On the dock in Boston, Beatrix is alone. Everyone else has been picked up. It is already hot, even though it’s early in the day, the moon etched in chalk on the pale blue sky. Beatrix is wearing her favorite dress, red wool with a white collar and piping at the cuffs. She picked it out carefully, remembering that her mother told her to look her best, but it is the wrong dress for the day, and sweat drips down her neck and back.
The woman who paired up the other children with their host families keeps checking her watch and looking at her clipboard. The Gregorys, she says again and again, her voice getting sharper each time. That’s the family name, is that right? Beatrix nods. The sun moves higher, tucks behind a cloud, and Beatrix shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She touches the label that she has repinned every morning since she left London. The edges are beginning to fray.
Beatrix feels as though she left home years ago, as though the girl she was there is separate from the girl standing here. So much has transpired, although it has only been two weeks, and yet it seems like something out of a book, like it all must have happened to someone else. Docking in Canada and saying goodbye to most of her new friends. Another train and then a small ferry, rolling through the rough waves. Finally, calm water as they entered Boston Harbor. On a small island, three barefoot children on a dock, holding fishing rods, waving as the ferry passed. Welcome to America, Beatrix thought.
She looks down, making sure that her suitcase and gas mask are still at her side, and when she looks up, a boy is standing in front of her. It is almost as though she willed him to exist. He’s taller than she is, with curly blond hair so long it’s practically at his collar. He raises his arm to block the sun out of his eyes with his hand. This is William, she thinks, she knows. They’d had a letter, describing the house and the family, and Beatrix read it every night on the ship. She memorized sections. Gerald is the younger boy, just turned nine, and William is thirteen. He’s too smart for his own good, Mrs. Gregory wrote. Wants to be a baseball player when he grows up. Beatrix thought he’d have brown hair. She didn’t think he’d be so tall or that his eyes would be green. But, still, this must be him.
Beatrix, he says, and his voice is lower than she anticipated. He is almost smiling. She nods and then another boy runs up, his face flushed, his crooked smile wide, his red-gold hair shining in the sun. This is most certainly Gerald. You’re Beatrix, aren’t you, he says. You must be, I just know it. Yes, she says, smiling, at last, because his accent is funny and his freckles are everywhere and he’s a wide-open American boy.