Page 31 of Road Trip
After she’d sipped the last of her wine and her dinner tray was cleared, she took out the gummies and stared at them. The cabin lights had dimmed, and it appeared that she was the only one in first class who was still awake.
“Screw it,” she muttered, popping them in her mouth. She chewed slowly, then pulled the satin sleeping mask from the cute, zippered pouch and donned it.
“Calgon, take me away,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 14
Aboard the S.S.Cedric, 1926
“Miss, miss!” Dolly leaned over Kathleen’s bunk, her little face alight with excitement. “We’re here! Mum says we’re here.”
Kathleen struggled to a sitting position. She’d been seasick for most of the week-long crossing, rising from her bunk only for trips to the bathroom, or twice, to venture to the dining room, where the smell of food made her so ill it was all she could do to make it to the bathroom in time.
Maggy had been so patient, so kind, bringing her tea and biscuits, with the occasional piece of fruit, treating her like family, while worrying and watching over her own child.
“Where is your mum?” she asked Dolly.
“Washing up.” Dolly sat on the edge of the opposite bunk, swinging her legs. “Are you feeling better?”
Kathleen was surprised to realize she was. The ship’s constant rocking motion had stilled. She was hungry, not queasy, for the first time in days. She was standing, her stocking feet planted on the floor, when Maggy burst through the door to their berth.
“You’re alive!” she said. “And we’re here. Hurry now, get yourself together. The matron says we’re to be ready in the next hour.”
“Ready for what?” Kathleen reached instinctively for her valise, glancing inside to make sure nothing had been touched. She trusted Maggy, of course, but maybe someone could have gotten into the room while they were both sleeping.
Her fingertips brushed over the valise’s false bottom, and she felt rather than saw the bumps where the jewelry and money were hidden. The painting was still rolled up beneath her clothes.
“Matron says they’re going to put us on a barge, then we’ll be taken to an island, I don’t know where.” She set a mug of tea she’d been holding on the edge of the sink and handed Kathleen a piece of bread. “Sorry, there wasn’t much left today.”
“Another boat?” Kathleen’s heart sank.
“Mum?” Dolly tugged at her mother’s skirt. “Will Dad come to the island? Will he?”
Maggy knelt beside her daughter and finger-combed her fine red hair. “I don’t know, my darling. We’ll have to wait and see. Now, let’s put on your shoes and get you ready.”
One hour turnedinto two, which turned into three. Finally, the steerage passengers were herded up to the ship’s deck. A sign told them the ship was anchored at the Hudson River Pier. Beyond the pier, they could see the city skyline, and closer than that, crowds of first-class passengers milling about the pier, reuniting with loved ones.
Maggy held Dolly’s hand and leaned close to Kathleen. “It’s grand, isn’t it?”
Too overcome to speak, Kathleen could only nod. The vastness of the sky above, the buildings crowded together, the smells, the noise, were like nothing she’d anticipated. America, and this city, New York, had been an abstraction, an illusion that she hadn’t dared let herself consider up until this morning.
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, doing a slow, clockwise circle to take it all in. “I’m really here.”
They were loadedonto huge, flat-bottomed barges to make their way across the Hudson River to a place Matron called Ellis Island.
“And if all is well, another barge will take you back to the pierlater today, or tomorrow at the latest,” she promised. “And then you’ll be on your way to your final destination, wherever that might be.”
“And what if all isnotwell?” asked an impudent young man whose tweed cap sat on the back of his head at a rakish angle. He was stick thin and deeply tanned, with a dramatic handlebar mustache.
“If you’re sick, or a criminal, or have no business coming here, then you’ll be put back on theCedricand shipped back home,” Matron snapped. “Best keep a civil tongue in your head, Joe Riley, or you’ll find yourself on that list.”
Kathleen sucked in her breath and stared down at her shoes, thinking of the money and jewelry that Lady Delia had given her back at Tarrymore House. She thought of the portrait Delia sliced out of the frame, and then of the sickening scream echoing from the downstairs hall, just before she’d bolted for the stables with the loot in her valise. What if, somehow, word had reached America? Would she be called a thief, or worse—blamed for whatever misfortune had befallen her benefactor? Could she be arrested or sent back to face the authorities?
“Look!” Maggy cried, pointing to a huge statue that seemed to rise out of the river’s surface. It was a statue of a woman, holding aloft a torch.
The outspoken young man from the dock was standing nearby, leaning over the barge’s iron deck railing. He turned to address the two women. “I read about that. It’s called the Statue of Liberty. A gift from France. It’s hollow inside, and people can walk all the way up to her crown to look out and see all of New York City. And New Jersey too.”
His gray eyes seemed to focus on Kathleen, who blushed and turned abruptly away.
