The Address(102)

“Where is your family now?”

The girl lowered her chin to hide it from wobbling. “Don’t know. Scattered. Lost.”

“Daisy, you’ve done terrible things. But I am sorry that you ended up here. On this island. It’s an awful place. I’m sorry you lost your family.”

The girl recovered fast, blasting Sara with a garish smile, the gap in her teeth black between cracked, dry lips. “I hear the asylum is a fancy hotel compared to what we criminals put up with. You don’t know anything. Never did. Don’t you pity me. I can take care of myself.”

The guard came in. “Time’s up.”

She grabbed Daisy by the back of the neck and shoved her out of the room in front of her. Daisy’s cackling reverberated down the hallway after her.

Sara tore back to the ferry pier, breathing hard. Daisy. Theo. She was never to trust a soul again. Anyone might turn on you, at any time. She might as well check back into the asylum for all life offered her. Let the nurses tell her when to eat, when to sleep. She didn’t want to have to face each day. The loss of everything she’d held dear.

Her mother’s suffering should have been warning enough, but Sara had convinced herself that her own story would have a different ending.

No such luck. Men betrayed, women endured.

She had forty minutes before the ferry departed. Lifting her skirts, she moved at a fast clip to the building where she and Natalia had peered in the window. She showed them Nellie’s golden pass and a nurse took down the relevant information.

“But he was born in the asylum, does that make a difference?” she asked.

“No. We have all records of every bairn here. Dead or alive.” The woman’s Scottish brogue spoke the awful words with a melodic spin.

Sara waited, checking her timepiece, for twenty minutes. She couldn’t leave without visiting the grave of her child. Of saying a prayer over the mound of dirt that pressed upon his tiny bones.

Finally, the nurse reappeared, holding a clipboard. “A stillborn, you say?”

“Yes. Born in July of this year. To Sara Smythe.”

“No stillborn. The boy was alive.”

“Well then, he was alive but then he died.” Arguing over the semantics cut her to the core.

“No. He was taken away. To the Foundling Asylum on Lexington and Sixty-Eighth.”

The room spun and Sara held hard to the wooden countertop to keep herself upright. “He was alive? Why was I not told the truth?”

“They never do, as a rule. No point in driving the nutters madder than they already are. Easier this way, I guess.”

During the ride across the river, Sara keened on the hard bench, wishing the ferry would speed faster. So much time had already passed. Would he still be there? Was he still alive? She didn’t know what she’d do once she found him, how to prove that the child was hers. Would they just give him to her, hand him over? She moaned and the other passengers stared. The boy must have suffered so, without his mother. Her baby was alive. Her thoughts wound around each other like a dust storm.

More waiting, more sitting. The nurse in the Foundling Asylum was no kinder than the one on Blackwell’s Island. They must turn brittle fast, in order to stay inured to the cries of the babies and children that echoed down the stairwell.

A form was thrust at her on a clipboard. The words swum for a moment before she focused, reading them softly out loud. The boy had been taken in by a family, just as Sara was released from Blackwell’s.

She recognized the signature on the document. The same that she’d seen scrawled on countless letters and contracts.

Theo had known all along.

Christopher was her son.



“Where is he?”

Sara tore down the long gallery of Theo’s apartment. Her first priority was Christopher, getting him out of Theo’s hands, taking him somewhere safe. She’d had plenty of time to figure out a plan on the ferry and cab ride back to the Dakota. First off, she’d head with Christopher to the offices of the New York World and tell Nellie everything. Nellie would protect them and provide them with safe shelter until Sara could arrange to sail back to England. Only an ocean between herself and Theo would do to put her mind at ease.

She’d planned on appearing calm, offering to take Christopher for a walk in the park, then absconding with him, but as she grew closer to the Dakota, panic gripped her. Once inside the apartment, the memories of everything Theo had said and done to her flooded back. The evening after the ball, the picnic. The betrayal.

Mrs. Camden stepped out of the children’s room, the three children scampering behind her. She saw the look on Sara’s face and turned around. “Off you go, children. Play in the parlor, please.”

The children trotted away quietly, no doubt tuned into the strange vibrations that Sara was giving off.

Sara barged into the nursery, Mrs. Camden close behind. Christopher was in his crib, asleep.

“Where is Theo?” Sara said.

“He’s due back any minute. You seem upset. Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea.”

Sara wanted to throttle her. “You knew. You were raising my son and you knew it, didn’t you? How did he get you to agree?”

Mrs. Camden didn’t answer, but a tremble went through her body.

“Why would you do such a thing? Don’t you have any shame?”