Page 108 of The Missing Pages
She could easily have written in Harry Elkins Widener and written “Deceased” beside it. But the Widener name was famous in these parts. She worried her daughter might be exploited in the future; that those seeking to adopt her wouldn’t be doing so out of love or the want of a child, but to line their own purse strings if they knew they could take a child connected to one of Philadelphia’s greatest fortunes.
But what if she wrote in a clue?
She scrawled in the name “Jim Hawkins.”
And for her daughter? That was easy. The red hair. The milky green eyes and gaze that seemed to pierce her heart. Harry had been here when she bought the Rossetti poems; so many of them were written for his muse Elizabeth Siddal, an artist in her own right.
Ada knew what she wanted to name their baby. She took the pen and wrote out the letters slowly and with great care: “Elizabeth Hawkins.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
IN HER BAG WERE TWO BOOKS.ONE OF THEM HAD ARRIVEDfrom England with her few belongings she’d left in her boarding house back home. She took out the copy ofThe Happy Fairy Bookthat Harry had given her as a gift and in the tiniest letters wrote her initials inside and a little doodle of a bird beneath it.
“Can you please give this to Elizabeth,” she asked Sister Mary. “Just knowing she has one thing from me will mean so much.”
“We aren’t allowed to send anything that has any notes or letters of any kind. Just like you, the child must start a new chapter when it leaves here.”
“There is no note. It was my favorite book as a child, that’s all.” She doubted the sisters would even notice the small monogram she had inscribed discreetly in the cover’s inner corner.
Sister Mary took it from Ada. “I can put it in the baby’s bag along with the bible we always give to the adopted parents when they take the child home. But as you can imagine, I’ll have no control over what they do with it from that moment onwards.”
Ada blinked away tears. “I understand. Thank you.”
To suppress her milk from coming in, Ada took the advice that the nuns gave her and rubbed peppermint oil into her breastsand placed cool cabbage leaves in her bra, replacing them every few hours.
On the day she was to leave the home, however, her emotions became so strong, Ada leaked right through her dress.
She did not want to walk out the door without her daughter. The idea of separation overpowered her. Part of her felt like she was on board theTitaniconce more, and she was having to leave the person closest to her heart all over again.
She closed her suitcase and looked at the door.
Ada had no idea where the nursery was located. She knew it was not near the rooms in which they placed the unwed mothers. The sisters knew hearing the wails of the newborn babies would not be good for those women now grieving the loss of motherhood. But Fanny would not be picking her up for another hour. That was enough time for Ada to try and find where they were keeping her baby.
She opened the door, her mind made up. She would not leave without Elizabeth.
The buttercup-colored walls outside her room seemed incongruent with the bracing smell of disinfectant in the hall.
“Where are you going, Miss Lippoldt?” Sister Agnes, who was one of the sterner, more elderly nuns working at the home for unwed mothers, stopped her as she reached the door leading toward the staircase.
Ada’s eyes froze like an animal caught in a suspended state of terror.
The sister pulled a small watch on a chain from around her neck. “I believe someone is arriving within the hour to get you.”
It was then the most wretched wail escaped from Ada. Gone was her rigid British upbringing, the societal expectation to show no emotion even under great duress. Ada collapsed to the ground.
“Come now,” Sister Agnes said firmly, pulling her up. “You must get ahold of yourself. Think of the child. Surely you know it would be impossible for you to give her a good life.”
The words pierced her like a knife’s wound. Steely, cold, and sharp.
An icy hand gripped her own, and Ada was swiftly led back to her room. This time, however, Sister Agnes felt the need to remind her that every action had a consequence. On her way out, she locked the door.
“I did as you directed and used the money you gave me from selling that book of poetry you loved so much to get your passage home,” Fanny said.
Ada nodded. She had turned in her original return ticket for England months before, when she’d first relocated to Philadelphia and had no idea when—or if—she’d be returning to England.
Once her Rossetti book was sent over from her flat in London, along with the fairy book from Harry and some of her other things, she had hoped to sell it to raise funds to allow her to keep her baby. But after the ordeal with Rosenbach, she knew she could no longer approach him to purchase the cherished volume for a fair price. So Ada had been left with no other choice but to sell it to another dealer, who’d given her less than half of what it was worth. It was nowhere near enough for her to raise a child on her own.
“I was able to get your train ticket to New York City,” Fanny said as she hugged her in the reception room and took the handle of Ada’s suitcase. “And the boarding pass for the boat to England tomorrow afternoon. You leave from New York Harbor.”
