A Place to Belong
Authors: Joan Lowery Nixon
FICTION
A Candidate for Murder
The Dark and Deadly Pool
Don’t Scream
The Ghosts of Now
Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories
The Haunting
In the Face of Danger
The Island of Dangerous Dreams
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
Laugh Till You Cry
Murdered, My Sweet
The Name of the Game Was Murder
Nightmare
Nobody’s There
The Other Side of Dark
Playing for Keeps
Search for the Shadowman
Secret, Silent Screams
Shadowmaker
The Specter
Spirit Seeker
The Stalker
The Trap
The Weekend Was
Murder
!
Whispers from the Dead
Who Are You?
NONFICTION
The Making of a Writer
Dr. Mundy, his face dark red with anger, struggled to stay in control. He raised his voice and said firmly, “No need to shove or shout. If you’re not happy, I’ll refund your money. Folks know my good reputation wherever I go.”
“Not in New York,” Danny said. “Your tonic killed a man there.”
“A lie! The boy is lying!” Dr. Mundy shouted, glaring at Danny.
“I am not lying,” Danny said. “You aren’t a real doctor, either.”
“The man’s a crook!” someone yelled.
“A cheat! Give back our money!”
A woman screamed as the crowd pushed toward the wagon.
Dr. Mundy handed back coins as fast as he could, tossed bottles of pills and tonic helter-skelter into the wagon, and scrambled to lift and lock the wagon’s gate. He paused in front of Danny, grabbing the collar of his coat and poking his face close to Danny’s. “I won’t forget you, brat!” he said. “I’ll get you for this.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 1989 by Joan Lowery Nixon and Daniel Weiss Associates, Inc.
Cover art copyright © 1990 by Nigel Chamberlain
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. Originally published in hardcover by Delacorte Press, New York, in 1998.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-553-05803-1 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-440-22696-3 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-307-82757-9 (ebook)
First Delacorte Press Ebook Edition 2013
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Elise Howard
in camaraderie
During the years from 1854 to 1929, the Children’s Aid Society, founded by Charles Loring Brace, sent more than 100,000 children on orphan trains from the slums of New York City to new homes in the West. This placing-out program was so successful that other groups, such as the New York Foundling Hospital, followed the example.
The Orphan Train Adventures were inspired by the true stories of these children; but the characters in the series, their adventures, and the dates of their arrival are entirely fictional. We chose St. Joseph, Missouri, between the years 1860 and 1880 as our setting in order to place our characters in one of the most exciting periods of American history. As for the historical figures who enter these stories—they very well could have been at the places described at the proper times to touch the lives of the children who came west on the orphan trains.
J
ENNIFER
C
OLLINS RACED
down the stairs, nearly colliding with her grandmother. “You can’t go jogging because it’s raining,” Jennifer said, “so could you read some of Frances Mary’s journal and tell us now—
right now
—about Danny and Peg and why they couldn’t write letters to anyone, and about the attempted kidnapping, and—”
Grandma Briley laughed and held up a hand. “Slow down,” she said. “You haven’t even had breakfast yet.”
“I’ll eat fast,” Jennifer promised.
Her twelve-year-old brother, Jeff, sauntered into the hall just behind Grandma. “It’s oatmeal,” he mouthed, as he rolled his eyes and grimaced.
“Even if we’re having oatmeal,” Jennifer solemnly added.
“You might try it with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter,” Grandma said. “Jeff liked it so much that he ate two helpings. Isn’t that right, Jeff?”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Jeff mumbled, looking embarrassed.
“Butter on oatmeal? That sounds strange,” Jennifer said.
“That’s the old-fashioned way to serve oatmeal,” Grandma answered. “I think a recipe from long ago will get you ready for a story that took place in 1860. Don’t you?”
Jennifer smiled. She already felt a close relationship with Frances Mary Kelly. Frances, Jenny’s great-great-great-grandmother, had written the stories about her trip to the West with her brothers and sisters on one of the orphan trains.
When she had first introduced Jennifer and Jeff to Frances and her journal, Grandma had combed Jennifer’s long dark hair into the style worn by Frances so that she would look even more like Frances’s photograph. Each time Jennifer had studied the photograph or held Frances’s faded blue journal, she had felt a peculiar kind of tingle, as if there were a special bond between them.
“Come with me,” Grandma said. “I’ll be chef in charge of the oatmeal, and you can pour yourself a big glass of orange juice. The kitchen’s as good a place as any to tell Danny’s and Peg’s story.”
It took just a few minutes for Grandma, Jeff, and Jennifer to settle around the kitchen table. Jennifer took a tentative bite of the oatmeal and was surprised to find that she liked it. She watched Grandma gently open the cover of the journal and turn to the page that began Danny’s story.
“As I’ve done before, I’ll read just a few paragraphs of Frances’s own words,” Grandma said. “Then I’ll tell you the rest of the story. Are you ready?”
“Yes!” Jennifer and Jeff answered together, so Grandma tilted the journal to the light and began to read the faint, spidery writing.
As I stared back at all those people who had come
to look over the children from the orphan train and perhaps choose one, I hoped with all my might that Danny and Mike would find a home together
.
Danny, at ten, was tall and strong for his age and had a careful, well worked out answer for everything. He carried his shoulders back and his chin high. “Stubborn,” a few people said about him. “Determined,” said others. Everyone agreed, however, that eventually he’d do well for himself. But I saw a vulnerable side of Danny most people couldn’t see, and I wasn’t as sure
.
When Danny was only seven, Da had overheard him explaining to Mike an elaborate escape route back to our home, “just in case those big blokes from Seventeenth Street ever decide to come after us.” Da had laughed and said to Ma, “You’ll never have to worry about Danny. If the fates ever choose to deal the boy a bad hand, they’ll find him well prepared to take care of the problem.”
And later, when he had grown old enough to work as a shiner, Danny had come home limping a bit, tugged off his right boot, and proudly dumped a handful of pennies on the table. He had rubbed his sore right foot as he announced, “Those bullies on the Avenue aren’t going to get my hard-earned coppers!” Ma had smiled and tousled his curly brown hair, calling him, “My careful, cautious child.”
Danny had been very close to Da, and he had suffered terribly the loss of a father when Da died. It wasn’t long before he’d attached himself to Mike, and no one could even waggle a scolding finger in Mike’s direction without Danny jumping to Mike’s defense. Mike—only a year older and an inch shorter than Danny—had such a ready sense of mischief that he seemed an unlikely one to take on the job of father
.
Would Da be proved right about Danny? I didn’t know. When we learned from the people at the Children’s Aid Society that we’d probably be separated and placed with different families, I’d seen the shock and terror in Danny’s eyes. He’d edged close to Mike, and I’d heard him say, his voice quivering, “We’ll stick together, you and me, huh, Mike?”
I would have given anything to be able to promise Danny then and there that his fear of being parted from his brother was groundless. But I couldn’t promise. I didn’t know what would happen until that day in the church when a kind couple chose Danny and Peg together. It was a boy and a girl they had come looking for, and there was no room for Mike
.
When it was time to leave, little Peg, only seven years old, her face wet with tears, took her foster mother’s hand trustingly, but Danny—oh, how I ached to see the misery on his face as he said good-bye to Mike
.
“You’ll have a good home with these people,” I’d told Danny with all the confidence I could muster. But a nagging part of my mind kept scolding, “How can you speak so bravely? How can you possibly know that your words are the truth?
”