“Miss Biddeford, I know these are terrible questions. And I think you have shown great courage in your answers. But I require this information if I am to take on your case. I also need to know if you have the stamina to face certain realities about your past. Believe me when I say to you that this is but the mildest foretaste of the questions that will be put to you if you decide to go any further with your suit.”
Olympia takes a breath and nods. “My family and I left Fortune’s Rocks on the morning of August eleventh,” she says. “My parents live on Beacon Hill in Boston. I discovered I was with child on the twenty-ninth of October.”
“You were examined by a physician?”
“Not immediately.”
Tucker leans back in his chair. Behind him on the desk, fitted into a silver frame, is a photograph of a handsome woman in her thirties — his mother, surely, Olympia guesses. When she was a young woman.
“Miss Biddeford, this next question is exceedingly difficult, but I must ask it. Is there any possibility that another man, a man other than John Haskell, could be the father of the boy you speak of?”
Despite Tucker’s warning, Olympia is shocked, not so much by the question itself as by the notion that she could ever have had such a relationship with anyone but Haskell. “No,” she answers vehemently. “No possibility whatsoever.”
“Good,” he says, and he looks genuinely relieved. “That is fine. Did you then contact John Haskell to tell him of the news?”
“No.”
“Tell me what happened on the day you were delivered of the child?”
“I am not sure what happened. I had been given laudanum toward the end of my confinement, and it made me sleepy, so that when I woke from the ordeal, the child had already been taken from me.”
“But you saw the child.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew it was a boy.”
“I was told it was a boy.”
“You had a physician with you? Or a midwife?”
“A physician. Dr. Ulysses Branch of Newbury Street in Boston.”
“Was it he who took the child from you?”
“I do not know. I assume whoever it was did so at the request of my father, since he had once or twice referred to ‘arrangements’ that had been made. Though he never spoke directly to me, either then or later, about what had been done with the child.”
“Did you ever ask him outright?”
“No,” she says. “I did not.” And it strikes Olympia as odd now that she did not. How was it that she accepted her fate so willingly?
“Your father left your house that night?”
“No, he did not.”
“Then he must have given the child to someone else?”
“Yes. I do not know precisely to whom he gave the child. But I have reason to believe the baby shortly entered the care of John Haskell himself.”
“The reason that I am lingering on the details of the birth is that the issue of how and when the child was taken from you may be important,” he explains.
“Yes, I understand.”
“How was it you came to know of the child’s whereabouts?”
“By accident,” she says. “Soon after I arrived in Fortune’s Rocks — that is, returned to Fortune’s Rocks, this July — I had a visit from an old friend of my father’s, Rufus Philbrick — ”
“Yes, I know the man,” Tucker says, interrupting her.
“During this visit, he inadvertently let slip about the child’s being in the Saint Andre orphanage.”
“And how would he have known this?”
“He is a member of the board of directors,” she says. “The next day I went to Saint Andre’s and spoke to a nun who I believe is called Mother Marguerite Pelletier. She told me the child had been at the orphanage but had been placed out. She told me the boy’s first name. She would not tell me his last name.”
“But you say the child’s name is” — Tucker consults his notes — “Pierre Francis Haskell.”
“Yes,” Olympia says. “I paid a call on Rufus Philbrick and asked him to find me the boy’s whereabouts. He told me the child’s name had once been — if not still was — Haskell. Later he was able to confirm this.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“He could tell me little else on that particular day, but later he wrote me that the boy’s guardians are Franco-Americans, Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc. They live at one thirty-seven Alfred Street here in Ely Falls and work at the Ely Falls Mill. The boy is three years old, and Rufus Philbrick’s letter said that he was healthy. I have seen the boy, and he appears to be so. That is all I know. Oh, and he was baptized into the Catholic faith.”
“You spoke to the boy.”
“No, I saw him from a distance.”
Tucker removes his spectacles and cleans them with a handkerchief. “Did anything about the boy’s appearance suggest that he was the son of you and John Haskell?”
Olympia knows she will never forget the shock of seeing the boy’s face. “Yes. Definitely. He looks very like his father. I believe anyone would remark upon this resemblance.”
Tucker puts his spectacles back on. “Have you spoken to either Albertine or Telesphore Bolduc?”
“No.”
“Have you told anyone of your desire to reclaim your child?”
“Only Rufus Philbrick.”
“And you say you saw the boy again today?”
“Yes.”
Tucker sits back in his chair and folds his hands in front of his chin. “I cannot tell you today whether or not it is possible to pursue this case,” he says.
“I understand.”
“I will need to investigate certain matters.”
She nods.
“To do this, I will have to hire a private investigator. This is usual in these cases. . . .”
“Yes,” says Olympia.
“I am sorry to have to broach the subject of fees, but I fear — ”
“I have money,” Olympia says quickly. “Money is not a difficulty.”
“Very well then,” he says, standing, and she takes this as her cue to stand as well.
“May I call your carriage?” he asks. “Or do you have a motorcar?”
“Mr. Tucker, I live alone,” Olympia says. “I have neither carriage nor motorcar, and I believe I have missed the last trolley to Ely. If you would be so kind as to call me a cab. . . .”
Tucker takes the gold watch from his vest pocket and consults it. “Yes, yes, of course,” he says. He turns and appears to be looking for something on his desk. “Can you be reached on the telephone?”
“No.”
“I shall need your address then.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I may have to visit you in Fortune’s Rocks from time to time to discuss this case,” Tucker says casually. He turns back to her with an address book in his hand. And she is surprised to see, in his face, that Payson Tucker finds her interesting, or intriguing, or possibly even attractive. And that because of this, he will take her case. For a moment, Olympia ponders the uneasy question of whether or not to use this attraction to gain what she wants.
And then she thinks about the boy, her son, in his cracked leather shoes.
“I will look forward to your visits,” she says.
• • •
When Olympia returns to Fortune’s Rocks, she writes to Rufus Philbrick to tell him that she has hired a lawyer to look into the matter of the boy. She also writes to her father to ask him for money, neglecting to explain the reason. While she awaits a reply from each, she contemplates possible ways in which she might earn extra funds to pay for an eventual custody suit; but she can see no immediate manner in which to secure a living, apart from hiring herself out again as a governess, which she most sincerely does not want to do. To pass the time, she reads books and newspapers, but the outside world seems to her more and more remote, particularly as the summerfolk desert Fortune’s Rocks. The days grow colder still, and she wonders if she will, after all, be able to remain in her cottage.
On the twenty-eighth of September, Olympia receives a letter — but not from Rufus Philbrick or her father.
27 September 1903
Dear Miss Biddeford,
I shall be staying at the Highland Hotel on 2 October and would be pleased if you would dine with me there. I understand that this may be awkward for you, and if you prefer, I will be happy to suggest an alternative venue. In either event, may I call for you at six o’clock on the evening of the second? I have some information regarding your custody suit that I think you will want to hear.
Respectfully yours,
Payson Tucker, Esq.
Olympia sits down at her kitchen table with the letter in her hand and reads it through once more. The Highland Hotel. She can see its high ceilings, its cavernous lobby, its long mahogany desks. She has not thought she would ever again be able to enter the Highland, but it seems cowardly now to have to say to Payson Tucker that she cannot do that, particularly so if she wishes to impress him with her courage and resolve. She takes her pen and ink from the drawer in the kitchen table and begins to write.
29 September 1903
Dear Mr. Tucker,
I should be pleased to dine with you at the Highland Hotel on the evening of the second of October. I shall expect you to call for me at six o’clock. I look forward most sincerely to hearing your information.
In anticipation of your arrival, I remain,
Olympia Biddeford
She blots the letter, puts it into an envelope, and seals it with wax. She glances about her kitchen.
So it is beginning,
she thinks.
• • •
Olympia dresses for the evening of October
2
in an emerald velvet suit with black braid piping and frog closures. The suit, though somewhat out of date, squares her shoulders and flatters her waist. With the suit, she wears a high-necked ivory silk blouse that once belonged to her mother and was left behind in her closets. Olympia chooses pearls for her jewelry: drop earrings, a rope at her neck, and a bracelet. She fusses for nearly an hour with her hair, forming wide wings at the sides and a double bun at the back. When she is dressed, she studies herself in the glass in the kitchen and is somewhat surprised to see that her face looks considerably older than she has remembered it, its planes more accentuated. Her figure is thinner as well, somehow longer, or perhaps this is just an illusion created by the suit. No, she is definitely thinner. She seems foreign to herself and yet oddly familiar, familiar from a time when it was not unusual to dress in velvet and pearls or to spend an hour on one’s hair.
Payson Tucker comes for Olympia at precisely six o’clock, as he said he would, in a smart lemon and black motorcar. His white shirt shines in the headlamps as he passes in front of the automobile after helping her in. He seems larger, more adroit than she has remembered him. Since it is only Olympia’s second time in a motorcar (though she does not tell Tucker this), she is more than a little tremulous when they begin to move faster than seems prudent along the winding narrow lane that abuts the seawall and the summer cottages of Fortune’s Rocks.
“You must be one of the few people still in residence on the beach,” he says.
“I think I may be.”
“You do not mind being so isolated?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “In fact, I am rather afraid I am enjoying it.”
At the hotel, a valet takes the car from Tucker, who touches Olympia’s elbow gently as he guides her up the long set of stairs. Although she has prepared herself, she hesitates a bit when they enter the lobby, a misstep she tries to hide with conversation.
“What brings you to the Highland so late in the season?” she asks Tucker.
“I have business in Fortune’s Rocks both today and tomorrow,” he answers, moving her firmly through the lobby, “and it seemed pointless to make the journey back and forth to Exeter, which is where I live. And besides, it has given me an excellent opportunity to see you again.”
He leads her into the dining room, which seems not to have changed at all. There are, she notes, only a few diners on this Tuesday in October. Olympia and Tucker are led to a table with white candles and late-summer roses, and as she sits, she takes in the sparkling goblets, the silver champagne buckets, the heavy cutlery, the massive crystal chandelier at the dining room’s center, and then the menu (haricot mutton, turkey with oyster sauce, mock turtle soup, apple brown Betty), reflecting that it has been four years since she was last in society. And she further reflects how very much, when she was, she took for granted its luxury, its furnishings, its food, its accoutrements, as if they were her birthright, her due, with hardly a thought — barely even an imagining — of those who would never have such luxury offered to them. Perhaps obliviousness is necessary, she thinks, to enjoy, or even to bear, this excess.
“The hotel will be open only a week longer,” says Tucker.