Blessing (36 page)

MARCH 22, 1849

Gerard had returned to Boston, but instead of going home, he’d taken a room in a modest inn. After the Manhattan visit, he’d expected to become angry. Instead he remained bewildered and disoriented, as if he’d been tossed in a blanket and landed on the ground hard. He found he couldn’t make himself go to his parents’ house—his father’s house—quite yet.

Discovering Saul Ramsay’s duplicity in Manhattan had fractured Gerard’s peace of mind. He wanted to visit his mother but was afraid he would not be able to hold back his emotions. And in any event, she’d told him she didn’t want him to see her in her extremity.

He had spent the past couple of days in the inn, barely leaving it. Thoughts of Blessing plagued him. He wanted to spill this puzzle into her nonjudgmental ear. But she was hundreds of miles away, and writing a letter wasn’t the same as being in her understanding presence. Gerard could count on her to sympathize and console, yet he should not be seeking her solace. He reminded himself of his brush with her illegal activities and how they’d shaken him. Thinking of Blessing only stirred up his emotional turmoil further.

Finally he realized he had to talk to someone, and the only one who might understand would be the one who’d discovered Saul Ramsay’s secret life in the first place. Gerard went to Kennan’s family’s home and asked for his whereabouts. He was given an address in Providence, so he boarded a coach to Rhode Island.

Late in the afternoon, he stood outside a seedy inn. He only hoped Kennan would be sober. He asked for the man and was led up to his room. It was a small chamber, barely large enough for a bed, a side table, and a chair.

“Gerard,” Kennan mumbled as he opened the door. He dropped down onto the side of the rumpled bed, running his hands over his face. “What brings you here? I thought you were going to stay in Ohio.”

Gerard sat in the only chair. “My mother is nearing her end. She may pass any day.” He paused to stroke his taut
forehead and the back of his neck. “And I had to find out the truth about that address in Manhattan. Did you know my father has a second family there?”

Kennan yawned and stretched. “That’s what it looked like to me. Stuffy, upright Saul Ramsay—a bigamist.” Kennan barked with laughter.

The sound jabbed Gerard. “I don’t find it very amusing.”

“So what is the plan?” Kennan rubbed his hands together. “Going to shove old Dad’s face in it? Make him pay?”

Gerard stared at Kennan. “What?”

“Don’t you see? This is excellent! You have power over your father now. He’ll do anything to keep you from revealing his double life.”

Disgust rolled up Gerard’s throat. “I have never craved power over my father. I’ve only wanted freedom from him.”

“Well, now you can have both. Or if you want to ruin him, here’s your chance.”

Kennan’s words made Gerard pull back as if fending off a blow. “Kennan, my mother is near death. I will do nothing while she lives.”

“Oh, I understand that. But after she’s gone, let me know, and I’ll be happy to help you take down your father.”

It had been a mistake to come here. Gerard’s stomach bubbled with turmoil. Kennan wasn’t Stoddard; he hadn’t grown up. Gerard’s old friend had no idea how what he’d discovered in Manhattan could impact so many lives. How could he wound innocent Bella and his half siblings? Kennan had reduced it all to cheap revenge and blackmail. Gerard was beginning to see it was so much more.

Blessing stood in the backyard of the orphanage, staring at the charred remnants of her carriage house. While she was away for Caleb and Rebecca’s wedding and a couple days’ visit with her family, it had caught fire.

“The neighbor over there,” Adela explained, pointing to the east, “was up late with a toothache. He saw the fire and sounded the alarm. People came flying out of their houses in robes and slippers with buckets in hand and lined up here in the backyard by the pump. Then the volunteer firemen arrived with their pumper truck. They worked like mad pumping water onto the fire, but they couldn’t save it.”

Blessing heard footsteps, and Scotty appeared beside her and wrapped his arms around her knees. She reached down and patted the boy’s head.

“We had a fire,” the boy said sadly. “It was scary. Miss Adela made us line up in the front yard in our coats.”

“God protected thee.”

“Where’s Mr. Ramsay?
He
shoulda been here to pertect us.”

For a moment Blessing could barely breathe. A tourniquet tightened around her lungs.
Gerard.
If he were here, she would be tempted to bury herself in his arms and seek comfort as she contemplated how to keep the children safe. She struggled to maintain control.

“Mr. Ramsay’s mother is very ill, Scotty.” Blessing stroked the boy’s soft, fine hair. “He had to go to be with her.”

“I’m sorry his mama is sick.”

Adela held out her hand. “Come on, Scotty. It’s time I read you children a story.”

Scotty released his hold on Blessing and accepted Adela’s hand. But he continued glancing over his shoulder at her until they disappeared into the house.

The breeze carried the acrid smell of charred wood to her. The loss of the carriage house had not shaken her, but she feared the fire was not the result of any accident or natural cause. Smith again? Or was she letting fear overtake her? Fires happened every day for many different reasons. She shoved Smith out of her mind.

The vision of Gerard fighting the slave catchers came to her. She clamped her unruly mind against further thoughts of Gerard. And focused on planning her next step.

She had meant to begin looking for a new orphanage. Maybe she really needed to talk to a builder and buy some property farther out of the city. She’d originally chosen the present location because it was near Little Africa, which was a place of allies though often the target of violence, and near the docks, where she found many of her orphans. She sighed, considering this decision.

Gerard again tried to slip into her mind. She turned and walked briskly into the orphanage. No time to see Smith behind every bad event. No time for foolish longings. Time to make plans and carry them out.
Greater is he that is in me, than he that is in the world.

MARCH 26, 1849

Gerard stood in the gloom of his family’s parlor, each window shrouded with funeral crepe. He didn’t know if he could go through the restrained and affected protocol of his mother’s
visitation without exploding or fleeing. If anybody here truly mourned his mother as he did, he didn’t know who it was. This artificial society mourning mocked his mother.

But for her sake, he must not make a scene. He wouldn’t turn her obsequies into a carnival of emotions, wouldn’t give everyone something shocking to gossip about. All the doors on the first floor stood open to accommodate the full complement of Boston’s elite. They’d turned out to see and be seen.

Surrounded by cloyingly fragrant lilies, his mother lay in her ornate coffin upon a special pedestal made for this purpose. Every time he glanced at his mother’s coffin, he was rent with grief. And every glance at his father sparked an outrage he was having trouble hiding.

Thus far Gerard had not been able to bring himself to approach his mother’s casket, though everyone else, all dressed in sober black, paraded past the coffin, wiping their eyes and murmuring “appropriate” comments. The proprieties of death were being observed to the letter. And it sickened him. These people belonged to his father’s life, not his. Or at least his father’s
Boston
life.

“We are so sorry for your loss, Saul,” yet another guest murmured to Gerard’s father, who stood nearby. Each word of condolence to his hypocrite of a father plunged another needle into Gerard’s mourning soul. He clamped down his fury.
If only Blessing were here.

He banished the thought once again. A mourner approached him. He vaguely recognized this woman, who began shaking his hand. “I knew Regina from the time we were girls together. She had such a sweet heart . . . and such potential.” The woman sent a sharp glance at his father.

He gripped the woman’s hand. She was the first person who showed she understood how his mother had suffered after marrying his father.
And she doesn’t know the worst.
“Thank you. My mother was special.”

“I hear you’ve settled in Cincinnati,” the woman continued.

“Yes. My cousin is there.”

She squeezed his hand. “A good choice. A promising city, I’ve heard.” Then she moved down the line and somehow, in the crush, managed to avoid speaking with his father.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gerard glimpsed Kennan and his family entering. Kennan must have used the death of a friend’s mother to force his family to let him come home. Gerard’s neck muscles tightened painfully. He didn’t want a dispute at his mother’s funeral. He owed Mother her dignity. He moved to intercept Kennan but was blocked by several new arrivals all eager to tender their sympathy.

Kennan, don’t.

But his profligate friend ignored him and went straight to his father. “Mr. Ramsay, I know how much you’ll miss your dear wife,” Kennan said with rich irony in his voice, which was also unusually loud and somewhat slurred. Was Kennan never completely sober?

Gerard held his breath.
Kennan, that’s enough here and now.

Father thanked him with a face stiffened with disapproval.

Kennan chuckled but covered it with a cough and moved away. He avoided the coffin, found a chair near a window, and sat slumped against the straight back.

Touched by relief, Gerard remained where he was throughout the visitation, repeatedly checking the tall clock and
counting down to the time when the coffin would be taken to the cemetery for the graveside service, ending this travesty.

At last the grieving crowd adjourned to their vehicles. The satin-black hearse, pulled by black horses sporting dyed plumes and followed by a long line of carriages, arrived at the cemetery. Standing graveside, Gerard felt tears wash down his face, but he couldn’t stop them and didn’t bother to wipe them away. A son could weep at his mother’s grave.

The minister spoke as her coffin was lowered into the ground. “‘Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.’”

While earth was cast upon the coffin, the minister continued: “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God our sister Regina Ann Ramsay; and we commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

The words spoken over her coffin provided Gerard some comfort. He realized that, though his heart was an open wound, his mother—the one person who had loved him most—was with God, no longer suffering. What stabbed him was that his father had betrayed her. Though Blessing was miles away, he felt her comforting presence. She would have reassured him of God’s love for his dear mother, a true Christian. But he shouldn’t be thinking of Blessing at this moment.

The horrendous day finally ended. He and his father entered their home. A solemn footman helped them shed their top hats, canes, and gloves in the foyer. This act of discarding
the outward signs of mourning liberated him in some way, released him. He followed his father into his second-floor study, finally ready to vent his rage.