If it hadn’t been for the sisters, Rowan might have ended up that way.
She met them when she’d gone to a church to get in line for the free dinner on Thanksgiving Day. It had been crowded, and then the food had run out just as she’d gotten to the front of the serving line. One of the old ladies who was handing out cards with directions to another soup kitchen touched her hand, and without thinking Rowan held on to her.
The lady stared at Rowan’s face without blinking, and then abruptly asked her to come into the back to help her with the dishes. Having nothing better to do, Rowan followed her.
“Here.” Instead of handing her a dish towel, the lady offered a white box. “It’s a box lunch. They give them to us for serving today.”
“I can’t take this.” Instantly ashamed, Rowan tried to give it back to her. “You’re supposed to eat it.”
“I don’t particularly like turkey sandwiches. Too dry.” The thin lips crimped. “If you don’t take it, I’ll throw it away.”
That was enough to convince her, and she started to go, but the old lady asked her to sit down at the table. Then she did the same, and started talking to her about living in New York since the forties, and how hard it was for older women on their own to feel safe.
Rowan wolfed down the skimpy turkey sandwich and celery sticks before she saw the last item in the lunch box: a slice of apple pie in a neat triangular cardboard container. It was the kind they sold frozen by the slice in the supermarket, and was more crust than anything. But her favorite dessert had always been apple pie, and she hadn’t tasted it in more than a year. Seeing it made her throat hurt.
“My name is Deborah,” the lady told her. “I have a house in the Bronx that I share with my sister, Annette. She’s a widow and I never married, so living together saves us a little money. Where are you living, my dear?”
“What do you care?” Rowan tried to look defiant, but she knew she wasn’t impressing the old gal, not with a week of dirt on her face. In a smaller voice she said, “I don’t have anyplace. I’m homeless.”
“Do you use drugs?” When she glared at her, Deborah smiled. “I didn’t think so. Your eyes are too clear. Are you in any trouble with the police?”
“Not unless they catch me. Next year I’ll be too old for them to put me back in foster care.” Angry with herself for saying too much, Rowan placed the slice of pie in front of the old lady. “Thanks for letting me have your lunch. It was really decent of you. I gotta go.”
Deborah’s fine silver eyebrows arched. “To where? You said you have no place to live.”
“You shouldn’t do stuff like this,” Rowan told her. “Chatting up people like me … it’s dangerous. You don’t know who I am. I could beat you up or mug you.”
“I won’t have any money until my check comes in on the first,” the old lady told her. “But I have a nice little house, and a spare room, and no daughters or sons to look after me and Annette. How would you like to come and see it?”
“Why?”
“You came to help me even though the food was gone.”
When Rowan would have replied, she waved one of her hands. “You’d be doing me a favor. I have to take the bus, you see, and I hate to ride it alone. The young men who sit in the backseats are always watching me.”
Rowan had gone with her, scrounging enough change from her pockets to pay the bus fare. The little house turned out to be just that, a small but tidy place in the Bronx with geraniums in the window boxes and lace curtains in the windows. Deborah’s sister, a slightly older woman with the twisted fingers of advanced arthritis, had welcomed her in like a visiting niece and fussed over her, offering her tea and cookies and then asking her to help with dinner, which Rowan then had to stay and help them eat. As Rowan washed the dishes, Annette began nagging her sister to make her stay with them for the night because the buses had stopped running.
Rowan wanted to leave, but neither of the old gals would hear of it. Deborah persuaded her to use their tiny bathroom and shower, and when Rowan stepped out of the shower she found a pile of clean, folded old clothes waiting for her on the bathroom counter. Her clothes had been taken away, and later she would find out that Deborah had immediately tossed them out in the trash.
As elderly and frail as they were, the sisters were amazing bullies, and refused to listen to a word Rowan said. Shortly after nine, Rowan found herself sitting on the bed in the spare room, looking around the neat little room in disbelief as Deborah called out a good-night and that they would see her in the morning.
She had stayed with the sisters that night, and settled down in that real bed. The clean sheets and fluffy pillows had felt so good and soft against her scrubbed skin that she’d wallowed for a while, but in the end the soft mattress had felt too alien, and she’d tossed the top sheet on the floor and settled down there.
In the morning Deborah gently shook her shoulder to wake her. She didn’t say anything about finding Rowan on the floor, but asked her to join them for breakfast. Over homemade waffles, sausage links, and the best coffee Rowan had ever tasted in her life, the sisters offered her a job as their housekeeper and companion.
“We’d pay you if we had the money,” Annette said, her kind eyes worried, “but between the two of us we barely have enough to cover our prescriptions and living expenses. That’s why we can only offer you room and board.”
Rowan didn’t understand. “Why me?”
“You don’t have a job or family,” Deborah said. “Annette and I are getting on now, and we need a young person around the house to help us. You need a home. It’s a perfect match.”
“But you don’t know anything about me,” Rowan protested. “I could be a thief or a killer. I could take advantage of you, clean out this place while you’re sleeping and take off!”
“Nonsense,” Deborah said, her expression stern. “You’re a good-hearted girl; anyone can see that. Besides, by not offering you a salary we’re taking advantage of you.” She stood up. “Your first job is to help me with these dishes. Annette keeps dropping and breaking things.”
Her sister nodded. “My arthritis makes me clumsier than a Republican at a gay bar.”
Rowan knew what waited for her outside that little house, and the last three years had taught her never to question an act of kindness. So she moved into the spare room, and became the sisters’ housekeeper and companion, and repaid their kindness by keeping the little house spotless and whipping up the most delicious meals she could manage from the food they could afford. The two sisters only just scraped by on their Social Security checks, so Rowan became a champion at clipping coupons and finding the best prices at the local markets.
Every weekend she worked with Deborah cooking for the homeless at the church, and through her work there was offered a part-time job supplying muffins and cookies to the owner of a convenience mart. At the end of the first year she’d lived with the sisters, she was bringing in enough to cover her room and board and improve their living conditions considerably.
Deborah refused to accept any rent money from her, but Rowan used her earnings to see to it that her ladies never wanted for or needed anything. She would have happily lived with the sisters forever, but one morning Annette didn’t wake up. After her sister’s funeral Deborah seemed to grow old overnight.
“I’ve never wanted to pry, Rowan, but I must if we are to talk about your future,” the old lady had said to her one night over dinner. “I can’t go to be with Annette unless I’m sure you’ll be all right.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rowan assured her.
“I’m eighty-seven years old, my dear,” the old lady said. “We both know I’m not long for this world. I want to leave you the house and everything we have, but our lawyer tells me to do that I must give him your full name and Social Security number.” She studied Rowan’s face. “If we do that, they’ll find you, won’t they?”
Rowan started to deny it, and then sighed. “Yeah, they would. I’d explain but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I already know,” Deborah said, looking a little ashamed now. “You talk in your sleep. The first couple of weeks you were with us, Annette and I would take turns listening.”
“You know everything?”
Deborah nodded. “I won’t allow you to be in danger again, so I must sell the house before I go. We’ll put the money in traveler’s checks.”
Rowan shook her head. “Even if you did that—and I wouldn’t let you—I couldn’t cash them.” She touched the old lady’s frail hand. “Leave everything to the church, the way you and Annette planned to. I’m working now, and when the time comes I’ll find a place. I’ll be all right.”
“What about your past?”
“It’s dead and buried.” Rowan plucked at the edge of her sleeve, tugging it down over the new black dragon tattoo she’d just gotten to cover the other mark. There was one question that remained unanswered, and it was one she had to ask. She glanced up at Deborah. “Why did you take me in?”
The old lady looked uncomfortable. “You know why. We needed a housekeeper. You needed a home.”
“That’s nice, but I know what I did to you the day we met.” Rowan took a deep breath. “What was her name? The girl you loved?”
Deborah put a hand to her throat, and then her face crumpled like an old tissue. “Mary Margaret O’Brien. She never … I never told her.” Regret dulled her eyes. “She wasn’t like me, so there was no point. She married very young, and died in childbirth. It broke my heart.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Rowan told her. “I was just so hungry. I didn’t even realize what I had done until later, and I should have gone. But you and Annette were so nice, and I was lonely and afraid …” It was her turn to be swamped by shame. “I’m so sorry.”