Pretend She's Here(51)

“That sounds really hard. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I look at families like yours, so tight and together, and it kind of kills me—not that I’m not happy for you.”

Like mine. “Thanks,” I said, my stomach twisting.

“Casey has it harder than I do. I thought divorce was the worst, but having your mom die—I can’t even imagine.”

“He said she died in September, a year ago,” I said.

“I know, it’s so sad. He’s missing her so badly, and just think of all the things he’ll do in life that she’ll never know about,” Carole said. Lizzie came to mind, and I felt a rush of sorrow. I wanted to ask Carole how Casey’s mother had died, but she went on. “Did he ever tell you why they moved to town?” she asked.

“He said they inherited the house.”

“Okay, you know about Sarah Royston?”

I remembered the woman from the portrait at the school. “The one the town’s named after?”

Carole nodded. “Well, she was originally from Ireland, too, and it turns out she was Mrs. Donoghue’s great-great-aunt. Sarah had one daughter, Nora, who didn’t have any children, so when Nora died—she was ninety-nine—she left this house to Casey’s mom. That’s why the Donoghues came to America.”

“But I thought Sarah Royston lived in the school building,” I said, staring at Casey’s house.

“She did until she had this conversion, later in life. She turned that big mansion into a home for wayward girls—that’s what they actually called it: the Royston Home for Wayward Girls. Girls who got pregnant, or were abused, who ran away, whose parents couldn’t afford to take care of them, who had to leave home for whatever mysterious reason—she gave them a place to live. And she built this house for herself and Nora.”

“Girls who had to leave home,” I said, the words making me feel hollow.

“That was Sarah’s story,” Carole said. “That’s why she had a soft spot for girls who couldn’t live with their families. She was forced to leave her home in Ireland.”

“Who forced her?” I asked, my skin prickling.

“You’ve asked the right person,” Carole said with a smile. “I did my term project on her last spring.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Her parents were dirt-poor, starving in the Famine, and needed money, so they sent her to America to work in the mills. They had a deal with Edward Sheffield—the mill owner—that she would work for him until she was twenty-five, and he’d send most of her wages back to her family in Ireland. Supposedly for her future.”

“She had no choice?” I asked.

“No. And it was really hard—standing in a sawmill with gigantic logs barreling down the river, below zero temperatures, no safety standards at all. People got cut by the saws, trapped between logs, even killed.” Carole paused for breath. “He was evil—he paid the lowest wages around, and he punished the workers. He beat them, withheld their pay. But Sarah was so smart, she figured out a way to make the production line run faster. Because she was making him so much money, he moved her into the office.”

“Big of him,” I said.

“Yeah, but wait! She took care of the books, convinced the state to run train tracks all the way to the mill so they could ship lumber all over the country. But one day Eddie-boy was down by the river, overseeing a wagon filled with logs from Canada, and he just disappeared.”

“He died?”

“Everyone assumed so. He was never seen again. And since no one else knew how to run the mill, Sarah took over and wound up owning the place the year she turned twenty-five. Cosmic, right?”

“Completely. I wonder what happened to him.”

“The official word is that he slipped into the river, and the current washed him out to sea. But I’ve always thought maybe …”

“What?” I asked, my spine tingling.

“Well, that Sarah …”

“Fought back,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Do you think he attacked her or something?” I asked.

Carole was silent for a moment. “My mother says there are different ways of attacking. If you take away a person’s freedom and choices, that’s a type of violence. When that happens to you, you’re not going to stay docile forever. There’s always an uprising.”

“But Sarah was just one woman.”

“You think a woman can’t rise up?” Carole asked.

Those words, that one question, filled me with fire.

I thought of Sarah Royston—had Edward Sheffield driven her to a point where she couldn’t take it anymore? Had she waited for her chance and pushed him into the river? What would it take for a person to turn violent? I tried to imagine myself reaching that point. What would I do to protect myself, to win back my own freedom? I could never hurt someone; I was sure of it.

But there were other ways of fighting back.

As I contemplated that question, I saw Carole pack a snowball and whip it toward a row of winterberry bushes. A second later, one came whizzing back. I craned my neck, hoping it was Casey. But Chloe’s head poked up over the hedge, pelting us as we returned fire.

“No fair, two against one!” Chloe said.