six WINNY

Winny didn’t have time to fall apart. Mary collapsed in her arms, and Winny swore to herself that she would hold her friend until the end of time if she needed to. Thankfully, Miss Pence took pity and left them alone in the bedroom.

Winny had never seen Mary like this. Being separated from Jack at the orphanage had been terrible for them both, moving away to the Home had been bad as well, but this was a new level of sadness. Once the sobs slowed and the tears dried, it was as if there was very little left of her.

“It’ll be us next,” Mary said, picking at the blanket on her bed, not meeting Winny’s eyes.

Winny wasn’t sure how to answer. She was terrified at the thought of losing Mary, but she couldn’t show it. What Mary needed most was support. She took a deep breath and thought of Jack. He was always so strong for them. It was her turn now.

“Maybe we’ll end up living close to each other,” Winny said, then she realized she was picking anxiously at her fingernails. If Mary looked up she would see Winny was scared. So Winny consciously separated her hands from each other and pressed them to her sides. “Then we can visit all the time. And then one day, Jack will find us and we’ll be together again.”

“I wish I could believe that.” Mary’s voice was no more than a whisper.

“We will see each other again,” Winny replied softly, though even she had begun to doubt it.

It was another two days before they learned where they were going. To Winny’s relief, Miss Pence called Mary’s name and hers at the same time, along with a few others. As she pinned new name tags to their coats, she told the girls they would take a train to Peterborough, a couple of hours away, where the families who had paid for them would come and pick them up. Miss Pence would be staying in Toronto with the rest of the girls.

Once they were out of the city, the sight of the green, flowing countryside calmed Winny somewhat. Though this land was very different, a memory surfaced from long ago of the little cottage where she’d once lived in Ireland. Life had been hard there, but she remembered happy moments. She remembered feeling loved.

“Have you ever seen so much green?” She nudged Mary. “It goes on forever. Look, Mary! Cows!”

Mary allowed herself a small smile. “I’ve never seen a cow before.”

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Winny asked. “Everything looks so bright and happy.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

After another hour, they reached the Peterborough station, and when the brakes shrieked, Winny’s heart thundered like the wheels on the tracks. “Stay close to me,” she said to Mary, as much for her friend’s benefit as her own.

No one was there to greet them, but their trunks were unloaded near a bench on the end of the platform, so the group of girls headed toward them. As they did, Winny eyed every stranger she passed with a kind of terrified optimism.

After the platform had cleared of the other passengers, Winny noticed wagons, automobiles, and trucks waiting across from the station, and people began to approach in ones and twos, studying the girls as they walked. Most were dressed in faded shirts and overalls, their straw hats circled by wide brims. Farmers, she thought, taking Mary’s hand. What would a farmer need with a housemaid?

The first person to approach the group was an older, bearded man, and he strode directly up to one of the younger girls. Without a word, he reached for her name tag, checked it, then moved on to read the others. Winny made a silent plea that he wasn’t there for either of them. He stopped at a brown-haired girl a few spots before them.

“I’m Mr. Chisholm,” he told her, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “You’re to come with me.”

Every girl still standing on the platform watched her pick up her trunk and go, and no one said a word.

“Miller,” someone called.

Mary’s hand jerked in Winny’s, and their eyes went to a round woman in a blue dress, on her way up the stairs to the platform. Her hair was swept into an untidy bun. She wasn’t old, Winny didn’t think, but she looked tired.

“Miller,” the woman repeated, scanning the girls.

“It’ll be okay,” Winny whispered. “We’ll find each other.”

“Take care of yourself, Winny,” Mary said, then she stepped forward, the hem of her skirt shaking.

“Not much meat on you,” the woman said, scowling at Mary’s name tag. “I paid a full three dollars. I should get what I paid for.” She glanced at Winny. “At least you’re bigger than that one.”

Winny wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she could disappear.

“I guess you’ll have to do. I’m Mistress Renfrew. Get your things and come with me.”

Mary’s chest rose and fell in a bolstering breath, then she turned and trailed behind her new mistress, her trunk gripped in her hands. Every nerve in Winny’s body pulled towards Mary, and she wondered how she could possibly survive without her.

“Wait!” Winny blurted, rushing forward.

Mary dropped her trunk and wrapped her arms around Winny, digging her fingers into her back. “I hope wherever you end up they treat you good.”

“Oh, Mary!”

“That’s enough,” Mistress Renfrew said, pulling the two apart. “I don’t have all day. It’s bad enough that I had to be the one driving in for you. We’ve got a long ride ahead.”

Through a sheen of tears, Winny watched Mary follow the woman to a dusty green truck, where a brood of children sat in its open bed. Winny counted nine.

“Get in, girl.” The woman jerked a thumb then climbed into the front cab. “Best you get to know the kids right off.”

At first, the children stared at Mary, then they shifted, making room for her and her trunk. As the truck began to pull away, Mary’s shining eyes held on to Winny’s.

It’s not goodbye, Winny promised silently, tears streaming down her cheeks. She watched Mary until she was just a spot in the distance. I will find you.

One by one, the other girls were picked up by their new masters, but Winny remained. She sat on the bench by her trunk, baking in the heat of the sun, feeling as insignificant as the pebble by her shoe. At one point, the station master walked out of the building and looked at her. She opened her mouth to ask for help, but he went back inside without saying anything. She dropped her eyes to her tortured nails and picked at what remained. What if no one came for her?

Two hot hours later, a dented blue truck with a cracked windshield pulled up to the station, and a haggard-looking woman called out from the cab.

“You the Home Girl?”

Winny nodded.

“I’m Mistress Adams. Get over here.”

Winny jumped to her feet and clutched her trunk. Her heart raced as she ran towards the truck, and she was so nervous she nearly lost her balance on the platform steps. When she got closer, she could see Mistress Adams a little better, sitting behind the steering wheel. She was thin, and the brown hair pulled back into a bun was wispy around her angular face. Beside her, Winny saw a girl she thought might be eighteen or so, with the same drawn face as Mistress Adams.

She stopped at the window of the cab and offered a tentative smile. “My name’s Winny.”

“What are you standing there for?” Mistress Adams demanded. “Put your trunk in the back and get in with it.”

Winny’s smile wavered, but she did as she was told.

“She’s so small,” she heard the other girl say.

“You’re right, Helen. I am disappointed,” her mother agreed. “I think we might have gotten a bigger one if we’d ordered earlier. The other farms took the good ones.”

“Only good thing I see is from the size of her, she won’t eat much. What’s she gonna be able to do with those scrawny arms of hers?”

“That is no concern of yours, is it? You won’t even be around. She will do whatever she’s told. Do not speak to her unless you have to, and she will not speak to you. If she does, don’t listen. She’ll just tell lies.” She glanced back at Winny as she climbed into the back of the truck. “And do not touch her, because she probably has a disease. Or fleas. They say all these Home Children do.”

Winny felt the words like a punch to her gut. She’d taken special care that morning to wash her face and brush her hair, and she’d cleaned her clothes the best she could. She wanted to speak up, to explain that she’d been checked over by the doctor, and he’d said she wasn’t sick, only small. Most of all she wanted to tell them that it was safe to talk to her because she wouldn’t lie. She never lied. But her mistress’s cruel words brought back the voices of the other women at the Halifax pier, and all the ugly things they had said about Home Children. Was this what everyone thought of her and Mary and Jack and the brothers? Why had the Home gone to all the trouble of sending them here if they were so clearly unwanted?

Helen scowled back at Winny, then Mistress Adams started the engine. As they drove away from the station, Winny gripped the sides of the bed, trying to stay upright even as her head spun with a sense of helplessness. Had Mary arrived safely at her farm? Was it nice? Was her mistress kind? What about Jack, Edward, and Cecil? What had happened to them after they’d left Northwold on that dark, rainy morning? All Winny could do was hope they were all right. Because hope was all she had left.

They bumped along the dirt road, dust billowing behind their wheels, and Winny stared out at the endless farm country that had so delighted her before, the rolling hills and the stands of trees quivering in the breeze. Where was Mary in all of it? And where would Winny end up? For the rest of the long, lurching ride, the Adams women never looked back. It was as if they had forgotten about her.

With every lonely mile, Winny felt herself shrinking away, becoming smaller and smaller. Eventually, she wasn’t sure she was really there at all.