A Rip Through Time(97)

My gaze catches on a girl, no more than five, dressed in a sack of a dress, her arms piled high with clean laundry. Then on a man, half drunk in a doorway, staring listlessly, seeing nothing.

“Is it better in your world?” she says. “Please tell me it is not like this still.”

“Parts are better,” I say. “But not as much as they should be. Where I live—Vancouver—we have a lot of homelessness. People living on the streets. Even after years of patrol, I couldn’t help wanting to help. With some, I could, but it never felt like enough. Most didn’t want the name of a shelter or a clinic. Addicted to drugs and alcohol, as you say. Or suffering from mental illness. A lot of mental illness. And then, for some, it’s a choice, however hard that is to imagine. Eventually, I had to acknowledge that as much as I want to help them all, they’re people, not stray cats.”

“Not stray cats,” she repeats, and her eyes glisten. “Yes, that is exactly the lesson I have had to learn, and it is a hard one.”

She pops a mint from her tin. “Take Alice. When Hugh brought her to me, my impulse was to adopt her. Hire a child to labor in my home? Absolutely not. Hugh counseled against an adoption, and that may be the worst fight we have ever had. Duncan stayed out of it, but he asked me to employ Alice for a month before making any decisions, and I saw my mistake soon enough. To me, being a child like that, adopted into a well-to-do family, would be a dream come true. The stuff of novels. Yet Alice would have run away had I suggested it. She wants to earn her keep, and anything else smacks of charity and obligation. I am educating her, which she enjoys very much, and I have hopes of easing her into a life where her dreams rise above her station, but it is a slow process.”

“And she is not a stray cat.”

A wry smile my way. “She is not.”

We climb rickety steps to an apartment half the size of my small Vancouver condo. The apartment is home to two Irish families and their children. One of the women is cleaning as the other tends to the smallest of the children and the older ones help their fathers, doing tailoring work by the window.

The apartment is … I hesitate to use the word “squalid.” That suggests they’re living in their own filth, which they absolutely are not. They’ve made the best of what they have, but no amount of scrubbing will scour away the wood and coal soot stained into every surface, and no amount of polishing the lone window will lift the gloom.

I keep thinking of that jail cell, and how I’d spent the night in the corner, huddled in horror, waiting to escape. These people can’t escape. I’ve seen rough living in Vancouver, and I’d known that behind the tenement doors in the Old Town, I’d find conditions to make our worst look like luxury living. Yet I’m still not prepared for this, and to my shame, I can’t wait to get out onto the street again.

“I am glad they took the bread,” Isla murmurs after we leave. “I noticed one of the babies has croup.”

She continues to talk about what remedies she might send and whether they’d accept a basket of other goods as well. I’m still in too much shock to process her words. Too much shock to also process what I see next.

We’re walking down the street, and at a shout behind me, I turn. It’s just a man yelling at a kid running past, jostling a woman. But as I turn, someone steps out from a side road and then retreats fast, backpedaling. That alone wouldn’t have caught my eye. The street is congested with people scurrying about. I’m not sure why I notice this one, and that is a testament to my preoccupation, because when recognition hits, I can’t believe it took even a split second.

“Wait here,” I say to Isla as I stride back to the corner.

I peer down it, looking for a retreating figure with dark hair, of average size. While the street is busy, I should still be able to see him. But I don’t.

I stride back to Isla as she heads my way. “Did you call Simon to—?” I stop midsentence with a shake of my head. This isn’t the twenty-first century, where she can text Simon to come fetch us.

“Is there any reason Simon would be here?” I ask.

“Simon?”

“Did you ask him to pick us up in the area?” I say.

“Certainly not. If we wish a ride home, we will flag down a hansom cab. Are you saying you saw our Simon?”

We return to the intersection. There’s still no sign of him.

“Perhaps it was someone who looked like him?” she says. “He’s a well-favored young man, but not unusual in his appearance.”

“It was Simon. When he saw me looking, he retreated fast.”

Her brows furrow. “That is most odd.”

“Does he have any connection to this area? A reason he’d be here?”

“No, and there is a funeral this afternoon. He should be at the stables, polishing the carriages.”

I motion for us to walk. Isla doesn’t push me to talk, just lets me fall into thoughtful silence as she directs us back to the New Town.

Earlier, Evans’s hash pipe had caught my attention. Just last night, Simon had offered me opium. I’d made the connection, but hadn’t pursued it, no more than if I’d found they both liked to play golf. Yet a shared hobby means the possibility of intersecting lives.

Two young men, around the same age, who both use opium. Not exactly a rock-solid link. But then there’s Catriona. Whoever wrote the note in my bag knew tidbits of her past, the sort you might share with friends.