Chapter 31

In Which Aunt Kitty Tries to Rid Herself of Me, and I Meet the Reason Why

Help me find the wool stockings,” Aunt Kitty ordered one freezing February morning a few months later. Her voice was muffled by the fact that she was deep within the wardrobe. When she finally emerged, she was lugging a heavy woolen cloak. “Baltimore will be just as cold as Chicago, so I’ll need lots of warm things for my stay there.”

I told Aunt Kitty I’d help her pack, but I could hardly pull myself away from my newspaper. Now that “Honest Abe” Lincoln had won the presidency, the South was in a dither. Every day featured another story about South Carolina or Mississippi trying to tear apart the Union. Mr. Lincoln hadn’t even sat down in his big presidential chair, and already seven states were breaking away, forming their own confederacy.

I was about to start sharing this news with Aunt Kitty when a knock at the door interrupted me. I dashed over to see who was there, half expecting to find a sweaty Mrs. Wigginbottom propping herself up against the doorframe after her exhausting climb to our floor. Instead I found an apple-cheeked woman with the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

“I’m calling on Mrs. Warne, please,” she said softly, her manner of speech slow and deliberate.

My aunt stepped over to the door, still holding the wool cloak in her arms, and shook the woman’s black-gloved hand. “Miss Lawton, what a delight. Please come in and meet my niece.

“Nell, this is our newest detective, Miss Hattie Lawton.”

We received so few visitors to our room, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I gestured toward the rocking chair beside the fire, but then I wondered if that was too informal. So I made a dash for the straight-backed chair beside the small table, but I caught my toe on the spare logs at the fireplace and sent them tumbling. As I bent down to collect them, I bumped the sewing basket off Aunt Kitty’s chair and heard the sound of a hundred tiny straight pins ping their way across my aunt’s freshly swept floor.

“It’s a pleasure, Nell,” this Miss Lawton said, and she smiled so warmly, I stopped my fussing and shook her hand. Her pale eyes were almond-shaped and wide set beneath two slender black eyebrows. And with her smooth black hair swept over her ears, she reminded me of a graceful cat. “Mrs. Warne has told me a great deal about you.”

She has?

Now what was I supposed to think of that? I forgot all about Hattie Lawton and the straight pins for a moment and stared dumbly at my aunt, wondering what in the world she would have to say about me to a stranger.

“Your timing is perfect, Miss Lawton. I was just having Nell assist me with the packing for tomorrow. Mr. Pinkerton is not one for waiting around. Especially not on this mission.”

“What sort of escapade is it this time?” I asked, putting away the pins and hoping I’d be included. “Will there be danger? Murder? Treachery?”

“Possibly two of the three, Nell,” Aunt Kitty called from the back room, her arms in the wardrobe again and digging so quickly that she seemed like some sort of high-strung gopher. Finally she popped her head up, then passed a few gowns out to Hattie Lawton. “But on this case I cannot divulge our plans. Secrecy is too important. It is a matter of life and death.”

Whose life and whose death?

I shot a look over at Miss Lawton and felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. Why wouldn’t Aunt Kitty trust me? Hadn’t I proven myself to be faithful? Hadn’t I worked hard to earn my place beside her, as a detective’s assistant? I thought back on the part I played in the fortune-teller case, as the book peddler in the Maroney adventure, and as the haunting, hammered bank teller in the Drysdale affair. I was so good, I could have been on Mr. Pinkerton’s payroll myself, with Mr. Bangs worrying over my every need.

Suddenly my embarrassment turned to anger. Was I still a burden to her? I had tried to believe she was no longer plotting to ship me off somewhere. But the letter waiting for Aunt Kitty on the downstairs table yesterday, with HOME FOR THE FRIENDLESS written in tight script on the envelope’s back, didn’t help. I hadn’t opened it, but then again I hadn’t told her about it either. It was still under my mattress in the back room.

I wasn’t about to hand over my own jail sentence.

“Fine, I don’t want to know your secret,” I snapped testily. I didn’t care that Hattie Lawton was present to witness our disagreement. “I can stay here this time. I’m good enough at caring for myself. I don’t need you around.”

I snatched up Aunt Kitty’s favorite bonnet and began running my fingers through the long pheasant feathers. I gave Miss Lawton a distrustful look, then hurled the silly hat onto the rocking chair.

Aunt Kitty came out of the small bedroom.

“As a matter of fact, you’re right, Nell,” she said. “You will stay behind this time. I’ve already arranged it with Mrs. Wigginbottom. She will watch after you while I am gone, for a fee, of course. I trust you will behave yourself.”

Trust? My eyes burned into hers. How could she even use that word, trust? When for a few dollars, she was willing to rid herself of me? Leave me in the care of that dodgy, despicable landlady?

Hattie Lawton stepped away to the corner of the room, as far from us as possible, and started busying herself with the gowns.

Suddenly I could see it all so clearly. My aunt was through with me. What good was I when she had this new detective—the beautiful, catlike Hattie Lawton—to replace me? And when she had the Home for the Friendless waiting to offer me a cold, filthy bed?

Storming past her into the bedroom, I pulled the cigar box out from underneath my mattress and flung the lid open.

“Do they teach trust at the Home for the Friendless?” I asked, emerging from the room and waving the letter toward her. My voice was dripping with a venom I didn’t even know I possessed. But I found her secrets enraging. And knowing she didn’t want me anymore, well, the hurt coiled up inside me like an asp. I wanted to strike and hurt her back.

“That is my letter,” Aunt Kitty said, staring at the cream-colored envelope, MRS. KATE WARNE scrawled prettily across the front. She put out her hand for me to give it to her.

“Are there others with it?” she snapped.

Suddenly I felt ashamed as I pulled out four more envelopes—one from the Protestant Orphan Asylum, two from the Catholic home, and another from a place I’d never heard of—and laid them in her palm.

“I did inquire, Nell. I’ve heard the Home for the Friendless takes good care of the older girls, puts them to work tending to the younger ones. Surely one of these places would make a more suitable home than here,” she said calmly, gesturing around our tiny two rooms but keeping her eyes locked on my face. “More suitable than what I can do for you, dashing off on a railcar toward peril at the drop of a hat.”

“So why haven’t you set me on their doorstep already?” I said, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. “You can save yourself paying Mrs. Wigginbottom for me, like I’m some piece of old mutton.”

“Because,” she replied, tapping the stack of envelopes against her hand, “I have been awaiting their responses.”

I caught my breath as if I’d been punched in the stomach. She’d certainly been busy.

“If you haven’t noticed, Aunt Kitty, I’m just fine riding railcars toward peril.”

Hattie Lawton was standing in the corner, looking uncomfortably at the two of us. “Detective work does sound exciting,” she said vaguely, maybe in the hope of redirecting the conversation. But we were too far into our fighting to regard her.

“It’s wrong to expose you to danger, Nell. So you cannot join me on this case. And as to the orphan asylums, well, I can scarcely afford to feed two mouths. I worry that I’m one step away from the poorhouse myself,” she said, jabbing the iron poker into the fireplace and stirring the flames.

“At the Home for the Friendless, you will have security. Not only will you have a bed and three meals, you will be taught properly—sums and vocabulary, as well as virtues like respect, hard work, responsibility. And…” she added darkly, turning to face me. Her eyes shot straight to my brown boots. “Integrity.”

There it was, that heavy cloud hanging in the air. Everything between us hinged on my daddy—my faith in him.

And Aunt Kitty’s lack of it.

I heard my bedsprings squeak in the back room. Hattie Lawton must have decided to sit down in there and wait out this storm.

“You think I’m going to turn out like him, don’t you?”

“I cannot look at your face and not see Cornelius Warne gazing back at me, Nell,” she began, squeezing her eyes shut. “The gambling. The drink. The lies.”

I reminded Aunt Kitty that I was not like him. Hadn’t I proven myself to her? Couldn’t she just put the past to rest and trust me?

“Trust you, Nell?” she snapped with a bitter laugh. “You’ve already deceived me by hiding these letters.”

“But I am not him, Aunt Kitty—”

“Him, him! When Cornelius killed Matthew, he took everything from me, Nell. It is because of him that I am alone in the world.”

Alone? That cut me deep. Sure, we were both haunted by the ghosts of Warne men. But we still had real, flesh-and-blood family walking this good green earth.

Each other.

“I would be grateful,” I whispered through my hurt, “to be even half the man my daddy was.”

“Well, the good news here,” Aunt Kitty said, snatching the pheasant bonnet from the rocker and tugging it onto her head, “is that you are a woman.”

And she picked up the black cloak, uttered something about the dry-goods store, and pulled the door shut behind her. I reached over and put my hand on the mantel and tried to calm my breathing. My eyes stung with tears, though I refused to let them fall.

Hattie Lawton emerged from the back room a few moments later and timidly came to stand near me at the fire. She ran her hand over the dresses draped on the parlor chair and peeked at my face. I think she was trying to read my expression.

“You should take those with you,” I said, nodding at the gowns. “Take whatever clothes and woolens you might need. Baltimore winters can be mighty cold, they say.”

Miss Lawton fingered the gowns, but she didn’t budge from where she stood. Her eyes were locked on mine, and she patted my arm. “What can I do to help you?” she asked in her sweet, slow way.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll pack my bags and be gone soon enough.”

But Miss Lawton wouldn’t hear of it, and she urged me to stay put and be a help to Mrs. Wigginbottom.

“Darling Nell,” she said gently, taking one of my hands in her own, “I know you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but your aunt cares for you deeply. You’re all she talks about at our meetings—I feel as if I know you already.

“I come from a family of six girls, so believe me when I say it. Even though you’re not getting along right now, you will again. The two of you are like sisters.”

Sisters? I fought the urge to laugh. Miss Lawton said something about packing later, then she turned and headed for the door.

“If me and Aunt Kitty are like sisters,” I whispered bitterly, my eyes fixed on the flames in the fireplace, “then I’d rather be alone.”

As Hattie Lawton pulled the door shut behind her, I listened to the mantel clock ticking in the empty room.

Alone was exactly what I was.

Again.