Vita watched as for the second time that morning, Cathleen made a frantic dash for the bathroom.
She knelt on the cold tile, her stomach churning, until the waves of nausea subsided. At last she got up, bathed her face with cool water, and returned to the kitchen.
“Good thing we have an indoor privy,” Derrick grunted from behind his newspaper. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“I—I don’t know.” Cathleen sank into the chair opposite him.
“My stomach’s just upset, that’s all. It’ll pass.”
He pulled his pocket watch from his vest, clicked open the case, and squinted at the dial. “I have to be at work in ten minutes.”
“I’m all right—you go on.”
“Don’t forget we’re invited to dinner downstairs at eight,” he reminded her as he retrieved his suit jacket from the coat tree next to the door. “You can wear that blue dress—and do something with your hair, will you?”
She ran a hand through her disheveled curls. “The very mention of that blue dress makes me want to throw up again,” she said. “I’m sick to death of it—I’ve been wearing it for three solid months, every time I need to dress up the least little bit.”
“So wear something else.”
“I have nothing else, Derrick. Nothing suitable for dinner with your bosses. And I’ve seen the way their wives look at me. I’m quite sure they gossip behind my back about how pathetically unfashionable I am.” She turned her most entreating smile on him.
“I was wondering if I might not go shopping for a new frock.”
He waved away her concerns. “The blue one will do just fine.
Put that lace collar on it or something—you know, the handmade one you brought with you from home.”
Cathleen repressed a caustic reply. Derrick never missed an opportunity to remind her, however subtly, that she was a thief, in possession of her sister’s stolen goods—including the lace collar Mam had made for Rachel’s birthday.
She sank onto the moth-eaten sofa and looked around the room. “Don’t you ever get tired of living this way?” she asked.
“This place is so dismal.”
Derrick frowned. “You should be grateful. If Angelo Benedetti didn’t own the entire building, we might still be in that horrible flat we rented when we first arrived. As it is, we’re saving money, and we’re right above the restaurant, where I can keep an eye on things when Angelo’s not around.”
“I suppose,” Cathleen conceded. “But how do we ever plan to improve ourselves? When you accepted this job, I hardly thought you’d be employed as an errand boy.”
Derrick folded the newspaper and slapped it down on the table. “Not errand boy. Courier. I deliver papers and contracts to Angelo’s business partners. It’s important work. And Angelo is already talking about moving me up in the business.”
“We’ve nowhere to go but up,” she muttered. “Have you seen the rats and smelled the rotting garbage in the alley below our bedroom window?”
He stood up and donned his suit coat, then stalked to the door and opened it. “When you start bringing in money, you’ll have earned the right to criticize,” he said. “In the meantime, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.” He slammed the door behind him, and as she heard his boots clattering down the stairs, she realized he hadn’t even kissed her good-bye.
When Derrick was gone, Cathleen washed up the breakfast dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and picked up the newspaper and odd articles of clothing he had left scattered about. She had just begun to tidy the parlor when a thought struck her. “A blanket!” she murmured to herself. “I could tuck a colorful blanket—the bright blue one, perhaps—over the sofa. It would certainly cheer the place up a bit.”
She went to the closet in the bedroom, where the blanket was stored for the summer on a high shelf. She could reach it, if she stretched—just the nearest corner.
The blanket slid off the shelf and into her arms, but when it came, it dragged something else along with it. Something that glanced off her head and dropped to the floor of the closet. She laid the blanket aside and looked down. A boot—one of a pair, Derrick’s second-best boots, to be precise. But what were boots doing on the highest shelf, under the blanket?
She retrieved it and turned it upside down. A thick roll of bank notes fell into her palm.
Cathleen stared at the money.
“Someone’s been keeping secrets,” she whispered to herself.
“Well, Derrick, dear, I think it’s time for a new dress.” She smiled.
“Something smart and festive, I think. In a bright ruby red.”
It was nearly noon, but Rachel had other things on her mind besides a midday meal. She left the dress shop and strode across the central green toward the road that led from the edge of town to the river.
“A plan,” she muttered under her breath. “I need to come up with a plan.”
In the distance, she could hear the rippling sound of the river as it cascaded over boulders and wound its way downstream. The river had brought her both sadness and succor over the years. It had taken Sophie from her, but it had also become her sanctuary, her thinking place. And she needed to think.
She had to get the Treasure Box back. This had become her mission in life, her obsession. To find Cathleen and make her pay for what she had done. Whether vindication would bring any kind of inner satisfaction, Rachel had no idea. It was simply the only option open to her.
Along the road, a myriad of summer flowers bloomed— yellow primroses and lady’s slippers and bright thistles in the sun-washed ditches, nodding wild violets and lush ferns in the shade at the base of the trees. Rachel had always considered the village of her birth, with its sedate streets and surrounding woods, as quite the loveliest place on earth. A paradise. Every sunset brought a benediction, every sunrise the blessing of another day in Eden.
But no longer. Instead of stopping to touch the shy primroses at the edge of the road and watch the powdery gold at their center rub off on her fingers, she trampled them underfoot. She saw the sunset and the flowers and the lights on the water, but the connection between her eyes and her soul had been severed. The presence had left the garden. The voice of blessing had gone silent.
Rachel reached the bank and gazed unseeing out over the river. If she could just hold on another few months, she would have enough money saved to make the crossing. She no longer believed what Derrick had told her about America being a garden of delights, but it hardly mattered. For Rachel, there was no paradise.
Not here.
Not anywhere.