A Family Apart

FICTION

A Candidate for Murder

The Dark and Deadly Pool

Don’t Scream

The Ghosts of Now

Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories

The Haunting

In the Face of Danger

The Island of Dangerous Dreams

The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore

Laugh Till You Cry

Murdered, My Sweet

The Name of the Game Was Murder

Nightmare

Nobody’s There

The Other Side of Dark

Playing for Keeps

Search for the Shadowman

Secret, Silent Screams

Shadowmaker

The Specter

Spirit Seeker

The Stalker

The Trap

The Weekend Was
Murder
!

Whispers from the Dead

Who Are You?

NONFICTION

The Making of a Writer

Frances felt herself drawn to look at the people in the room, fearfully searching one face, then another, for hopeful signs. Round or long, wrinkled or plumply red-cheeked, bushy-eyebrowed or scruffily bearded, no matter; every pair of eyes in every face stared intently at the children. Frances couldn’t tell what they were thinking. She tried to look away, but couldn’t. For a moment she felt dizzy, and her stomach churned. Desperately, she held Petey even more tightly. Who were all these strangers? Would any of them choose the Kelly children to be their own? What if no one wanted them? What would happen to them then?

During the years from 1864 to 1929, the Children’s Aid Society, founded by Charles Loring Brace, sent more than 100,000 children on orphan trains from the slums of New York City to new homes in the West. This placing-out program was so successful that other groups, such as the New York Foundling Hospital, followed the example.

The Orphan Train Quartet was inspired by the true stories of these children; but the characters in the series, their adventures, and the dates of their arrival are entirely fictional. We chose St. Joseph, Missouri, between the years 1860 and 1880 as our setting in order to place our characters in one of the most exciting periods of American history. As for the historical figures who enter these stories—they very well could have been at the places described at the proper times to touch the lives of the children who came west on the orphan trains.

J
ENNIFER SHOOK BACK
her long, dark hair, damp from the summer’s heat. “I wish we were home,” she snapped so suddenly that she startled her younger brother Jeff, who was sitting on the steps of the front porch. “It’s so boring. I miss the city. I miss my friends. I wish, oh, how I wish, we were home.”

“Stop wishing,” Jeff grumbled. “We haven’t got a home.” He squinted and slowly aimed, preparing to throw a pebble along the gravel path that led from the front porch of Grandma Briley’s house to the road.

Just as he let it fly, Jennifer deliberately nudged his shoulder, causing the pebble to flop onto the grass.

“Hey!” Jeff shouted. “Cut that out!”

“Then don’t say dumb stuff like that. We do too have a home. At least we will when Dad gets through with his assignment overseas.”

“You know what I mean,” Jeff said. He quickly
aimed and threw another pebble before Jennifer could interfere.

“I miss Dad,” Jennifer said.

“I miss Mom, too,” Jeff said.

“Mom? How can you miss Mom? She’s right here.”

“No, she’s not. She’s upstairs working away on that novel that never seems to get finished.”

“That’s not her fault. She keeps getting interrupted. Anyhow, that was the whole point of our spending the summer here in Missouri, so Mom could concentrate on her writing and we could get to know Grandma better.”

“Grandma’s almost as busy as Mom,” Jeff complained. “In the morning she’s jogging, in the afternoon she’s working for that historical society, and at night she goes to City Council meetings.”

Jennifer nodded. “And here we are stuck out in the middle of no place with nothing to do.”

She heard a chuckle behind them, then a click as the screen door opened. “ ‘Out in the middle of no place’?” Grandma said as she squeezed onto the top step between them. “Well, I’ll grant that northwest Missouri doesn’t have all the excitement to offer that Washington, D.C., has, but you could hardly call it ‘no place.’ ”

Jennifer felt her face grow even warmer. She pushed at the hair that clung damply to her cheeks and stammered, “I didn’t mean—uh—that is—it’s different in Missouri, and—”

Grandma tilted her head and studied Jennifer. “You know, you’d be a lot cooler with that lovely long hair off your neck.” She got up, tugging down her shorts, and held out a hand to help Jennifer up “Come with me—both of you. I’ve got something to show you that ought to relieve your boredom.”

As soon as they reached their grandmother’s bedroom,
she pointed to the bed. “First, we’ll take care of that long hair,” she said. “Have a seat, Jennifer. Just give me one minute, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Jennifer stared at Grandma’s own short-cropped curls and opened her mouth to protest. “You’re not going to—” she began, but she relaxed with a grateful sigh when Grandma simply picked up a silver-backed hairbrush. The rhythmic strokes of the brush were soothing, and soon Jennifer’s hair was swirled over her grandmother’s left hand.

“Jeff,” Grandma said, “will you please hand me a few bobby pins from that box on my dresser? There ought to still be a few of them in there.”

“Bobby pins!” Jennifer gasped. Nobody used bobby pins! What in the world was she going to look like?

Her grandmother poked and patted at Jennifer’s hair. Finally she said, “Stand up and look in the mirror, Jennifer. My, I’ve got a beautiful granddaughter.”

Jennifer stared at the face in the wood-framed mirror that hung over Grandma’s dresser. Her hair was parted in the middle and caught in a bun low on her neck. She looked older than fifteen. It wasn’t so bad—kind of old-fashioned, but actually pretty nice. Lightly touching her hair, she sneaked another look, then met her grandmother’s friendly grin. “Thanks,” Jennifer said.

“Now,” Grandma said, “wait till you see this.” She bent to reach into the low cedar chest that stood in the corner of the room and took out a book covered with faded blue fabric. She opened it carefully and removed a sepia-toned photograph. Without a word she handed the photograph to Jennifer.

Jennifer felt prickles dart up her backbone as her eyes met those of the slender, dark-haired girl in the photograph. “Who is this girl?” Jennifer asked. “She looks like me.”

“The young woman was my grandmother’s mother,” Grandma explained, “and when she was your age her name was Frances Mary Kelly.”

Jennifer studied the photograph. “How old is she here?”

“About eighteen, I would guess.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“When Frances was thirteen years old—about your age, Jeff—she was an Orphan Train child, sent from New York City to St. Joseph, Missouri,” Grandma said. “That was in 1860, just before the beginning of the Civil War.”

Jeff took another look at the photograph. “What’s an Orphan Train child?”

“I believe I’ll let Frances Mary tell you,” his grandmother said. She held out the book to Jeff. “Frances Mary wrote about her own life and the lives of her brothers and sisters and friends. If you think Missouri is a dull place, wait until you hear these stories. They’re full of bandits and runaways and battles and all sorts of excitement. Why, one time Frances was almost arrested!”

Jeff eagerly opened the book, allowing Jennifer to bend close to him.

“It’s too hard to read this,” he finally said. “The writing looks like little spider tracks.”

“And in places the ink’s faded.” Jennifer peered intently, surprised at her disappointment. “I can’t read it, either.”