Reverend Mother tickled the boy’s chin and looked at Violet. “Now, keep doing that every three to four hours, and he’ll get some weight on him in no time.” She stood up and grabbed the washcloth to wipe his face.
“But I’m here to look after Lily,” Violet said, keeping her eyes on the boy.
“A little late for that.”
“If you’re suggesting . . .”
“I’m sure you won’t mind helping out.” The nun’s words rolled over Violet’s. “Babies get born here.” She nodded in the direction of the front entrance. “Or left in that cradle. Either way, we don’t have enough hands.” The infant started to fuss a little, and Mother Mary Joseph walked over to the cupboard on the wall opposite the sink. “People losing jobs every day. Can’t afford another mouth to feed. It would break your heart if you let it.” The earthy smell of potatoes and onions wafted up as she searched the shelves. She found a bottle of vanilla extract, tipped it onto her finger, and ran it along the baby’s gums. “We’re full up,” the nun continued, “but God as my witness, the Good Shepherd has never refused a mother or a child, and as long as I’m alive, we never will.” She turned as the doctor strolled into the kitchen.
Violet looked up. “Speak of the devil.”
“Thank you again for all your help this evening, Dr. Peters. We might have lost Judith and her newborn if you hadn’t come when you did.” The Reverend Mother cleared a spot at the end of the table. “Sit.”
“Another time. Good Shepherd babies don’t arrive during bankers’ hours,” the doctor cackled. A bit of spittle caught at the corner of his beard and hung there. He set his medical bag on the table and put on his topcoat. “And once again,” he placed his hand on Violet’s shoulder and squeezed, “I apologize for any misunderstanding. When I saw you with that,” he paused as if considering his next word, “child, I assumed . . .”
Violet bristled and opened her mouth to speak.
“No harm done.” The Reverend Mother turned to Violet. “Dr. Peters has been with us for nearly ten years. And I daresay, he loves our unfortunates as much as we do.”
“Happy to do the Lord’s work,” he said.
Just then, the infant started to cry. Violet tipped the neck of the vanilla bottle onto her finger and rubbed the liquid along the baby’s gums. Glaring at the doctor, she shrugged his hand off her shoulder without another word.
* * *
Violet tiptoed through the dormitory doorway and headed down the aisle. She stopped to tuck the blanket around Lily’s bared feet before continuing past her own bed to the window. Puffs of frigid air invaded the room where expectant mothers either slept or tried to. Violet pushed her thumb against a pane, melting tendrils of frost. She pressed again with her other thumb, and a heart appeared in the midst of the icy strands.
“Vi, is that you?” Lily squinted toward the moonlight.
“Go back to sleep,” Violet said, flattening her palm against the window, supplanting her flimsy heart with a sturdy handprint. “It’ll be morning soon enough.”
Lily mumbled something incomprehensible and closed her eyes.
Shrill winds raged outside; the frosty glass shivered against its tired frame. Stanley, Violet thought. How was it that a person could be so close, and yet so far away?
If he’d married her early on like she’d wanted, married her before going off to law school to save the world (and her reputation, or so he’d said: “Let me prove to your father that I’m worthy of your hand”), Stanley would be with her now. He’d help her make sense of a world where mothers abandoned their babies in the name of duty, or selfishness, or God. If he’d married her before going to the University of Pennsylvania, as he used to say he would, she’d be surrounded by her own children now, and not the Good Shepherd’s brood. So what if her parents spurned her? It wouldn’t be the first time. She’d spent the better part of a year as an outcast after Daisy’s death.
Daisy. Everyone had blamed Violet for the tragedy, except Stanley. Even her mother thought she threw that lit sparkler out of jealousy. Violet had been jealous of her sister, it was true. With one year between them, Daisy got the store-bought dress, since it was she who was being baptized that morning, while Violet wore one of her sister’s hand-me-downs. But they’d made up that afternoon when they’d found the fireworks their father had bought for the evening’s Fourth of July celebration. It was Daisy who told Violet to hold them while she lit the match. It was Daisy who said the first one wouldn’t light. And Daisy who told her to keep a lookout for their parents and that nosey Mrs. Evans, causing Violet to turn away when the sparkler unexpectedly caught fire. She didn’t throw that firework out of jealously. She tossed it out of instinct when the flame burned her fingers. Daisy knew that. Violet saw forgiveness in those blue eyes the moment the sparkler touched the hem of her sister’s dress. Folks around Scranton still talked about Daisy—the little Morgan girl who sang hymns for three days as she lay dying. God called home an angel, they’d concluded, as if they knew God’s ways. Yet, for months, many of those same good Christians assumed Violet had hurt Daisy on purpose. Assumed an eight-year-old girl could kill her sister. Was that God’s way?
Violet had spent the rest of that year looking in from the outside. As awful as it was, she learned early on she could endure it, endure almost anything with Stanley close by. How ironic that Stanley should be so near, as Violet stood in the mothers’ ward of an infant asylum, sworn to secrecy.
Chapter four
FEBRUARY WINDS KICKED UP A FRESH DUSTING of winter outside Stanley’s bedroom window. Triangles of snow pressed into the ledge’s corners, as if taking refuge from the punishing squall. Inside his rented room, Stanley rubbed his stinging eyes with thumb and forefinger. He’d spent his entire Saturday studying, and still felt ill-prepared for Monday’s exam. Mining law. His most difficult class, and the most important one, if he intended to make a go of it in Scranton where politics and coal were a dirty business. Scranton. The word swelled inside Stanley’s brain, squeezing out the likes of Pennsylvania Coal Company v. Mahon and The Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902.
Scranton. Home. Violet.
And there he was again, imagining her in that red dress on New Year’s Eve. The neckline dipped in the middle and curved up and around her breasts. A channel between two seas he ached to explore.
Stanley shook his head to loosen the vision. He couldn’t afford to get lost in her. Not tonight. He looked at the open textbook on his desk in front of the window. Clarence Darrow stared back at him in a photo taken at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in downtown Scranton. Someone had snapped it the day Darrow gave his closing argument to the Anthracite Commission in support of the striking miners. Stanley eyed the speech included on the page. We are working for democracy, for humanity, for the future . . .
Darrow’s words usually bolstered Stanley, especially when he flagged in his resolve to finish school before marrying. Violet would wait, he’d tell himself in the darkest part of night when longing took its shot at reason. With a law degree, he’d be able to feed his family and fight for the miners, who deserved better working conditions and higher wages. His own father had died in the mines, and though he had mostly been known for his cruel ways, Stanley
