Late October 1892 Chicago, Illinois

“It’s official,” Helen says. “We’re to wed on October the 26th.”

“I couldn’t be happier for you!” Mary Agnes embraces Helen. “I’ve been waiting ever so long for this day. Mrs. Patrick Kelleher.”

Helen stumbles over the words. “That is what I’ve come to say—I’m afraid you won’t be invited, Mary A. Mother has forbid it. Your mother and father will be there.”

“What is it you’re saying?” Mary Agnes feels a rush of anger rising from her chest. “My parents have chosen not to see me based on a lie, Helen, and you know it. A lie that Fiach spun from the beginning that has taken hold. Like a cancer.” She tries to tamp down her rising anger. “And if what I think is true, about your father . . .”

“I won’t have talk of that.”

“You’re blind, then, Helen! I’ve pieced together the puzzle. Your father came at my mother when she was just a girl, like my own brother Fiach came at me. Why else would my gram say your father owed it to my mother to take me in? Because it would be his penance.”

“Or because that’s what family does.”

“But isn’t it curious that Uncle left right away for Chicago after my mother was with child? And my grandparents sheltered my mother until she had the babe?”

“Why would your mother name her bastard child after her own brother then, if he violated her?”

“Maybe she thought it was her fault. Naming her child after her brother was like her penance. One she’d have to live with her whole life.”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong, Helen.”

“Why didn’t she side with you then, when your brother Fiach came at you?”

“Her shame. She would rather live in shame and penance. ‘Sour as they come,’ Granda always said. About his own daughter! I reminded my mam too much of herself, and that was the end of it. She sided with Fiach since the beginning and sides with him still. Let alone fraternizing with her brother. You would think she would never want to see him again. ’Tis more than troubling. ’Tis outrageous.”

Helen touches Mary Agnes’s arm. “Sorry, I am, Mary A. I hope you’ll be happy for me.”

“Of course, I am happy for you and Paddy. He’s a lucky man.”

Mary Agnes mulls all this over, what is family, what is home. She wonders what happened to that sense of calm she had in Colorado and second guesses coming back to Chicago. Maybe she will save up and go back. Get a good job. Start over. I’m almost twenty! I can do whatever I want to do now.

She is less than a block from her lodgings on payday, thinking of a present for Helen, something special for her wedding day. Somehow, she will afford it. Somehow, she will get the gift to her.

A large man—is he Greek? Italian?—bushy eyebrowed and weathered, with sagging jowls and strong forearms, pushes past Mary Agnes. He smells rank.

“Have you no manners?” she asks, throwing him an eye.

“Pardon, mavoureen, me nerves are up,” he says. “Me woman is waiting at home and I’ve nothing for her.” The man is not Italian nor Greek. It’s an Irish brogue thicker than Tom’s.

“Here,” she says. “I’d best put my manners on.” She opens her purse, peels out one of the six dollars she earned this week, and offers it to the man.

“I couldn’t take wages from a lady. I’m knackered enough.” He hangs his head.

Mary Agnes lets the bill flutter out of her hands and onto the ground. “Well, would you look there! A dollar for the taking!” She squeezes the man’s arm. “Go ahead. On the pig’s back, you are today.”

Does it feel good to help another? Yes, she thinks. Make the world a little kinder. She dallies over coffee with Mrs. Spinelli, takes her weekly bath in her landlady’s kitchen, and winds her way to her room, her hair wrapped in a towel. It’s not freezing yet, and she has extra blankets now. She circles her shoulders with one of the blankets and sits at her desk, starting, stopping, starting again. In the end, the letter is only one line long. It might never reach him, anyway.

Mr. VanRy—

Trusting that Santa Fe is everything you hoped it would be.

Mary Agnes Coyne

Mary Agnes wakes with a start, sweating, not knowing if she should mail the letter or not. She pulls the pillow over her head. But it’s dawn, no time to dwell on troubles, real or imagined. She makes her way to the stockyards, the letter in her coat pocket. Once at work, she changes into her uniform and doubles down to her tasks.

On the way home, before she changes her mind, Mary Agnes stops outside the mailroom at the stockyards. In it, the short note, and on the back of the envelope, her return address. She looks at the envelope one last time before she drops it in the slot:

Pieter VanRy

Rancho Vista

Santa Fe

New Mexico Territory

When she gets back to the boarding house, an envelope is tucked under her door with no note. The handwriting on the front of the envelope looks vaguely familiar, but she can’t place it. Not Helen. Not her aunt. Not Mrs. O’Sullivan. Could it be Mrs. Rutherford?

“Mrs. Spinelli?” she calls. But her landlady is out. She wants to ask who left the envelope for her. A messenger? A stranger? Someone she knows?

As she takes the stairs to her room, she stops. That’s it, she thinks, remembering the letter she saw on Mrs. Rutherford’s vanity when she was in service there. Mary Agnes goes back and forth as she studies the handwriting. Could it be? Maybe. Yes. Because Doria is the only one who knows where I live. Mary Agnes opens the envelope carefully, not knowing what is inside.

What is this? Bills fall out into her hands, slipping through her fingers onto the stairway, like the dollar bill she gave to the Irishman an hour ago. She gathers the bills up and rushes to her room. Sitting on the bed with bills spread around her on the blanket, she counts them, twice. One hundred dollars. She cannot believe her luck.

Mary Agnes counts the bills a third time as she puts the story together, piece by piece. She has yet to take off her coat or her hat.

Doria must have gone back home . . . and Mrs. Rutherford repaid me for my kindness to her daughter.

After everything.

Now Mary Agnes really wishes Mrs. Spinnelli was in, in case she saw the messenger. Did Mrs. Rutherford herself come by the boarding house? No, probably not. Nor Doria. But someone did. And now I have enough money to . . . do I dare?

Mary Agnes gets up, hangs her coat on the door peg, leans against the door jamb, and pulls her long hair down, finger-combing the knots. What is it that Mary Catherine told me on the ship to America? She blesses herself with the sign of the cross to honor Mary Catherine’s memory. Think, think, think, Mary A.

Take the risk, she said. Take the risk or lose the chance.