Long Journey Home Read online

  Long Journey Home

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Hope Springs Series

  Long Journey Home | A Hope Springs Novel | Sarah M. Eden

  Dedication: | to Josephine, 1857–1860

  Chapter One | March 1873

  Chapter Two | Hope Springs, Wyoming Territory

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four | May

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For more Hope Springs novels, click on the covers:

  Hope Springs Series

  Longing for Home

  Hope Springs

  Love Remains

  My Dearest Love

  Long Journey Home

  Regency Romances

  The Kiss of a Stranger

  Glimmer of Hope

  An Unlikely Match

  For Elise

  All Regency Collection

  British Isles Collection

  The Jonquil Brothers Series

  Friends and Foes

  Drops of Gold

  As You Are

  A Fine Gentleman

  Love and Honor

  The Lancaster Family Series

  Seeking Persephone

  Courting Miss Lancaster

  Romancing Daphne

  Loving Lieutenant Lancaster

  Timeless Romance Anthologies

  Winter Collection

  Spring Vacation Collection

  European Collection

  Summer Wedding Collection

  Love Letter Collection

  Historical Westerns

  The Sheriffs of Savage Wells

  Old West Collection

  Mail Order Bride Collection

  Calico Ball

  Long Journey Home

  A Hope Springs Novel

  Sarah M. Eden

  Copyright © 2018 by Sarah M. Eden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles. This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Interior design by Heather Justesen

  Edited by Annette Lyon and Lisa Shepherd

  Cover design by Mirror Press, LLC, and Rachael Anderson

  Cover image © Sandra Cunningham / Trevillion Images

  Published by Mirror Press, LLC

  eISBN-13: 978-1-947152-42-7

  Dedication:

  to Josephine, 1857–1860

  Chapter One

  March 1873

  In New York City, only the wealthy could afford to truly live, and only the wealthy could truly afford to die. Maura O’Connor was nearly as poor as possible and was quickly growing as ill. She’d a son to raise with hardly a penny to her name. There was little to spare for doctors or medicines or being too sick to work.

  She’d pinched together what money she could to bring in a doctor, desperate for answers she dreaded hearing. Her wheezing, difficult breaths sounded like Jenny’s had, and like Mary Elizabeth’s and countless other women’s she’d worked with for long years in the cotton mill. The cough sounded as theirs had early on. She knew where they’d all ended. She needed to know if that was where she was headed.

  She sat in the silence of her one-room tenement, waiting to hear her fate. After drawn-out moments listening to her breathe and asking questions about her symptoms, Dr. Dahl sat back in a rickety chair across from her. His expression was not one of relief.

  “Is it brown lung?” she asked.

  He simply nodded.

  “But I’ve not worked in the factory for months.” Her lungs were the reason she’d left. Cleaning houses didn’t pay as well, and the work wasn’t as steady, but she’d not known what else to do to avoid the same fate as Jenny and Mary Elizabeth.

  “Sometimes, Mrs. O’Connor, a person leaves the factories too late, after the damage has been done.” He began packing up his instruments. Dr. Dahl was the only man of medicine who frequented the tenements of the poor in this area of the city. He charged little, but that meant he could not afford to spend very much time with each patient.

  “Are you quite certain, then? I won’t get better?”

  He shook his head. “Once the cotton gets into your lungs, it doesn’t leave. And so long as it’s in there, it takes a toll.”

  “Will my condition grow worse?” Heavens, she hadn’t that luxury.

  “Only time will tell you that.” He stood. “In a few more weeks, I can listen again.”

  “I’ll not have money enough for another visit so soon.” She’d likely need nearly a year to tuck away enough for his admittedly modest fee.

  He offered a brief look of sincere empathy. “Once you are able, I’ll check on you. But in all honesty, you will likely already know by then.”

  Her heart stopped a moment. “How will I know?” Did he mean her lungs would be worse? Or that she would be dead?

  “If your symptoms have not changed in the next few months, then this is likely where the disease will remain for a time.”

  “What do you mean by ‘for a time’?” A breath wheezed in, then pushed back out with a cough. “Will I grow worse no matter what?”

  He hesitated in the doorway. “Nothing can reverse the damage already done. You may live many years with little more than this cough and a bit of tightness in your lungs, or you may deteriorate quickly. I cannot predict the timeline with any certainty, but you will eventually grow worse. Nothing can stop that.”

  She knew she was taking more of his time than her meager payment justified, but she needed answers. “Can it be slowed?”

  “To a degree, yes, if you take care of yourself.” he said. “Send for me if you grow worse or contract a cold or anything else that impacts your lungs. A bit of medicine to help you through rough patches may grant you more time.”

  She could afford neither to call the doctor again nor to buy medicine, not when she struggled to put food on the table, or to replace the clothes her son outgrew or the shoes he wore holes through.

  “I have a son. He’s only fourteen.”

  The doctor’s solemn expression remained unchanged. “Send for me when things change. Proper medical care is your only real chance.”

  When things change. Her heart dropped to her toes. When.

 
He stepped into the corridor and tipped his hat to someone just out of sight. In the next moment, Maura’s neighbor Eliza appeared in the doorway, her little baby, Lydia, in her arms. She watched the doctor walk away before turning back to Maura, concern in her eyes.

  “You’ve had the doctor in?” Eliza eyed her with concern. “What did he say? Good news, I hope.” After Eliza had first arrived, Maura had needed time to grow accustomed to the sound of an English accent. Eliza hadn’t a truly proper manner of speaking, having come from circumstances as humble as Maura’s.

  “He offered me a few things I might do to feel better.” ’Twas a bit of a stretching of the truth, but she wasn’t ready to talk about how little hope he’d left her with. “Come inside.”

  She closed the door behind her friend and reached immediately for the baby. Eliza set her wee one in Maura’s arms.

  “Hello there, sweet Lydia.” Maura tucked the blanket more securely around the baby. “Have you a smile for your godmother?”

  Lydia was too sleepy for anything but a few slow blinks.

  Eliza watched Lydia a moment before turning to Maura. “Would I be imposing on you too much if I left her here with you for a spell while I rush to the market?”

  “Not imposing at all. And my Aidan’ll be home in a bit. You know he loves when little ones come for a visit.”

  “You’ve both been so good to us.” Sadness touched Eliza’s eyes. “I don’t know what we would do without you.”

  Maura shifted Lydia so she rested against her shoulder then set her free arm around her friend’s shoulders. “We love you, Eliza. And we love your Lydia. You bring us joy. So don’t you ever feel like a burden. Not you, and not Lydia. Not ever.”

  Eliza’s answering smile was a bit tremulous. “Lydia is certainly fond of you.”

  “Of course she is.” Maura stepped away enough to give Eliza room to compose herself. “Lydia and I’ve known each other from the very beginning.” Maura had acted as midwife at Lydia’s birth, the fifteenth she’d overseen in this tiny tenement building over the past eight years. “The Widows’ Tower,” the locals called it. An old, worn-down building, too shabby for even immigrant families in such a poor section of the city, it had become a refuge for destitute widows simply trying to survive. Some came with children, others alone, and in particularly heartbreaking instances, some arrived while carrying a child to be born without a living father.

  “Please give Aidan a hug from me,” Eliza said. “He’s seemed sad lately.”

  “He has,” Maura acknowledged. “But Lydia will lift his spirits, I’m certain.”

  “I thank you, Maura,” Eliza said. “I’ll not be long.”

  “Don’t you fret. We’ll be grand.”

  After Eliza slipped out, Maura rocked Lydia, who rested against her shoulder. The little one had grown heavy and lax with sleep. Maura walked from one end of the room to the other, a journey of only ten steps. She gently rubbed Lydia’s back. Now five months old, she was finally beginning to sleep well. Poor Eliza had been stretched to her very limit since Lydia’s birth. Many a night Maura had walked the floor of Eliza’s tiny room above her, trying to keep the colicky newborn quiet and soothed enough for her exhausted mother to get a bit of sleep.

  Maura knew what it was to be alone in this world with a child to care for. She remembered clearly the fear that had followed her those first months and years. She saw it daily in the faces of the other women in the tower. ’Twas likely in her eyes again now.

  Proper medical care is your only real hope.

  She couldn’t begin to afford it. She and Aidan both worked, but their combined income only just covered the necessities, and sometimes not even them. She’d not an extra penny to her name.

  A cough rattled through her and, with it, a deep, searing pain. She tensed against the urge, trying her utmost not to wake the baby. Her cough had been agonizing these past months.

  And it’ll not ever go away.

  Her goal, then, was simply to not grow worse too quickly. She had to find a means of securing medical care. In the first few years after Grady died, she’d sold everything of value they owned. Anything remaining they needed or couldn’t hope to get any money from.

  Except . . .

  A wave of dread crashed over her. One thing Maura owned would fetch a good price. One precious, treasured item. Heaven help her, how could she part with it?

  Careful of Lydia, she crossed to the bureau that acted as clothes press, kitchen cupboard, and linen chest. She pulled open one of the small drawers on the top row.

  A quick shifting of rags and cloths revealed the drawstring bag she sought. She clutched it tightly in her free hand, removed it from its safekeeping, and pushed the drawer closed with her hip.

  She set Lydia in the make-shift cradle Aidan had helped her fashion from discarded bits of wood two years ago. Nearly all the babies who’d lived in the building since had slept in the tiny bed at one time or another.

  Maura moved as quietly as she could to the table and sat. With shaking hands, she tugged at the top of the bag, slowly pulling it open. ’Twasn’t a large bag, neither was it full, yet it contained items more precious to her than all the gold in the world. She peered inside. Beside two hinged leather frames and atop a neatly folded handkerchief, lay a simple, thin gold ring.

  She carefully pulled it out, holding it tightly between her finger and thumb. The dim light spilling through windows, made dingy by the grime of the city, glinted off the metal. She’d stopped wearing the ring when she’d first begun working in the factory nearly eight years earlier. Too many horrifying, whispered tales had reached her about what happened to hands and fingers when unyielding rings grew entangled in the unforgiving machinery.

  That long-ago morning, as she’d slipped off the ring, she’d wept bitter, soul-shaking tears. ’Twas the first time it’d left her finger since the day Grady had put there. He’d been gone for two years by then, but taking off his ring had made his loss agonizingly new again. Made it evermore real.

  Sitting at the table in this tiny, cramped little room where she’d raised their son alone for eight of the ten years she’d been a widow, Maura couldn’t shake the feeling of inevitable defeat that began trickling over her. This ring was made of gold. It’d fetch a price good enough to see her through likely a couple of years of the doctor visiting and powders to see her health maintained. This, one of her dearest, most treasured possessions, was all she had with which to save her very life. Yet it was also all she had left of her sweetheart.

  Another cough surfaced, tearing at her as the previous had. As all of them did now.

  She set the ring atop the limp drawstring bag. Her eyes wouldn’t leave it. How well she remembered the look of pride and affection in Grady’s expression when he’d at last managed to scrimp and save enough to buy her that ring. He’d worked so hard and done without for so long.

  “I love you, my Maura,” he’d said. “I’d give you jewels if I could. I’d give you all the world.”

  “It must have come very dear.” She’d not wanted him to suffer for that offering. He’d worked tirelessly. The money he’d spent on the ring would have seen to many of his own needs, needs he must have neglected to purchase it.

  “Knowing you’ll wear it and treasure it, and that it’ll last a lifetime, and you’ll think of me whenever you see it on your hand, makes it a bargain at any price.”

  “Is that your way of saying you’re fond of me?” she’d teased a little. Jests had come easier then.

  “Fond doesn’t come close,” he’d answered. “I love you with all my heart, and I will for all my life.”

  They’d not been married long when he’d left to fight in the war that broke out between the states. His ring and his words had kept him close to her and had given her hope. Years later, word came of his death in battle. His grandest, most tender offering, the ring she had then worn, remained the only tangible connection she had to him.

  And here I sit, pondering how much I could se
ll it for. What else could she possibly do? She had a son. Their son. She couldn’t leave Aidan an orphan simply because she was too sentimental to do what was necessary for her to stay alive.

  For many wealthy people in New York City, seeing a doctor or buying medicine was little more than an inconvenience. But no matter how long the hours she worked, no matter that they never bought anything that wasn’t a necessity, she and Aidan would always be poor. She’d lived that truth too long to be fooled into believing anything else.

  I am going to die because I am poor. She and so many of her countrymen had fled the same fate, buoyed by the promise of America, only to discover that not much was different here. In Ireland, they’d died of starvation while those with wealth and power looked on in indifference. In America, they died of illness and injury, while those who profited from the very labor that killed them declared their deaths an acceptable cost of doing business.

  She ran her finger over the ring. No item in the world meant as much to her as it did. But Aidan was far more important than any object. If she didn’t sell it, and she died, he would be all alone.

  Grady would have understood. She told herself as much again and again, even as tears of mourning and frustration threatened to pour from her. If he’d known that his death would leave them in this dire situation, he would understand. He wouldn’t have begrudged her anything she needed to do to protect their son. He would not have been disappointed in her no matter how much guilt she heaped upon herself.

  The door handle turned. Heavens, was it time for Aidan to be home already?

  She quickly slipped the ring inside the bag and pulled the strings tight. With fast step, she reached the bureau and set the bag carefully atop it, then turned to greet her son, praying her distress did not show.

  He stepped inside, dragging his feet. Without looking up, he shut the door behind him. To her untrained eye, he seemed tall for fourteen. Had Grady been tall at that age? She hadn’t met him until he was a man grown. His family were halfway across the continent, unable to offer any help.

  Aidan dropped his bag of shoe shining equipment on the table and then slumped into a chair. He’d once been of a sunnier disposition, apt to smile. He’d grown more withdrawn every day since he’d begun shining shoes on the street corners.