Kaitlin
This was the week that Kaitlin should have arrived home from hospital with a baby girl in her arms. By rights, she should have been tired, sore, apprehensive – but elated. By now, she would have been taking calls of congratulation while quietly fretting about how she’d adjust to her new responsibilities. Instead, she was in the office, advising on the stock market floatation of a mid-sized pharmaceutical company. She hoped that, aside from Clay and her immediate family, no one would remember the week’s significance. The best way to get through this was quietly.
She was muddling along, doing as well as possible, until an encounter on Franklin Street with a law-school classmate. Mallory Sorenson was very tall and very blonde with a wide coral-lipsticked mouth and a rasping laugh. Her friends would describe her as ebullient. Charismatic, even. She also had no filter. Her every thought had to be articulated. If you asked Kaitlin, self-censorship was an undervalued skill. Had she been able to stride past with a wave and a too-busy-to-talk look, that was what she would have done, but Mallory seemed to expand until she filled the sidewalk.
‘Kaitlin Wilson,’ she said, as though announcing her arrival on stage.
Before Kaitlin could come up with an excuse, she was being herded away from the street and into a pool of shade in Post Office Square.
‘I don’t know about you,’ said Mallory, ‘but this weather’s getting to me.’
Kaitlin agreed that the heat was uncomfortable. It was that time of year when her hair became a mass of damp tendrils and sweat gathered along her spine. While engaging wasn’t easy, she was anxious not to come across as unfriendly. Mallory was an accomplished gossip, and any perceived rudeness would be widely shared. A minute or two of small-talk and she’d be able to escape.
‘Now, forgive me if I’ve got this wrong,’ said Mallory, ‘but did I hear that you and Clay were expecting a baby?’
Do I look pregnant to you? Kaitlin was tempted to say. She’d lost weight in recent weeks, and her expensive charcoal suit hung around her like a garbage bag. Like so much else, this hadn’t been deliberate. The weight loss had crept up on her until she’d realised that her clavicles were protruding like shards of metal and her face was all eyes and bone. Even her underwear was too large.
‘Eh, no,’ she said, her voice a hesitant squeak.
‘Leave it to me to get the wrong end of the stick. I could have sworn . . . Oh, well, you want to put a ring on it first, I guess.’
Kaitlin told herself not to get upset. Not here. Not now. And definitely not in front of Mallory Sorenson. Somehow, she forced out the truth. ‘I had a miscarriage.’
Mallory, who wasn’t completely without shame, turned Pepto Bismol-pink. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Kaitlin. I had no idea. I heard a whisper of something, but obviously I didn’t pick it up right.’
‘You weren’t to know.’ With relief, she realised she wasn’t going to cry. She was too listless for emotion. She just wanted this to pass. She wanted to walk away and be on her own, but doing so would leave a residue of embarrassment. They needed to move to safer ground. Work: that was what they needed to talk about. Safe, predictable work. First, though, she decided to make Mallory squirm a bit more. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘my due date was around now.’
‘Ah, hell. Please forgive me. I’m usually more tactful than this. Are you all right? Can I—’
Kaitlin cut her off. ‘It’s cool. Honestly. Tell me about you. You’re working with . . .?’ She hoped this wouldn’t be read as bitchiness, as if she was suggesting that her former classmate’s employer was too inconsequential to recall, but the name genuinely eluded her.
‘Sullivan, Garcia and Rogers.’
A moustache of sweat had formed over Mallory’s top lip.
‘And are you specialising in any particular area?’ asked Kaitlin.
‘Are you kidding me? We’re not Frobisher Hunter. I handle whatever’s thrown my way, but I’m enjoying the work.’
Mallory went on to give a spirited monologue about the joys of small law firms. She was working on a couple of employment cases and had also handled some immigration work. The strange thing was, the more she spoke, the more her words and enthusiasm rang true.
When Kaitlin’s turn came, she kept it snappy. She was part of a large team; she found it challenging; the hours were long; yada-yada-yada. She did her best to sound upbeat, but had the feeling she fell short.
‘I’d better let you go,’ said Mallory, eventually. ‘I’m sure they keep you on a tight leash over at Frobisher’s. And apologies again for being such a great big doofus.’ She raised her palms to the sky in what she probably thought was an endearing gesture.
As Kaitlin walked back through the forest of skyscrapers, she considered the encounter. It occurred to her that the standout part hadn’t been Mallory’s blunder and subsequent discomfort. The memorable part had been the passion with which she’d spoken about her work.
More and more, Kaitlin found herself engrossed in the story of her Irish ancestors. To her delight, the message-board post had put her in touch with an Irish woman who’d also had a relative on the Mary and Elizabeth.
Jessie Daly’s fourth-great-grandmother had been among the dead. She’d sent screenshots from a document containing the names of those who’d died and those who’d survived. It revealed that Alice and Delia had been from County Clare while Martin had been from the neighbouring county, Galway. As far as Jessie could tell, Alice had been a widow when the boat set sail, but Martin’s original family, his wife and three children, had died on board. The news brought Kaitlin up short. It was hard to comprehend the scale of the poor man’s loss.
Jessie had also asked a throwaway question about Frobisher Hunter. She wondered if there could be a connection between the company and a man called Sir Henry Frobisher who’d evicted huge numbers of starving tenants, including her own ancestor, Bridget Moloney. A few hours’ research confirmed that she was on to something. The firm’s co-founder, Walter Frobisher, had been Sir Henry’s youngest son. He had emigrated to America as a young man and had been called to the Suffolk bar in 1875. What was unclear was how much he’d known about the deaths on his family’s land in Ireland. Kaitlin didn’t think of it as a coincidence, more as proof of how the world was connected – and of how the powerful remained so.
She was about to email the news to Jessie when she stopped to reconsider. She’d already written twice without reply. Clearly, Jessie had a lot going on. There was no point in annoying her.
From their first email exchange, she’d sensed that her Irish counterpart was reluctant to talk about herself. An internet search revealed why. A series of articles popped up, all of them based around a clip from a TV show in which a pretty but seriously drunk blonde derailed a discussion about the victims of crime. Although the onscreen Jessie seemed far removed from the smart woman in Kaitlin’s inbox, they were definitely the same person. In the articles, she was described as ‘the poster girl for self-absorbed privilege’ and ‘a millennial nightmare brought to life’. No wonder she was seeking refuge in the past.
Kaitlin spent an hour reading about the debate ignited by the TV show. Then she read some of Jessie’s published articles. A few of them, including a profile of a toxically ambitious news anchor and an interview with an actress who’d been abused by her partner, were impressive. Eventually, Kaitlin had to remind herself that she was supposed to be researching her fourth-great-grandparents, not Jessie Daly.
As well as trying to find out more about her family, she’d been reading about how challenging life had been for those who’d arrived in the 1840s and 1850s. Many Bostonians had considered them a nuisance, a sickly tattered bunch who drank too much and stole food from American mouths. Others had gone further. In their minds, the Catholic newcomers hadn’t simply been a drain on resources, they’d been an out-and-out menace, a violent, unpredictable mob.
Had Alice been treated unkindly? she wondered. Or had the dramatic way she’d arrived encouraged a more charitable response? Kaitlin recalled what Orla had said about her path being smoothed by the millions who’d made the journey before her.
It had been people like Alice and Martin who’d removed the stones and pushed open the door.
Kaitlin decided not to tell Clay about her encounter with Mallory Sorenson. Of course she knew this was wrong. Stella would have been his child too. But there was a wide chasm between accepting the illogicality of your behaviour and doing something about it.
Apart from one question about how she was coping, he didn’t raise the week’s significance. It had been a while since they’d discussed anything of substance, even longer since they’d talked about marriage or buying a house or other children. It was her fault. Her secrecy had infected the relationship. They were treading warily, frightened that a misplaced word would turn their carefully constructed world to rubble. Even when they spoke about mundane subjects, there was tension humming underneath, and she wasn’t sure they would ever be free of it.