Page 7 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

The journey by train now felt like a dazed and fatiguing blur. Slumped in her seat, Maggie had barely registered the cities they’d passed through—Cedar Rapids, Omaha, Denver, Cheyenne. A glimpse of mountains, bigger than any she had ever seen before, snow-capped even in summer, before she’d closed her eyes against it all and the train had sped on.

A knock sounded at the door, and Maggie turned with a start. “Come in?” she asked uncertainly, a jolt going through her when the door opened and she saw Brendan standing there. He’d accepted their lodgings for the night with no more than a shrug, never mind a word, as he had accepted just about everything since they’d left Chicago.

Now he braced one shoulder against the doorway as he surveyed her with the faintest, ghost-like smile on his lips that reminded her, if only barely, of the friendship they’d once enjoyed. His hazel eyes were crinkled at the corners, his light brown hair swept back from his forehead. “Well, this is a turn-up for the books,” he remarked dryly, and Maggie let out a trembling laugh, grateful that he was speaking to her at all.

“Indeed it is. A brothel!” Another ripple of horror went through her as she shook her head. “I knew I had fallen low, but not as low as all that.” She’d meant the remark lightly, but she had to glance away as bitterness and regret twisted her insides. “Serves me right, I suppose.”

Brendan took a step into the room. “Maggie, don’t,” he said quietly.

She shrugged and turned away, unwilling to look at him. “You know it does.”

They hadn’t spoken of the last six months, not really. Too much had befallen them to go into the details—Maggie’s ruination, both of business and reputation, their flight from H.H. Holmes, who had been a malevolent presence and suspected killer. Brendan had tortured himself for months, believing he was enabling the man’s wicked crimes by working for him. Even now, Maggie could see the agony of regret shadowing his eyes and tensing his jaw. She wondered if he would ever be free from it.

And what about her? Could she ever forgive herself for the way she’d let herself be led by the carelessly charming Theo Stein? For how naively and foolishly she’d convinced herself that their relationship was respectable, andso was she?

And then she’d learned the truth in the most humiliating and painful way. The memory alone was enough to make Maggie close her eyes against another hot wave of shame.

What a fool she’d been. What a prideful, stupid fool.

“How long are you going to punish yourself?” Brendan asked quietly.

“How long areyou?” Maggie fired back at him. She whirled around to face him and for a few seconds they simply stared at each other in a standoff, if not a truce. Brendan looked away first, his shoulders sagging. Neither of them spoke for several long moments.

Then, with a sigh, he walked to the window, bracing his hand on the frame as he took in the view. “You can see the bay from here,” he told Maggie. “Come look.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Maggie joined him at the window. She felt all jumbled up inside from their conversation, both from what had been said as well as what she felt hadn’t been. The past remained a vast and unspoken chasm between them, and perhaps it always would. They never seemed able to cross it, no matter how they tried.

Outside, the maze of city streets with their tumbledown houses and warehouses stretched all the way to the water, which shimmered under the sun that broke through the heavy clouds. The fog was finally lifting.

The bay was full of all manner of sailing vessels—fishing and ferry boats, schooners and trawlers, flat-bottomed skiffs and steamboats heading north, maybe all the way to Alaska. Maggie imagined the people aboard those vessels—captains and crew, merchant seamen and passengers, everyone with plans, with dreams, withhope.

She turned away from the window.

“Tomorrow we’ll have to find somewhere else to stay,” she told Brendan. “I don’t know where, but certainly not in this neighborhood.” She paused before continuing stiltedly, feeling it had to be said, “Please don’t feel obliged in any way to provide for us yet again. Danny and I can manage?—”

“So you’re casting me off once more?” Brendan asked. His tone was light, but his face looked hard.

“Casting you off?” Maggie turned to face him. “Brendan,no. I just… just don’t want you to feel beholden to us. You’ve already done so much, at great cost to yourself, and?—”

“Or is it thatyoudon’t want to be beholden tome?” He shook his head, his lips twisting in what looked like derision. “I thought we were past all that, Maggie. You said you’d put your pride behind you?—”

“It’s consideration, not pride,” Maggie replied, her voice rising. “And I don’t know what you want, Brendan. You’ve barely spoken since we left Chicago?—”

He hunched his shoulders, turning away from her. “There’s nothing to say.”

She stared at him helplessly. It felt as if there was far too much to say, and yet neither of them seemed willing to say it. When she’d first suggested they travel to San Francisco, she’d tried to bolster Brendan’s spirits with hopeful talk of finding a job, opening a grocer’s like he’d once had in New York. Hazy dreams that had kept them going, at least for a little while, but now with the reality of their situation pressing down on them, those dreams seemed hazier than ever. How could they possibly start from nothing,again?

“Tomorrow I’ll look for work,” she stated firmly. “There has to be something I can turn my hand to. And we’ll find more suitable lodgings.” They could stay together, if he wanted, and maybe her father would come, too. It didn’t seem as if he had much of a life here, sleeping till noon and smelling of spirits.

“These suit me just as well,” Brendan replied with a shrug, “and I doubt you’ll get Danny to leave your da now that he’s finally found him.”

“We’re living in abrothel,” Maggie reminded him, trying for a little humor, “I daresay it shouldn’t suit any of us!”

A smile tugged briefly at Brendan’s mouth and then vanished. “I don’t know that the kind of boarding house we could afford would be much better,” he pointed out. “Half of the cheaper ones act as brothels, or almost, at least for some of their rooms. This place seems clean and tidy, and aboveboard, in its own way.” He gave a surprisingly good-natured grimace at this admission. “The other places around here are far worse, from what I saw while I was waiting out on the street. From what I heard, Miss Jessie runs a respected establishment.”

Judging from the house’s furnishings as well as the lady herself, Maggie could believe that, but was arespectedbrothel really any better?

“Even so…” she began, before trailing off, too tired to keep arguing, with anyone. She knew she couldn’t fight Brendan as well as Danny and her da on this, and maybe she shouldn’t even try. Since she no longer had any more grand aspirations, did it really matter where she lived?