Chapter Twenty-Three. Rose #2
She bristles. “I don’t need your money, girlie.”
“Get something for the boys.” I press it into her hand. “We only want to hear a little more about that summer.”
“The summer Cooper and I were born,” Grace adds.
“I told you, I don’t remember your delivery. Money won’t change my mind on that,” the midwife insists.
Because Mr. Harrow already paid her off to keep quiet? I exchange a quick glance with Grace.
“Will you tell us what you do remember?” I ask. The baby catches my attention, teetering at the top of the stairs in a way that makes me nervous. I lift him down the four steps to the lawn. “There you go, darling.”
Mrs. O’Neill watches as he wobbles toward his brothers, who are taking turns on the tire swing. She settles back into her rocker and sighs.
“It’s no wonder Martha doesn’t like to talk about it,” she starts.
“Tragedy on top of tragedy, it was. Mr. Harrow—Grace’s grandpappy—passed right after Christmas.
It was a heart attack. Sudden, you know.
He was a good Christian man. When Joe took over the Home—well, there were some growing pains.
With the staff and with the girls.” I suspect that’s an understatement. “And then there was Emmeline.”
“Did you know her well?” I ask quickly, before Grace can say something ruinous.
“I delivered her, didn’t I? That girl came out squalling and never stopped.
” Curious that Mrs. O’Neill has no trouble recalling that.
“She was a late-in-life baby. Their ma died when Em was a wee girlie. Cancer. Mr. Harrow was hard on Joe, but he spoiled Em, and then he passed and … well, spare the rod and spoil the child, that was Joe’s philosophy. Those two were like oil and water.”
Grace scowls. She’s all too familiar with her father’s philosophy.
“What did they fight about?” I ask.
“What didn’t they fight about? Em wanted to see the world.
Her father had left her some money, but Joe held the purse strings, and he didn’t see the need for travel.
He already thought she acted too big for her britches.
” I glance over at Grace, who looks stricken.
I bet her father’s accused her of the very same thing.
“She needed to learn she wasn’t above an honest day’s work, he said.
He had her working as a chambermaid. But that backfired on him, didn’t it; that’s how she got to be friendly with Daisy.
Those girls were thick as thieves, and Joe couldn’t stand it. ”
“Daisy Wheeler?” Grace says. “The girl who ran away?”
“Seems like you already know the answer to that, don’t you?
” Mrs. O’Neill retorts. “Barely a week after she gave birth, too, and she didn’t have an easy time of it.
But I can’t blame her. Joe hated that girl.
Blamed her for—well, things that were never her fault.
The way he treated her…” Mrs. O’Neill doesn’t seem like one to spare the rod and spoil the child, either, but she presses her lips together in disapproval.
“Em swore up and down that Daisy wouldn’t have left her behind.
Said they had a plan to run away once Em turned eighteen. To Paris, if you can imagine that!”
She talks like Paris is impossibly far away, almost alien. I suppose to most people in Greeley, it is. Unless it’s wartime.
“Rose’s father is in Paris. On his honeymoon,” Grace says unhelpfully.
Mrs. O’Neill nods, her eyes faraway behind her glasses.
“Emmeline blamed Joe. Said he must have done something to run Daisy off. I heard them fighting and … well, both of them said the kind of things you can’t take back.
Joe kept her under lock and key after that …
Maybe three weeks later, Em snuck out in her little sailboat.
I don’t know where she thought she’d go with a hurricane blowing up the Bay. I guess the main thing was just to go.”
The midwife’s voice is sad. She was clearly fond of Emmeline.
Could Emmeline be our ghost? If she had a vicious fight with her brother, blamed him for her friend’s disappearance and the ruin of all her plans, then had weeks to stew on it, locked away in that house … could her spirit still be clinging to that desperate anger?
But then what is Birdie O’Neill hiding about the twins’ birth?
“Poor Dessa passed two weeks later. She started having fits from toxemia. Seizures, you know.” Mrs. O’Neill is brisk again.
“She was swollen up like a balloon, and I don’t mind telling you, if Joe hadn’t been grieving for his sister, I would have given him hell for not phoning me sooner.
By the time I got there, it was too late. ”
Dessa’s death was the result of Mr. Harrow’s negligence? Maybe she’s the ghost after all. Maybe she wants revenge. And D for Dessa—that fits with the ghost’s clue.
Grace rocks forward. The naked hope on her face is painful. “Did Dessa have twins?”
Birdie O’Neill purses her lips, confused, and then she laughs so hard that her auburn curls jiggle.
Grace looks like she’s been slapped. “Is that why you’re so interested in Dessa?
You’ve got some fool notion that she was your real ma?
No. That poor girl had one baby—a wee girl—that only lived two days. Lungs didn’t work. She came too early.”
Grace’s face is flushed and furious. “I don’t believe you! There’s something you aren’t telling us!”
“You ever consider it’s for your own good? I’ve half a mind to phone Joe and tell him you’re over here poking your nose into things that are none of your business.” Mrs. O’Neill stands.
She’s bluffing. I’m almost certain of it. But we can’t take that chance. I reach into my pocketbook for another bill. “For your discretion.”
Mrs. O’Neill narrows her eyes. “I told you, I don’t need your money.”