy.”
“We tried to find other family members,” Addy said, “but had no luck.”
“No, my wife immigrated here with her parents, who have both died. All her other relatives are back in Poland. I’m originally from Baltimore, but I left a bad homelife when I was thirteen. I worked on ships, traveling the seas, until I met Krystyna. She and her parents were steerage passengers.”
He had finished his meal, and he thanked them again for the food. “Do you want a cookie, Papa?” Jack asked. “Polly and I helped bake them.”
“Um, I think they’re all gone, Jack,” Addy said. “We shared them at the tenement house, remember?”
“There’s still some on the Christmas tree,” he said. “I’ll go get them.” He sprinted up the stairs to the parlor and returned with three gingerbread men. Addy thought they might be a little stale by now, but she hid a smile as Rob, Jack, and Polly crunched into them.
The children were yawning again by the time the cookies were gone. Addy convinced the family to sleep in the upstairs bedroom, and hurried to get the room ready for them, carrying blankets and pillows from the tiny servants’ room. She and Howard said goodnight and went back down to the parlor, leaving the little family to themselves. Addy gazed at the lopsided tree and the scattered wrappings and presents while Howard tended the stoves for the night. She felt dazed by everything that had happened tonight, yet filled with joy.
“I think we just witnessed a miracle,” she murmured.
“I agree. This would have ended in disaster if Jack hadn’t had the courage to stow away in your mother’s carriage.”
“I shudder when I think of Jack living in the orphanage and Polly in that horrible asylum. And their papa never knowing what happened to them. Thank you for helping me search for them, Howard. You’re my hero.” She brushed a streak of soot from his cheek before going into his arms.
“You worked just as hard as I did, darling.”
“You know, when I saw Rob being reunited with his children tonight it helped me understand Christmas in a new way.”
“How’s that?”
“What our heavenly Father wants more than anything else is to be reunited with His lost children. That’s why He sent Jesus.”