Liam nodded and followed. Empty crates and dented trash cans cluttered the narrow brick alley. There was nobody else back here, but Liam glanced nervously up and down the street before speaking in a low voice.
“I don’t know who to trust,” he finally said. “Uncle Mick said you were a decent lawyer and you promised not to tell any of his secrets. Something about the rules of being a lawyer.”
“That’s right.”
Liam fidgeted, continually shifting his weight. “Yeah, well, the only lawyers I’ve met are shysters who work for the owners of the steel mills. You’re nothing like them. You seem like one of us, like I might be able to trust you.”
“Trust me to do what?”
Liam looked him straight in the eye, his face intent. “You know the rumors about me, that me and that Blackstone kid might be one and the same. I don’t know if they’re true, but I have eyes in my head. I saw a picture of Theodore Blackstone, and we look alike. I wouldn’t put it past Mick to play mean and dirty. My dad had a long and healthy hatred for the Blackstones. He’s been dead for ten years, so there’s no asking him, but he played dirty too. Crocket Malone was a brute, and I left home as soon as I could get away from him. I’ve been working in the Philly shipyards ever since.”
“And your mother? The one who bemoans delivering a ten-pound child? Is she lying too?”
“Maybe,” Liam said. “She still lives in Pittsburgh and has a big box of legal papers under her bed. I’ve tried looking through it to find a birth certificate or something else to prove who I am, but I can’t make much sense of all those papers.”
“Why not?” Patrick asked. “It shouldn’t be hard to spot a birth certificate.”
Liam stared moodily down the alley. “I’m not much for reading,” he admitted. “I need help going through that box.”
“Can you read at all?” Patrick didn’t want to embarrass Liam, but he needed to know.
“Not really,” Liam said. “I can sign my name but not a whole lot more, and there’s no one I can trust to help me with those papers.”
The prospect of traveling all the way to Pittsburgh to help a virtual stranger look for a birth certificate was absurd. Patrick had a stack of new clients, and his mother still needed him.
“Take the box to the nearest Catholic school and ask the nuns to help,” he said. “They’ll keep your confidence.”
Liam’s shoulders slumped, but only for a moment before straightening back up. “Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that. Hey, thanks anyway. You did a good job for my uncle, and I’m grateful.”
Liam headed down the alley, hands stuffed in his pockets.
Unbidden, the drawing of Hansel and Gretel in Gwen’s dining room rose in Patrick’s mind. It had been thirty years since her brother’s kidnapping, and it still nagged at her. If Patrick could prove who Liam Malone was, one way or the other, Gwen would want to know. He could never repay her for the serum that saved his mother’s life, but maybe he could grant her deepest wish by finding out what happened to Willy Blackstone.
“Wait!” he shouted down the alley, but Liam had already disappeared into a sea of pedestrians and lumbering wagons on Mulberry Street. Patrick ran a few blocks, constantly scanning the crowds until he spotted Liam heading toward the streetcar stop.
“Liam, wait!” he shouted again, for Liam was about to board the streetcar, and Patrick doubled his speed. He was breathless by the time he got to Liam’s side. “I changed my mind. Let’s leave for Pittsburgh as soon as we can.”
This might be the only thing he could ever do for Gwen, and he wouldn’t hesitate again.
Gwen was writing invitations for Friday’s soiree when the perfect thought struck. She would invite Patrick! She hadn’t realized he was so sensitive about how they’d been meeting on his fire escape, and having him attend one of her weekly gatherings would let him know that she was proud to be seen with him.
She’d always assumed she would someday marry another Blackstone College professor. It wasn’t that she objected to men in other lines of work. She simply thought it would be easiest to marry someone who already belonged here.
That was before she met Patrick. An involuntary thrill triggered inside her when she thought of his face, rough with affection as he gazed at her. Patrick was everything a woman could want in a man. Kind and giving and intelligent, but also a man of raw strength and a rock-solid foundation. She remembered the first night they’d kissed, when he spoke of the vows he would someday make to his wife. “They will be carved in stone to last for all time,” he had said.
The doorbell interrupted the quiet of the evening. When she opened the front door to see Patrick standing on her front porch, it felt like her dreams had magically brought him to her.
“Hello, Mrs. K.”
She beamed in reply. “Good evening, Patrick.”
“Can I come inside? I had an interesting conversation with Liam Malone today.”
The haze of infatuation vanished, and her hand tightened around the doorknob. In the past few weeks, she’d managed to consign the disquieting man to the back of her mind. Uncle Oscar’s detectives hadn’t finished their report on Liam Malone, but she had already decided his physical resemblance to her father was a mere coincidence.
She sat on the padded chair beside the fireplace while Patrick sat on the hearth, only inches away, cradling her hand as he spoke. She felt sick as he relayed the conversation he had with Liam Malone, who claimed there were rumors and unanswered questions about his early years that might point to the chance that he could be Willy Blackstone.
Her gaze strayed to the Hansel and Gretel painting in the dining nook. Liam Malone was so crass and aggressive. Boorish. Not at all like she expected her older brother to be.
