Peter looked over his shoulder and spoke for the first time since meeting Patty and Noah. “That’s how he earned the nickname Bull. Because no baby could be that big, only a hookin’ bull could.”
“What a grand soft story!” Patty still held one of Rebekah’s hands, as though she would do anything to hold on to her new friend. “Turn left at the bottom of this street. We will find a diner by the name of Joe’s All Night Diner. They serve people like Noah and me, if we have the money to pay that is. Other places, they won’t allow us in their doors.”
Chapter Ten
New York City
“I can’t help but notice your accent, Patty.” Rebekah sat across a little table from Patty and Noah. Joseph sat beside her and Peter, with his newspaper, sat on a stool in front of a long bar. “If I may say so, you sound as far away from home as we are.”
“We are,” Patty began. She was interrupted as the server appeared with their orders. Thick toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken soup, and the promise of apple pie for dessert. Without waiting, Patty tucked into her meal, as did Noah, no sooner than the plates left the server’s hand.
Rebekah and Joseph exchanged a look. They joined hands and bowed over their shared plate. “Heavenly Father,” Joseph started. “Thank you for the blessing of this food, for this journey, but mostly, thank you for our company, Patty and Noah. May we all continue to walk in Your light. In Jesus’s most holy name...”
Everyone at the table answered. “Amen.”
Patty and Noah, with a few bites missing from their food, had joined in as Joseph said grace. When it was over, Patty did a funny thing with her hand, Noah did too.
Rebekah smiled. “You were saying?”
Patty nodded. “Aye, yes. Forgive me rudeness. An empty stomach will make you forget lots of things, I’m afraid.”
Rebekah nodded.
Patty picked up a piece of toast and nibbled at the crust. “I’m from Ireland. County Down.”
Peter sat up straighter and shifted in his seat. “I thought your name sounded familiar. Some folks with the last name of O’Shaughnessy traveled with our parents, our late parents, on a wagon train in the late 1860s.”
He stood up and plucked a chair from another table. “I’ll squeeze in if you don’t mind.”
Noah looked up at him and grinned. His little lips glistened with broth from his steaming mug of soup. Peter reached over and tousled his hair. “Our given name is O’Leary. No doubt we come from the same country, but I’m not sure rightly where in Ireland we hailed from.”
Rebekah clapped her hands and did a little bounce. “We may even be family!”
“Perhaps.” Patty’s sad eyes gleamed. “I was from a Catholic family. I married a man named Shadrach, who was Protestant.”
Rebekah glanced from Patty to Joseph to Peter. “I don’t understand, forgive me. What is this Catholic and Protestant?”
“The way we worship God.” Patty took a bite of the buttery toast, and spoke over the mouthful. “Our families, of course, didn’t approve. So Shadrach came to America where he said nobody would care about our religious differences.” She forced a swallow, then followed it with a drink of coffee. “He came over first and worked his job on the docks, then sent for me. It was a happy time; then he took sick right before Noah came along.”
Noah finished his soup while his mother talked. Peter motioned to the server for more, which brought a smile to the lad’s face.
“We didn’t have much,” Patty continued. “But what we had was ours.”
“That sounds ideal.” Rebekah smiled dreamily.
“It was until it wasn’t. Until Shad took sick. He grew worse and worse until he died, left me a widow in a strange country.” She looked at her son. “Noah is also of a peculiar sort since he never speaks. People fear what they don’t understand, do they not? Me boy makes people point and stare.”
Everyone sat in uncomfortable silence.
Patty took another bite. “It wasn’t long until we lost everything and Noah and I found ourselves living in the streets. Nobody will hire me, the mother of a mute. They think I’m a witch.”
She closed her eyes and touched her forehead, her chest, and each shoulder, just as she had done before. Noah did the same. She ended with an amen.
“Which I am not.”
Rebekah’s curiosity got the best of her. “What is that?”
“A witch? That is a person who—”
“Oh,” Rebekah giggled. “No, not that.” She fumbled her fingers in front of her. “That.”
“It’s a prayer. A reminder that Jesus died for me on the cross too. And that He lives in me still.” She offered a shy smile. “It’s called crossing yourself. Like the cross on which He died.”
Rebekah smiled. “I see.”
Patty finished the last of her toast and went to work on her eggs. “Some offered me work at the tar-paper shacks that line the docks, said that is all I would be good for. But I cannot. It would be a sin. I would rather live off the scraps of others than work there.”
Rebekah’s eyes were wide. “What happens there? In the tar-paper shacks?”
Patty shook her head. “You’re good people, innocent people. You need not know about the goings on in the likes of those places.” She shook her head harder. “They be nests of vipers.”
Peter picked up his paper and folded it.
“You have been keeping your paper close to your heart, Peter O’Leary,” Patty commented.
He laid the paper in front of her. “We are here to look for her. She is from our village back home in Indiana.”
At least he called Indiana home.
“And you love her,” Patty said. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Rebekah had never seen, in all the days since Peter found her, her brother flush such a crimson shade before.
“I—uh, I...”
Patty shrugged. “I might be a lowly street urchin in the eyes of society, but I can read people.” Patty looked directly at Peter. “I can read you. And you love her. Deeply.”
“You’re right.” Peter hung his head. “I do. And you know as well as I the harsh realities of this world. I must rescue her, or at least give her the option to be rescued.”
Patty finished her plate. The server brought over the promised slices of apple pie. Little Noah banged the table excitedly and kicked his bare feet.
“And you two,” Patty continued, looking at Joseph and Rebekah. “You two are to be married. But something is causing you distress, no?”
Rebekah’s smile faded and her shoulders sagged. “In our custom, we must sew our own wedding dresses. And those of our bridesmaids.” She looked into Patty’s clear, honest eyes. “I don’t sew very well.”
“I tell her her dress will be lovely, no matter what.”
“If it stays on,” Rebekah muttered. “I fear it won’t.”
