Orphan Train(87)

“I’m so sorry.” Molly fingers the never-used baby blanket, its basket-weave design still vivid, the stitches intricately pristine. So Vivian had a baby and gave her away . . . and then married Jim Daly, Dutchy’s best friend. Was she in love with him, or was he merely consolation? Did she tell him about the baby?

Vivian leans over and shuts off the tape recorder. “That’s really the end of my story.”

Molly looks at her, puzzled. “But that’s only the first twenty years.”

Vivian shrugs lightly. “The rest has been relatively uneventful. I married Jim, and ended up here.”

“But all those years . . .”

“Good years, for the most part. But not particularly dramatic.”

“Did you . . .” Molly hesitates. “Were you in love with him?”

Vivian looks out the bay window. Molly follows her gaze to the Rorschach shapes of the apple trees, barely visible in the light from the house. “I can honestly say that I never regretted marrying him. But you know the rest, so I will tell you this. I did love him. But I did not love him like I loved Dutchy: beyond reason. Maybe you only get one of those in a lifetime, I don’t know. But it was all right. It was enough.”

It was all right. It was enough. Molly’s heart clamps as if squeezed in a fist. The depth of emotion beneath those words! It’s hard for her to fathom. Feeling an ache in her throat, she swallows hard. Vivian’s resolute unsentimentality is a stance Molly understands only too well. So she just nods and asks, “So how did you and Jim end up together?”

Vivian purses her lips, thinking. “About a year after Dutchy died, Jim returned from the war and got in touch with me—he had a few small things of Dutchy’s, a pack of cards and his harmonica, that the army hadn’t already sent. And so it started, you know. It was a comfort to have someone to talk to, I think for both of us—another person who knew Dutchy.”

“Did he know you’d had a baby?”

“No, I don’t think so. We never talked about it. It seemed like too much to burden him with. The war had taken a toll on him; there were a lot of things he didn’t want to talk about either.

“Jim was good with facts and figures. Very organized and disciplined, far more than Dutchy was. Honestly, I doubt the store would’ve done half as well if Dutchy had lived. Is that terrible to say? Well, even so. He didn’t care a whit about the store, didn’t want to run it. He was a musician, you know. No head for business. But Jim and I were good partners. Worked well together. I did the ordering and the inventory and he upgraded the accounting system, brought in new electric cash registers, streamlined the vendors—modernized it.

“I’ll tell you something: marrying Jim was like stepping into water the exact same temperature as the air. I barely had to adjust to the change. He was a quiet, decent, hardworking man, a good man. We weren’t one of those couples who finish each other’s sentences; I’m not even sure I could’ve told you what was going on in his head most of the time. But we were respectful of each other. Kind to each other. When he got irritable, I steered clear, and when I was in what he called one of my ‘black moods’—sometimes I’d go days without saying more than a few words—he left me alone. The only problem between us was that he wanted a child, and I couldn’t give him that. I just couldn’t do it. I told him how I felt from the beginning, but I think he hoped I’d change my mind.”

Vivian rises from her chair and goes to the tall bay windows. Molly is struck by how frail she is, how narrow her silhouette. Vivian unfastens the silk loops from their hooks at each side of the casing, letting the heavy paisley curtains fall across the glass.

“I wonder if . . .” Molly ventures cautiously. “Have you ever wondered what became of your daughter?”

“I think about it sometimes.”

“You might be able to find her. She would be”—Molly calculates in her head—“in her late sixties, right? She could very well be alive.”

Adjusting the drape of the curtains, Vivian says, “It’s too late for that.”

“But—why?” The question feels like a dare. Molly holds her breath, her heart thumping, aware that she’s being presumptuous, if not downright rude. But this may be her only chance to ask.

“I made a decision. I have to live with it.”

“You were in a desperate situation.”

Vivian is still in shadow, standing by the heavy drapes. “That’s not quite true. I could have kept the baby. Mrs. Nielsen would’ve helped. The truth is, I was a coward. I was selfish and afraid.”