“Are you all right?”
“Mama’s new start has made me nostalgic, I suppose,” Rose hedged.
“Quite so,” Elise agreed and patted her arm. “Anyway, I must be off home or Michael will think I’ve run away.”
“As if,” Rose said, knowing her sister was as besotted with the handsome banker as the day they’d married.
Elise sighed. “I could never leave him because I cannot imagine my life without his lovely smile.” A warm reddish tinge crept across her cheeks. “Still, I am allowed to imagine a day without supervising our household and our children and the two cats and the parakeet. Can’t I?”
Both sisters laughed.
***
Finn had never been the naïve or romantic sort, at least not until the day he’d met Rose Malloy. Yet going to Hull Street in the North End, within spitting distance of the Old North Church, and expecting to find Liam the same as he had been nearly four years before was most likely a naïve fool’s errand.
Finn entered the same black door and flat lintel that still looked out of place next to the graceful arches over the other front doors. He went inside to the same hallway with its scuffed wooden floor, and knocked on the last door on the left.
A dark-haired woman with a child in her arms answered after a few moments. She didn’t smile or even offer a greeting, merely stared at him challengingly while holding her young boy in her arms as a shield.
“I’m looking for Liam Berne,” Finn said.
Her face relaxed instantly.
With a thick Italian accent, she answered him, “Sweet Mother Mary, I thought you were here for the rent.”
“No, I—”
“Liam Berne,” she spat the words. “I know him. Or used to.” She glanced down at the child and Finn realized that the boy was not a wee toddler as he’d thought by his size. More likely a lad of about four or five, underfed and stunted.
The boys’ dark eyes were those of his mother, not the pale brown that he remembered from Liam. Still, he couldn’t take his eyes off him. What if he’d given in to Rose that last night they were together? What if he’d left her with his child growing inside her? He would not have known for months until he reached England and then not until he wrote to her and she to him. He would have come home immediately to a family of his own instead of years later to an estranged wife beginning a life with another man. She would have had to tell her mother and her siblings, and then ...
“If you see him,” the woman interrupted his thoughts, “tell him a little of his gullyfluff — you know, his pocket change — would go a long way to feeding his son.”
Finn nodded. He definitely would tell him. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“Doesn’t he still work at the shipyard?” she asked, then let the boy slide down her hip, until he stood beside her, keeping hold of her skirts with his small hands.
Finn smiled at the lad, then regarded his mother. “I think so, but I don’t know for certain.”
She tossed her head. “Is he too high and mighty for that now?”
Liam, high and mighty?“I don’t understand what you mean?”
“With all his money and his fine house, does he still work at all?”
Finn tried to understand what she was saying. Had Liam changed professions or come into some money? “Can you tell me where he lives?”
“Not around here, that’s for sure.” She paused. “Are you his friend?”
“I used to be.”
She nodded, then gave him a curious, interested look. “Doyouhave any money?”
He nearly laughed but the idea that she might beg a stranger kept him quite sober.
“Not much.” Though the savings of a shipbuilder who’d spent as much time as he could spare away from his studies to earn a decent living, she would probably consider quite a significant sum. He was trying to spend as little as possible of those savings since disembarking in the States, with the uncertainty of when he would begin to earn again.
The woman shrugged, making a slight moue of dismissal.
