“Hello, Daniel,” I forced my lips to say.
“Thank God.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “You were lying there so still and peaceful that I thought for a second…”
I reached out and took his hand. “I’m fine, really. Just a bump on the head and some bruised ribs. They’ve strapped me up, which helps with the breathing, but they won’t let me go home.”
“And what about Liam? Where is he?”
“The doctor says he’s fine, Daniel. He’s in the children’s ward until someone can take him.”
“He’s not hurt? Are you sure?” His eyes were still darting nervously as he perched on the bed beside me.
“Don’t worry. He’s perfectly all right. Obviously he was terrified but I don’t think he was hurt in any way. We were so lucky, really. When I was thrown backward a woman fell into me and must have knocked him from my arms. And he slid under the seats until a man picked him up. A miracle, really, when you think of it. All those heavy people could have fallen on him.”
“Thank God,” he said again, and his voice cracked this time. “What a terrible business. I came past the site of the accident. When I saw that twisted metal I found it hard to believe that you had survived. What on earth went wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was a Ninth Avenue train and it was traveling quite fast and then suddenly it was going around the curve that the Sixth Avenue line takes. Someone must have failed to switch the points back after a Sixth Avenue train went through right before us.”
“There will be hell to pay when we find out who is responsible,” he said. “And it could have been much worse too. The whole train could have fallen. Which car were you in?”
“The one that was hanging in midair, suspended.”
“Oh, my darling. How terrifying that must have been.” He squeezed my hand.
“But I was so lucky, Daniel. I was about to get into the second car, the one that crashed to the street and killed the people inside. It was only because I heard someone coughing, and I didn’t want to risk Liam catching some disease, that I changed my mind at the last second. I could have been still lying in that mangled wreck.”
Daniel’s hand was warm as he continued to hold mine and a spasm of pain crossed his face. “I almost told you to take a cab when you traveled today. Then I thought that the train was just as easy, with stations near either end of the journey. Now I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Daniel, there’s nothing to forgive. How many years have we traveled on the elevated railway, and nothing bad has happened? And we’re both more or less unscathed. I’ll be as right as rain in the morning. I just need to know what to do with Liam today. I don’t like to think of him in a ward full of crying and sick children, but I know that you have an important job to do.”
“I could send a telegram to my mother to come and get him and take him back to her place,” he said. “If I send it now she could be here by this afternoon. It’s a pity she can’t stay with us yet. We don’t have room in the apartment and we don’t have a guest bedroom yet at the house.”
“I don’t think she could manage to take him alone on a train, Daniel. He’s quite a handful and awfully heavy now. Besides, I don’t want to be parted from him.”
“It would only be for one night, Molly. And if they release you in the morning, then you can also go straight up to Westchester and let my mother look after you. You’ll need to rest and recover, you know.”
I was torn between wanting to stay in New York to move back to my own house, and having someone take care of me for a few days until I was back on my feet. Then I decided that the last thing I wanted right now was to be fussed over by Daniel’s mother. I wanted to get on with my own life and be back in my own home as soon as possible.
“You could take Liam down to Sid and Gus’s,” I said, cheering up as the idea occurred to me. “I know they’d love to look after him.”
“What do they know about babies?” Daniel said testily. “They’ll probably feed him frog legs and curry, and let him smoke a hookah or play with their knife collection.”
I had to laugh at this. “Daniel, they looked after him a lot when I was in France.”
“Yes, but with you there with them, surely,” he said.
I was about to say that I’d been running around all over Paris, but then I remembered that I’d been on the trail of a murderer and had wisely kept the information about this from Daniel.
“There were times when I was out alone, and they entertained Liam,” I said cautiously.