Orphan Train

In the dozen or so photos in Google images, mostly head shots of Sarah with her violin and Rotary award ceremony groupings, she is slim, like Vivian, with an alert, guarded expression. And blond hair.

“I suppose she dyes it,” Vivian says.

“Don’t we all,” Molly says.

“I never did.”

“We can’t all have gorgeous silver hair like yours,” Molly says.

Things happen quickly now. Vivian sends Sarah an e-mail. Sarah calls. Within days, she and her dentist husband have booked a flight to Maine for early June. They’ll bring their eleven-year-old granddaughter, Becca, who grew up reading Blueberries for Sal and is, Sarah says, always up for an adventure.

Vivian reads some of the e-mails out loud to Molly.

I always wondered about you, Sarah writes. I’d given up hope of ever finding out who you are and why you gave me away.

It’s exciting, this getting-ready business. A troupe of workers marches through the house, painting trim, fixing broken baluster shafts on the porch facing the bay, cleaning the Oriental rugs, and patching the cracks in the wall that appear every spring when the ground thaws and the house resettles.

“It’s time to open up all the rooms, don’t you think?” Vivian says one morning over breakfast. “Let the air in.” To keep the bedroom doors from slamming shut in the wind from the bay, they prop them open with old hand irons Molly found in one of the boxes in the attic. Having all those doors and windows open on the second floor creates a breeze that blows through the house. Everything seems lighter, somehow. Open to the elements.

Without asking Molly’s assistance, Vivian orders some new clothes for herself from Talbots on her laptop with a credit card. “Vivian ordered clothes from Talbots. On her laptop. With a credit card. Can you believe those words just came out of my mouth?” Molly tells Jack.

“Before we know it, frogs will be falling from the sky,” he says.

Other signs of the apocalypse proliferate. After a pop-up ad appears on her screen, Vivian a

“She sent her daughter a friend request,” Molly tells Jack.

“Did she accept?”

“Right away.”

They shake their heads.

Two sets of cotton sheets are taken from the linen closet and washed, then hung to dry on the long clothesline beside the house. When Molly plucks them off the line, the sheets are stiff and sweet-smelling. She helps Terry make the beds, stretching the clean white sheets over mattresses that have never been used.

When is the last time any of them felt this kind of anticipation? Even Terry has gotten into the spirit. “I wonder what kind of cereal I should get for Becca,” Terry muses as they drape the Irish Wreath quilt on the girl’s bed, across the hall from her grandparents’ suite.

“Honey Nut Cheerios are always a safe bet,” Molly says.

“I think she’d prefer pancakes. Do you think she’d like blueberry pancakes?”

“Who doesn’t like blueberry pancakes?”

In the kitchen, while Molly cleans out cabinets and Jack tightens the latches on the screen door, they discuss what Sarah and her family might want to do on the island. Stroll around Bar Harbor, get ice cream at Ben & Bill’s, eat steamed lobster at Thurston’s, maybe try No

“She’s not here to do touristy things. She’s here to meet her birth mother,” Terry reminds them.

They look at each other and start laughing. “Oh yeah, that’s right,” Jack says.

Molly is following Sarah’s son, Stephen, on Twitter. The day of the flight, Stephen writes, “Mom’s off to meet her ninety-one-year-old birth mother. Go figure. A whole new life at the age of sixty-eight!”

A whole new life.

It’s a Maine postcard day. All the rooms in the house are ready. A large pot of fish chowder, Terry’s specialty, simmers on the stove (with a smaller pot of corn chowder, a nod to Molly, beside it). Corn bread cools on the counter. Molly has made a big salad and balsamic dressing.

Molly and Vivian have been roaming around all afternoon, pretending not to watch the clock. Jack called at 2:00 P.M. to say that the flight from Mi

Sitting in the rocker in the kitchen, looking out at the water, Molly feels oddly at peace. For the first time since she can remember, her life is begi

When the car pulls into the driveway, Molly hears the crunch of gravel from the kitchen, at the opposite end of the house. She’s been listening for it. “Vivian, they’re here!” she calls.

“I hear,” Vivian calls back.

Meeting in the foyer, Molly reaches for Vivian’s hand. This is it, she thinks, the culmination of everything. But all she says is, “Ready?”

“Ready,” Vivian says.

As soon as Jack shuts off the engine, a girl springs from the backseat, wearing a blue-striped dress and white sneakers. Becca—it must be. She has red hair. Long, wavy red hair and a smattering of freckles.

Vivian, gripping the porch rail with one hand, puts her other over her mouth. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Molly breathes behind her.

The girl waves. “Vivian, we’re here!”

The blond woman getting out of the car—Sarah—looks toward them with an expression Molly’s never seen before. Her eyes are wide open, searching, and when her gaze alights on Vivian’s face, it is startling in its intensity, stripped of any pretense or convention. Yearning and wariness and hopefulness and love . . . does Molly really see all this on Sarah’s face, or is she projecting? She looks at Jack, lifting the bags out of the trunk, and he nods and gives her a slow wink. I get it. I feel it too.

Molly touches Vivian’s shoulder, frail and bony under her thin silk cardigan. She half turns, half smiles, her eyes brimming with tears. Her hand flutters to her clavicle, to the silver chain around her neck, the claddagh charm—those tiny hands clasping a crowned heart: love, loyalty, friendship—a never-ending path that leads away from home and circles back. What a journey Vivian and this necklace have taken, Molly thinks: from a cobblestoned village on the coast of Ireland to a tenement in New York to a train filled with children, steaming westward through farmland, to a lifetime in Mi

Vivian puts her foot on the first step and stumbles slightly, and each person moves toward her, as if in slow motion—Molly, just behind her, Becca, nearing the bottom step, Jack at the car, Sarah crossing the gravel, even Terry, coming around the side of the house.

“I’m all right!” Vivian says, grasping the rail.

Molly slips an arm around her waist. “Of course you are,” she whispers. Her voice is steady, though her heart is so full it aches. “And I’m right here behind you.”