The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty Page B

placed out,” she told them, looking kinder and happier than she ever had, her blue eyes large and, for the first and only time Cora could remember, twinkling. “In just a few hours, you’re going for a train ride. You’re going to go very, very far away, because there are good people in the Middle West, in places like Ohio and Missouri and Nebraska, who want to bring a child into their home.” Still smiling, she pressed her palms together. “You’re each going to find a family.”
    Cora, sitting in her little wooden chair, felt her blood go still. She looked at Mary Jane, who appeared too stunned to move, but with a strange smile on her face. Cora shook her head. She was afraid of Sister Delores, but she was more afraid of the train. She didn’t want to go to Ohio. And Betsy. Betsy wasn’t with them.
    “I have a family,” Patricia said. She already had the panicked voice of someone about to cry. “My mother’s in the hospital. She won’t know where I am.”
    Rose said that she couldn’t leave New York, either. Her father was coming to get her any day. Her and her older sister.
    “This has all been decided,” Sister Delores said quietly. Her hard look, the one they knew better, had already returned. “If you were placed with us, it’s because you’ve got no one else. Some of your parents may have made you promises that they can’t keep. You can’t rely on them.”
    “My father’s coming for me,” said Rose.
    “Your father’s a drunk.” Sister Delores looked at her without blinking. “If he would stay sober through the week, he could keep a job, and he could come get you as he says he will. But he hasn’t done that, has he? Has he? No. And he won’t. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unkind, but you are too gullible. It’s been a year now, Rose. We can’t throw away a chance like this so you can wait around on an empty promise.”
    Rose started to cry, her whimpers louder and higher-pitched than Patricia’s. She took the tips of her brown braids and held them against her eyes. Cora felt heat behind her own eyes, her bottom lip starting to tremble. This train, this horrible train, was leaving in a few hours. They wouldn’t be able to go back to the home. She wouldn’t see Sister Josephine again. Or Imogene. Or Betsy. They would give her bed away to a skinny girl with a shaved head. Perhaps they already had.
    “Stop that. Stop that crying. You don’t understand what good fortune this is.” Sister Delores looked at them and shook her head. “I wasn’t going to tell you this. But before you even get on the train, you’ll each get a new dress.”
    Mary Jane turned to Cora, her eyes bright with excitement. She reached over and squeezed Cora’s hand. She thought Cora was like her. Neither of them had a mother in the hospital, or a father with good intentions, or an older sister to leave behind. Not as far as they knew. But Cora shook her head again. She didn’t care if Sister saw her. She didn’t know if her mother was in the hospital or if she had a father coming to get her. But she might. The train would take her away from all she knew, from who she was.
    “I won’t go,” Patricia said. Now she was crying full on. “I won’t go. I don’t want a new family. I have a mother.”
    Sister Delores stood quickly. There was no telling if she had the paddle. Patricia shrank from her reach.
    Cora looked up at a high window, at the sliver of gray sky beyond. Even if she could reach the window, and somehow fly through it, where would she go? They’d had breakfast before they left, and already she was hungry again.
    “How very selfish,” Sister Delores said, still looking at Patricia. She shook her head, her veil brushing her shoulders. “That you would deny another child a place to sleep and enough to eat because you refuse to take advantage of an opportunity.”
    “Let someone else go in my place,” Patricia said. “They can go to the Middle West.”
    “Stupid girl.” Sister Delores