Orphan Train

She laughs. “They should’ve given you a gold star. Bumped you up a grade.”
    “You’re not disappointed in me?”
    Vivian lifts her shoulders. “Eh.”
    “Really?” Relief washes over her.
    “You’ve certainly paid your dues, in any case, putting in all these hours with me.”
    “It hasn’t felt like punishment.” Once upon a time—fairly recently, in fact—Molly
     would’ve gagged over these words, both because they’re blatantly sycophantic and cringingly
     sentimental. But not today. For one thing, she means them. For another, she’s so focused
     on the next part of the story that she can barely think of anything else. She plunges
     ahead. “Listen, Vivian,” she says. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
    “Oh Lord.” Vivian takes a sip of cold tea and sets her cup down. “What have you done
     now?”
    Molly takes a deep breath. “It’s not about me. It’s about Maisie.”
    Vivian gazes at her steadily, her hazel eyes clear and unblinking.
    “I went online. I just wanted to see if I could find anything, and it was surprisingly
     easy; I found records from Ellis Island—”
    “The Agnes Pauline ?”
    “Yeah, exactly. I found your parents’ names on the roster—and from there I got the
     death notices of your father and brothers. But not hers, not Maisie’s. And then I
     had the idea to try to find the Schatzmans. Well, there happened to be a family reunion
     blog . . . and . . . anyway, it said that they adopted a baby, Margaret, in 1929.”
    Vivian is perfectly still. “Margaret.”
    Molly nods.
    “Maisie.”
    “It has to be, right?”
    “But—he told me she didn’t make it.”
    “I know.”
    Vivian seems to gather herself up, to grow taller in her chair. “He lied to me.” For
     a moment she looks off in the middle distance, somewhere above the bookcase. Then
     she says, “And they adopted her?”
    “Apparently so. I don’t know anything else about them, though I’m sure there are ways
     to find out. But she lived a long time. In upstate New York. She only died six months
     ago. There’s a photo . . . She seemed really happy—children and grandchildren and
     all that.” God, I’m an idiot, Molly thinks. Why did I say that?
    “How do you know she died?”
    “There’s an obituary. I’ll show you. And—do you want to see the photo?” Without waiting
     for an answer, Molly gets up and retrieves her laptop from her backpack. She turns
     it on and brings it over to where Vivian is sitting. She opens the family reunion
     photos and the obituary, saved on her desktop, and places the laptop in Vivian’s lap.
    Vivian peers at the picture on the screen. “That’s her.” Looking up at Molly, she
     says, “I can tell by the eyes. They’re exactly the same.”
    “She looks like you,” Molly says, and they both stare silently for a moment at the
     beaming elderly woman with sharp blue eyes, surrounded by her family.
    Vivian reaches out and touches the screen. “Look at how white her hair is. It used
     to be blond. Ringlets.” She twirls her index finger next to her own silver head. “All
     these years . . . she was alive,” she murmurs. “Maisie was alive. All these years,
     there were two of them.”

Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1939
    It is late September of my nineteenth year and two new friends, Lillian Bart and Emily Reece, want me to go with them to see a new picture that’s playing
     at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, The Wizard of Oz. It’s so long it has an intermission, and we’ve made plans to stay the night. Lillian’s
     fiancé lives there, and she goes almost every weekend, staying in a hotel for women.
     It’s a safe, clean place, she assures us, that doesn’t cost much money, and she has
     booked three single rooms. I’ve only been to the Twin Cities on day trips with the
     Nielsens—for a special birthday dinner, a shopping expedition, one afternoon at the
     art museum—but never with friends, and never overnight.
    I’m not sure I want to go. For one thing, I haven’t known these girls for long—they’re
     both in my night class at St. Olaf. They live together in an apartment near the college.
     When they talk about drinks parties, I’m not even sure what they mean. Parties where
     you have only drinks? The only party the Nielsens host is an annual open-house buffet
     lunch on New Year’s Day for their vendors.
    Lillian, with her friendly expression and golden blond hair, is easier to like than
     the arch