Chapter Seven. Grace
CHAPTER SEVEN
GRACE
“Brother dear.” I bat my eyes at Cooper as we finish lunch.
He pauses mid-guzzle. “Sure.” He has a milk mustache.
“I didn’t ask for anything yet.”
He swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “You used your asking-a-favor voice.”
“You don’t want to know what it is?”
“Nope.” He gives me his gap-toothed grin. “But make it quick. I gotta get to work by one.”
Last spring, he started working a couple afternoons a week down at the feed store.
It’s hardly glamorous (mostly it’s filling sacks with grain, weighing them, hauling them out to customers’ trucks, and sweeping up).
But he’s getting out of the house. He’s earning money of his own.
Most of it goes toward gas for that old rust-bucket of his, but he’s hidden cash in the baseball glove in his closet.
(Not that I was snooping to see if he had any dirty magazines, but for the record, he does not.)
I thought maybe I could get a job, too. Work as a chambermaid when the White Heron opens. But Dad said it was out of the question. What do I need money for? Doesn’t he provide for us?
If I told him I want to save up for college, he would have a conniption. After graduation I’ll marry Stanley and raise a family. Have a passel of little blond babies. I don’t need college for that. Look at Ma, she didn’t even finish high school!
The thing is … I’m smart. People see my tiny waist and long legs and blond hair, and they assume otherwise.
But I’m top of my class in math. Numbers come easy to me.
I never thought much about it till last fall.
Stanley and I were at his dad’s drugstore, having milkshakes.
Mr. Grotowski was behind the counter, figuring the dose of a new medication, scribbling on scratch paper.
I did the calculation in my head and blurted out the answer.
When Mr. G. said I was correct, Stan looked at me like I was a two-headed calf.
Mr. G. gave me a couple more equations, and I figured them in my head, too.
Faster than he could on paper. He was impressed.
Said I was a bright girl, and I should think about college.
No one had ever told me that before.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since.
When school starts in the fall, Johnny Dixon is going off to the University of Maryland.
I’m going to ask Mr. G. if I can have his after-school job at the drugstore.
It’s the one place Dad might let me work.
Stan’s mom helps out when they’re busy. His sister, Maja, worked there part-time before she had her boys.
If Dad says it’s not appropriate, that would be an insult to my future in-laws, wouldn’t it?
I could earn money (my own money!) and get some work experience.
And then next August, after I turn eighteen …
I’m gone. I’ll rent a room in a women’s boarding house in Philadelphia or maybe Baltimore.
Somewhere far enough that a broken engagement won’t follow me.
I’ll get another drugstore job. I’ll save up for college.
Maybe I’ll become a pharmacist myself someday.
Goodbye, Greeley. Goodbye, Stanley. Goodbye, Dad.
Goodbye, unsettling thing in the mirror.
Once I get out of here, I’ll feel better. I’ll be better. I just have to make it that long without hurting anybody else.
Next August feels awfully far away, though. That’s why I want to do some sleuthing. This idea nagging at me, that Cooper and I could be adopted, probably won’t amount to a hill of beans. But maybe there’s something to it.
Maybe this Grace (angry, selfish, violent) is not who I am by nature.
Dad is in the Poconos till tomorrow. Ma is out in the garden, picking green beans. Magnolia is in the powder room. (And did she take her dishes to the sink when she left the table? No, she did not.)
“Could you give me a ride into town? Drop me at the library?” I ask.
My brother’s gaze turns suspicious. “You want to go to the library?”
I’m not a big reader, but I’m not a complete nitwit. I just prefer math to a bunch of dusty old books. “Isn’t that what I said?”
He lowers his voice. “Are you meeting Stan somewhere?”
“Stan is at work.” I tighten my ponytail and scowl. “I do have other interests!”
Do I, though? Cooper plays football, runs track, writes for the school newspaper, works down at the feed store, and maintains that old jalopy. He studies hard, and always has his nose in some detective novel or comic book. Meanwhile, I have … Stanley. And a pile of chores.
“Sure, Gracie. I’ll drop you at the library,” Cooper says.
I don’t like the way he’s studying me, worried. I stand. “Thanks. Let me go do my face.”
“Okay. I’ll clear your dishes,” he offers.
“And Magnolia’s!” I holler.
I race to my bedroom to apply mascara and some lipstick. I was a scrawny kid scared of ghosts the last time I saw Maisie Mitchell. Now—well, I’m still pretty scrawny, and I’m still scared of ghosts (is that what she is?). But I’m too big to be shooed outside, and I’m determined to get some answers.
I wait till Cooper rattles away down Main Street before I head across the street to Greeley’s only inn. It’s not as nice as the White Heron will be, but tourists who come to town for duck hunting or sailing seem to like it well enough.
!
I stop at the desk beneath the stairs. A woman Ma’s age is reading today’s Easton Star-Democrat. Blessedly, I do not know her from church or school, and hopefully she doesn’t know me. “Hello, I’m looking for Maisie Mitchell.”
“She’s not in any trouble, is she?”
“No, ma’am.”
She points to the ceiling. “She’s turning over the Sassafras Room.”
I stroll down the upstairs hallway with its plush rose-colored carpet and pink floral wallpaper, trying to seem like I belong. Praying I won’t run into anybody who knows Dad and might mention seeing me.
I spot the maid’s cart at the end of the hall, piled high with linens. The door to the Sassafras Room is wide open, so I peek inside. “Maisie?”
A skinny woman with brown skin and Marcel-waved hair is stripping the four-poster bed. She turns when I call her name. Squints at me for a second, then grins. “Gracie Harrow! My stars. I haven’t seen you since you were just a little thing.” She raises her plucked, arched brows. “You staying here?”
“I was hoping to speak with you, actually. If you have a minute.” I run my palms over my green skirt, nervous.
“Sure.” She gestures to the cart. “You remember how to make a bed?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I used to help her make the beds at the Harrow Home when I was a kid.
Thought I was helping, anyhow. Probably got in her way.
I recall jumping off the bed with a sheet flying out behind me, pretending it was a parachute and I was a bomber pilot from the Great War.
To her credit, she never told me that girls couldn’t be bomber pilots.
“Hand me a sheet, then.”
I grab one from the pile on the chair, hand her a corner, and move around the bed to do my part.
“Now, what’s on your mind?” Maisie asks.
I tuck the bottom sheet in tight. “When did you start working at the Harrow Home?”
She pauses to think. “1930. September of 1930.” Damn. I try not to let my disappointment show. Cooper and I were born in August of 1930. “I worked there almost five years. Till I got married in June of ’35. Why? You want to give me a job at that fancy new hotel?”
I raise my eyebrows. “You want to work for my father again?”
Maisie cackles. “Can’t say as I would.” She tosses me a pillowcase.
“That’s what I thought.” I pull it over a thick feather pillow. “So you weren’t working at the Home when Cooper and I were born?”
Her hands still for a moment. “No. You were newborns. Your poor ma … Two babies at once. It was you doing most of the squalling, as I recall.”
I roll my eyes. Of course Cooper was mild-mannered and perfect, even as an infant.
“Your dad hired me as a housemaid, not a nursemaid, but I helped out some till your ma got her feet under her. Lord knows I had experience. I’m oldest of eight.”
I nod, plumping the pillow and grabbing another pillowcase. “Who else worked at the Home back then?”
“Let’s see … There was a schoolteacher came out two nights a week for the girls that were school-age.
Miss Payne. And there was Florence. She helped me with the cleaning and laundry.
Miss Sylvie took over the cooking from your ma.
She made the best biscuits I ever had. Her husband was the gardener.
It was a good group of folks. Your dad hired us all that September. ”
“I remember Sylvie and Ralph.” I frown. “Wait. You all started in September?”
“Yes, ma’am. I remember because it was my momma’s birthday. September the ninth, right after Labor Day.” Maisie nods at the heavy quilt, and together we pull it up over the sheets.
My pulse starts to race. “That’s peculiar, isn’t it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know.” Maisie smooths the quilt.
Why would he need a whole new staff? Unless he let the old staff go all at once?
Unless something happened that summer that he didn’t want anybody around to see.
Or the lack of something. Like Ma carrying twins.
“When you got there, Dad had a house full of girls, didn’t he?
” I press. When I was little, the Harrow Home had sixteen rooms in each wing—eight up and eight down—and a waiting list once those thirty-two spots were filled.
Girls arrived in their fifth month, or as soon as their bellies started showing, and stayed on for a month or two after giving birth.
“Who took care of them if there was no staff?”
Maisie shrugs and empties the wastebasket under the desk. “Your ma. And Mr. Harrow’s sister, before she passed.”
I know almost nothing about Dad’s kid sister, Emmeline.
She died in a boating accident before Cooper and I were born.
We didn’t find out she existed till we were eight and drawing a family tree for school.
When I asked how come Dad never talked about Emmeline, why we didn’t have any pictures of her, Ma said he had a lot of regrets.
That’s hogwash. I don’t believe my father is capable of regret.
“And that old battle-axe of a nurse.” Maisie scowls. “She was always around.”
I laugh. “Birdie O’Neill.”
“You remember her? She used to shoo you and Cooper outside. ‘Kids need fresh air,’ she said. ‘You’ll ruin your eyes with all that reading.’ You never minded, but your brother … he loved his comic books. He was a real smart little fella. Only four when he started reading.”
“I know.” It’s a point of pride for Ma, too.
Dad was more of a mind with Mrs. O’Neill.
Thought boys should be outside. But Cooper cried over the dead fireflies in our mason jar, and he hated hunting and fishing.
Dad called him soft and worse. Till we were thirteen.
I swear Cooper grew six inches that year.
He took up running, and he was fast as a bat out of hell.
He started winning track meets and scoring touchdowns for the jayvee team, and guess who became Dad’s new target.
Lucky me.
“Coop’s a wonder. But why would Dad let his entire staff go? Especially when Ma was … indisposed?” I ask delicately.
Unless she wasn’t.
“Honey, I never could figure that man out. Why you asking all these questions?”
I shrug. “I’m writing a report. For school. On the history of the Harrow Home.”
“During the summer?” Maisie wasn’t born yesterday.
“For extra credit,” I lie.
“Uh-huh. Well, you know what they say about curiosity and the cat. You be careful, snooping around grown folks’ business.
” She smiles at me. “You always were a curious little thing. ‘How come birds can fly, but I can’t? How come there ain’t any girl generals?
Why’s that girl crying like that?’ I used to make up real outlandish answers. ”
“I remember. You scared the pants off me.” I pause, hoping she’ll take the bait.
Maisie carries a stack of thick white towels into the bathroom and hangs them on the rack. “Imogen Lee. She was your favorite. The girl who jumped from the widow’s walk. They say she got word that her lover was marrying another gal. Poor Imogen was having his baby … You still hear her howling?”
“That was the old plumbing,” I say dryly.
Maisie cackles. “Well, the rest of it’s true. If any place in town was haunted, it would be the Harrow Home, that’s for sure.”
I think of the face lurking in the mirrors.
Did Maisie see something when she worked there? Feel something?
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
She unwraps a bar of soap shaped like a seashell. “Don’t you feel it? That sense that somebody else is right there? Just around the corner, out of sight? Watching you. Waiting.”
Goose bumps prickle on my bare arms.
Maisie bursts out laughing. “Look at your face, girl! You’re too old for ghost stories! There’s no such thing.”
I scowl. “I know that!”
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Those poor girls. Hidden away up there, waiting for their babies to come. Nobody to say a kind word to them, and your dad hollering on about their sins … I’m not surprised Imogen Lee jumped. It’s a wonder more of ’em didn’t.”
“You’re right. Anyhow. I should get going. Thank you for your time.”
“Sure.” Her dark eyes search my face, and I wonder what she sees. “You take care of yourself, baby girl.”
“I will.”
I have to. Nobody else is going to do it for me.