Victoria Thompson: Murder On Waverly Place

“Not exactly. As you already know, Maggie wasn’t one to meekly go along with our father’s plans. She escaped before the ship set sail, and she found her lover, and they eloped. But they didn’t live happily ever after,” Sarah warned quickly when Maeve’s face lit up again.

“But they were together!” Maeve protested.

“My father is a very powerful man. He had dismissed Maggie’s husband when he found out about the affair, and he’d made sure the man couldn’t get work anywhere else. He had to labor on the docks, when he could find work at all, and when he couldn’t, they went hungry.” Sarah had to close her eyes to shut out the visions that still haunted her.

“That must’ve been awful hard on your sister,” Maeve said. “With her being used to living in that fancy house and all.”

“None of us ever imagined how much they suffered. I tell myself that if we had, my parents would have helped them, but… Well, we’ll never know, will we?”

“They would have,” Maeve assured her. “Mrs. Decker is such a nice lady.”

Sarah wished she was as certain. “At any rate, we had no idea where they were. I think my parents believed that if they were truly in need, they would ask for help. In fact, I think that was exactly what my father had planned. They’d come crawling back, he’d make them beg forgiveness for defying him, and then he’d help them.”

“Except your sister would never give in, so they never asked.”

“No, she wouldn’t, not until it was too late.” Sarah drew a deep breath and let it out in a weary sigh. “I was home alone that night when he finally came,” she remembered. “My parents were at some party, and there wasn’t time to find them. Maggie was dying.”

“Oh, no!”

“He took me to the place where they were living. It was a rear tenement, on the fifth floor.” Sarah didn’t have to explain to Maeve that this was the cheapest of lodgings. Rear tenements were built in the spaces behind the buildings that fronted onto the streets. They got little air and less sunshine, and the fifth floor would be the least desirable location in a building where no one ever wanted to live in the first place. “The front room was full of lodgers who rented out floor space at night. That was the only way they could afford the rent.”

Maeve’s eyes were filling with tears. She didn’t want to hear the ending to this story, but she held Sarah’s gaze, determined not to flinch.

“Maggie had given birth with no one to help her, and she was dying. I know now that the afterbirth hadn’t been expelled properly, but I didn’t know anything about childbirth then. She was bleeding and no one could make it stop. She wanted me to take care of her baby.” Sarah’s voice caught on a sob as the horrible memories overcame her.

“You did, didn’t you?” Maeve cried. “Please tell me you didn’t leave him there!”

“He was already dead,” Sarah remembered, wiping the tears from her own face. “Such a tiny little thing and so perfect. I’ll never forget how beautiful he was. But I promised her I’d take care of him, and then… then she was gone.”

“And that’s why you became a midwife,” Maeve guessed, her voice filled with wonder.

“Yes,” Sarah said simply. “There were other reasons, too, but that was probably the most important one.”

“And when you married Dr. Brandt, your parents had learned their lesson and didn’t stand in your way.”

“I suppose you could say that. At least they didn’t stop me. I didn’t see them much after I was married, and after Dr. Brandt died, we quarreled and didn’t speak at all for several years.”

“But now you’ve made up.”

“Yes, although none of us can really forget what happened to Maggie.”

“But that wasn’t your fault. You were so young, you couldn’t’ve done anything.”

“I knew Maggie wasn’t going to Europe. She told me she was planning to elope. I’ll always wonder what would have happened if I’d told my parents and they’d been able to stop her.”

“You couldn’t do that! She wanted to be with the man she loved!” Maeve protested.

“But if I’d spoken up, she’d still be alive and her baby would, too. Even her husband… He hanged himself after Maggie died. Three lives lost, because I kept her secret.”

“That’s foolishness, Mrs. Brandt,” Maeve insisted. “You can’t know what would’ve happened. Maybe Maggie wouldn’t want to be alive like that. Imagine knowing your baby was out there somewhere and you’d never see him again!”

Sarah smiled at the girl. “Thank you, Maeve, for trying to make me feel better.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” she protested. “I’m telling the truth!”

“Yes, you are,” Sarah said. “And you’re right. We don’t know what would have happened, but now you know what did happen and why my mother is so interested in contacting the dead.”

“Does she want to tell your sister she’s sorry for what happened?”

“Yes, she does, and since we both know this spiritualist is a fake, she’s not going to be able to do that.”

“But what if she could?”

Sarah looked at her in surprise. “I thought you didn’t believe.”

“I don’t, but Mrs. Decker does, and that’s all that counts. If she believes this person can talk to your sister, then she can say she’s sorry and she’ll feel better. Would that be wrong?”

A very good question. Sarah considered it.

“Or maybe,” Maeve ventured, “you think she doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“Oh, no! I know how sorry she is. I’ve always known that, but tonight I finally realized how much she’s suffered. I don’t want to see her suffer anymore.”

“Then what harm could it do? So long as you’re there to make sure nobody takes advantage of her, I mean.”

What harm could it do? Sarah had no idea. She just hoped she wasn’t going to find out.

BY THE TIME THE DECKERS’ COACH STOPPED IN FRONT OF Sarah’s house the next day, she was certain she’d made a terrible mistake by agreeing to accompany her mother. Her growing apprehension had infected Catherine, who started crying when Sarah kissed her good-bye and started out the door.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” she assured the child. “I’ll be back in a little while, and when I am, Mrs. Decker will be with me.”

“Hush, now,” Maeve soothed the child. “Mrs. Ellsworth will be here in a minute, and we’ll bake some cookies,” she said, naming Sarah’s next-door neighbor. “You’ll like that, won’t you?”

Catherine shook her head in misery, big tears rolling down her cheeks as Sarah forced herself to turn away and take her leave.

The Deckers’ coachman was holding the door for Sarah, and she climbed inside to find her mother looking pale and drawn.

“Mother, are you ill?” Sarah asked in alarm. “We don’t have to do this if-”

“No, no, I’m not ill. I just couldn’t sleep a wink last night for thinking about Maggie. What if she appears? Oh, Sarah, I don’t think I could bear seeing her again.”

“She’s not going to appear!” Sarah exclaimed, horrified. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. You taught me that yourself.”

“Sometimes there are… apparitions at these events,” Mrs. Decker said as if she hadn’t heard. “My friend Mrs. Burke told me.”

From what Maeve had said last night, Sarah felt reasonably certain that any apparitions that appeared would be staged by the spiritualist, and her mother wasn’t likely to see an apparition on her very first visit in any case. She’d have to return several times and pay a large amount of money for such a dramatic display. “Has Mrs. Burke actually seen an apparition?”