Silent Voice

Chapter 1

You're expecting me to do what?" Snapped a peevish voice from the other side of the heavy wooden door. It opened just a few inches to allow a single blue eye to survey me up and down. "Take in this gangly urchin you claim is one of my kin? One look tells me the child hasn't made the acquaintance of a bar of lye in a good many years, not to mention being in the same two-mile vicinity of a comb."

I quickly ran my hands over my head to smooth down my hair from the center, lest she start a commenting on the size of my ears.

"Why, yes, Mrs. Warne," said the Right Reverend, sliding his pointy black boot forward just a hint to keep her door from slamming shut on his petition. "You are the waif's last relation in the world. Without you, the child is destined to a most piteous life in the orphan asylum"

"Surely someone will come and take the, the..."
"Girl," The Right Reverend declared, giving his throat a good clearing. Could she not tell that for herself?

I studied her eye through the crack in the door just to see if the woman was wearing spectacles. Surely her vision was failing, because I was obviously not some stinky schoolboy standing here before her. My clothes might have looked a bit on the masculine side, What with having to take my brothers best friend traveling coat for the long journey to Chicago. And the brown trousers might not be something you see every day on a fancy city girl. But what chores could a body get done on a farm while wearing a dress, I'd like to know?

My aunt stared back at me through the inch or so of the open door, inspecting me like I was a sack of mealy flour. Then she added, without the least bit of conviction, "She'll make someone a lovely daughter someday."

I decided to win her over with my charm, so I smiled up at her with a powerful grin that showed all my teeth. I squeezed one cheek with my finger and forced a dimple. She was the last living relative I had in this world, and I was not going to let her turn me away.

My aunt recoiled like I'd just presented her with a toad, pinching her lips so tight, they made a straight line across the lower part of her face—or what I could see of her face.

I gave it another try. I licked both my hands and ran them through my shortish hair, sticking down any clumps that were sticking up. Then I batted my long eyelashes at her like a graceful doe. I was going for irresistible, but I might have fallen short.

"What's the matter with her eyes?"

The Right Reverend draped his arm around my shoulder, pretending to appear fatherly. But his skinny fingers pinched my shoulder something awful. I got the hint and quickly stopped my eye-battling. I returned hair-slicking.

He let out a sigh that was about as deep and long as the whistle on our locomotive. I could tell that the Right Reverend wasn't about to head back to the middle of Mew York State with me in tow. After our long ride down from Chemung Country, him and me had spent enough quality time together to last a life time. Besides, that man could smell a sucker from fifty paces away, and he wasn't going to give up easily. He had followed the trail to my aunts door like a coonhound on the hunt.

"Between you and me and the gaslights, Mrs. Warne," he said, dabbing at a faint layer of nervous sweat that had formed above his lip, "the older mites at the orphanage do not have the same appeal as the babies. I don't share this dreadful perspective, mind you. But as a girl of ten summers, dear Cornelia here doesn't stand a chance of ever getting adopted."

"Eleven," I announced, though nobody had seen fit to ask me. "Or thereabouts."

And then, acting like I'd just spontaneously caught fire, the Right Reverend snatched his hand off my shoulder, pressed some papers in my aunts direction, and took off down the boardinghouse stairs. She called for him to stop, but he did not. I stared down the hallway after him, wondering if I should feel a pang of worry. But I couldn't muster even a faint hiccup of remorse to see the backside of that man.