Orphan Train

plays the tape backward and forward, stops and starts, scribbles down identifiers
     she missed. Kinvara, County Galway, Ireland. The Agnes Pauline. Ellis Island, The Irish Rose, Delancey Street. Elizabeth Street, Dominick, James,
     Maisie Power. The Children’s Aid Society, Mrs. Scatcherd, Mr. Curran . . .
    What did you choose to take with you? What did you leave behind? What insights did
     you gain?
    Vivian’s life has been quiet and ordinary. As the years have passed, her losses have
     piled one on another like layers of shale: even if her mother lived, she would be
     dead now; the people who adopted her are dead; her husband is dead; she has no children.
     Except for the company of the woman she pays to take care of her, she is as alone
     as a person can be.
    She has never tried to find out what happened to her family—her mother or her relatives
     in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes,
     Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with
     us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we
     turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them
     through our soles.
    Vivian has given Molly’s community service sentence meaning. Now Molly wants to give
     something back. No one else knows Vivian’s story. There’s no one to read the documents
     of indenture, of adoption; no one to acknowledge the significance of the things she
     values, things that would be meaningful only to someone who cares about her. But Molly
     cares. The gaps in Vivian’s stories seem to her mysteries she can help solve. On TV
     once she heard a relationship expert say that you can’t find peace until you find
     all the pieces. She wants to help Vivian find some kind of peace, elusive and fleeting
     as it may be.
    After being dropped off at the Bar Harbor green, Molly walks over to the library,
     a brick structure on Mount Desert Street. In the main reading room, she chats with
     the reference librarian, who helps her find a cache of books on Irish history and
     immigration in the 1920s. She spends a few hours poring over them and jotting notes.
     Then she pulls out her laptop and launches Google. Different words together yield
     different results, so Molly tries dozens of combinations: “1929 fire NYC,” “Lower
     East Side Elizabeth St. fire 1929,” “Agnes Pauline,” “Ellis Island 1927.” On the Ellis
     Island website she clicks Passenger Records Search. Search by ship. Now click the name of a ship from the list below . . . And here it is, the Agnes Pauline.
    She finds Vivian’s parents’ full names in the passenger records log—Patrick and Mary
     Power from County Galway, Ireland—and feels a vertiginous thrill, as if fictional
     characters have suddenly sprung to life. Searching the names, separately and together,
     she finds a small notice about the fire noting the deaths of Patrick Power and his
     sons, Dominick and James. There’s no mention of Maisie.
    She types “Mary Power.” Then “Maisie Power.” Nothing. She has an idea: Schatzman.
     “Schatzman Elizabeth Street.” “Schatzman Elizabeth Street NYC.” “Schatzman Elizabeth
     Street NYC 1930.” A reunion blog pops up. A Liza Schatzman organized a family reunion
     in 2010 in upstate New York. Under the “family history” tab, Molly finds a sepia-toned
     picture of Agneta and Bernard Schatzman, who emigrated from Germany in 1915, resided
     at 26 Elizabeth Street. He worked as a vendor and she took in mending. Bernard Schatzman
     was born in 1894 and Agneta in 1897. They had no children until 1929, when he was
     thirty-five and she was thirty-two.
    Then they adopted a baby, Margaret.
    Maisie. Molly sits back in her chair. So Maisie didn’t die in the fire.
    Less than ten minutes after beginning her search, Molly is looking at a year-old photograph
     of a woman who must be Vivian’s white-haired baby sister, Margaret Reynolds née Schatzman,
     age eighty-two, surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
     at her home in Rhinebeck, New York. Two and a half hours from New York City and just
     over eight hours from Spruce Harbor.
    She types in “Margaret Reynolds, Rhinebeck, NY.” An obituary notice from the Poughkeepsie Journal pops up. It’s five months old.
    Mrs. Margaret Reynolds, age 83, died peacefully in her sleep on Saturday after a short
     illness. She was surrounded by