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CHAPTER 1

1898

Grandma Teegan was dying. They shouldn't have come.

Eleven-year-old Bridget trudged up the dark stairwell. Her legs and arms ached. Water sloshed over the rim of her heavy pail. The heat in the tenement house swelled floor by floor, and sweat rolled down her neck and shoulders and dampened the back of her wool dress. She'd taken off her broken shoes and even her bloomers beneath her long skirt, but she was still hot as "frying mutton." Through July and now into August, Grandma Teegan had muttered about the heat, but for the last week, she'd been too sick for talking or humor.

Bridget set the pail down on the next riser and wiped sweat off her face. She'd made it up three flights. Only one more to go. She changed hands, gripped the handle again, and climbed. Grandma Teegan waited for her.

Opening the door to their small room was hottest of all.

Grandma Teegan, hunched on the cot, gasped to catch her breath. Bridget let the pail thud to the floor, socked herself in the stomach, and hurried to drop to her knees in front of the elderly woman.

Moisture beaded on Grandma Teegan's sunken cheeks though she wore only her threadbare nightshirt. Beside her lay the newsprint Bridget had stolen from a street vendor a week earlier. She picked it up and began to fan the sweaty face. Stealing the paper when she might have been caught was stupid. They couldn't eat it. She'd tried and hadn't been able to swallow.

She waved the paper, trying to both cool her grandmother and sweep away the shadows filling the million lines on Grandma Teegan's face. Wisps of white hair fluttered. Was she a hundred years old? Even Mum and Pappy had called her Grandma, and in the stories she told, the women who carried their people's history and legends in the books of their hearts, often reached a hundred years. And more.

"I'm taking care of you," Bridget promised. And she would. Somehow. She couldn't let Grandma Teegan die. She couldn't have murder number two. "You're going to get better."

The wrinkles in Grandma Teegan's sagging cheeks didn't lift, her watery eyes didn't clear, and she didn't nod with assurance. She also didn't place her palms on Bridget's cheeks and say, "We yet find your mum." She coughed and then sucked and gasped for air with a sound like soup in her lungs.

Bridget rose from her knees and sat beside her on the mattress — no more than paper sewn between rags. Nera, Nera, she prayed. I won't be scared.

Fish lived in Bridget's stomach. Ten, she decided. T-E-N. They swam back and forth when Grandma Teegan coughed. And other times. Lately, they never stopped swimming, even at night. Bridget's arms and legs slept, but the fish swam. Back and forth.

"I brought water." She hurried to dip their tin cup and hold it to Grandma Teegan's lips. The streets below were cooler and had an occasional breeze. Ought she try and coax Grandma Teegan down the stairs and outside for a few hours? But what if Grandma Teegan couldn't make it back? She couldn't spend the night sleeping on the street like the homeless children who piled into brick stoops and slept huddled together like puppies. Grandma Teegan's bones would break. Her disappearing skin made her arms and legs into sticks; her shoulders, knees, and elbows, doorknobs.

Bridget tried to think back over the months to when the coughing started. Coughing neither spring's warmth nor summer's awful heat had helped.

Grandma Teegan hadn't coughed when they first arrived in New York a year ago. Hadn't coughed in the fall when for weeks they walked up and down the Irish quarter searching for Mum and Pappy. The coughing began in winter when they continued hunting — even at night during snowstorms. Shivering up and down city blocks, Grandma Teegan yelled "Darcy!" over the biting wind. Bridget yelled, "Pappy!"

More than once, a man scooping snow into the lines of horse-drawn wagons had leaned on his shovel and looked up. But he was never Pappy. At first, she and Grandma Teegan were glad not to find him so desperate he worked with the unemployed Irish who came out during storms — men often without hats or gloves but with hungry children huddling in cold rooms.

Winter ended, the coughing worsened, and they quit walking the streets and asking strangers if they knew a Kathleen, a Darcy.

Bridget even quit insisting her parents were West — though she knew they were. Before leaving Ireland, Pappy had talked about getting to Dublin then Liverpool, the cost of steerage, surviving in New York without a sponsor, and earning enough money to outfit a rig for homesteading in the West. Mum and Pappy were there now. Nothing else explained their absence in New York. But when she insisted, Grandma Teegan's eyes stared off until Bridget could no longer bear the sadness. Being eleven, she understood now what she hadn't at ten. Grandma Teegan didn't know where "West" was. They didn't have money for next winter's coal, even for today's food. There was no money for a train ride into the unknown.

"Tomorrow, the ticket," Grandma Teegan managed. "Ye sell. Ye eat." Bridget drew in a sharp breath, and all the fish in her stomach jumped at once. She socked them.

Grandma Teegan's bony hand dropped on Bridget's wrist. "Na, na afraid."

Bridget wanted nothing more than to have Grandma Teegan's return ticket to Ireland sold — had it cost ten or fifteen pounds? But what then?

"When I'm a doctor," she said, "I'll make you well." I won't let you die. Not like Uncle Rowan.

But she wasn't a doctor and Grandma Teegan was growing down. She missed her croft, Ireland's green hills, her sheep, and her dog, Ogan. She missed all the graves too.

"You're still going home." Bridget nearly choked on the words. "You need to keep your passage."

"Find ticket."

"Tell me about selkies. Tell me how Mum swims in the sea and can visit us wherever there's water."

"Ticket."

Bridget stood and took a step back. "I can't. We'll find Mum and Pappy."

In the year since arriving, Grandma Teegan hadn't once reminded Bridget she'd only crossed to make sure Bridget found her parents. Hadn't once reminded Bridget she planned to leave as soon as that was done. "I'll lie me down with ye Grandfather Seamus," she'd said in Ireland. "My resting place be here." As she always did at the mention of the great-grandfather Bridget had never met, she'd looked at his old tools leaning in the croft corner: a rake, a spade, and a hoe. Grave-tending tools now.

"You can't sell your ticket," Bridget tried again. You'll die here. But how could she live without her? And you can't ever leave me. Grandma Teegan had always been her most mum. Though the entire family had lived together, Grandma Teegan even then shared Bridget's bed. It was Grandma Teegan who told the old stories, who held her when Mum and Pappy had red fights. Grandma Teegan who loved her in spite of Uncle Rowan's death — murder number one.

She backed slowly toward the door with Uncle Rowan's words banging in her head. It be us now who must take care of her. But Rowan grew a shadow around his body and though Bridget had seen it, she'd not been able to keep him from falling through the gloom of it. Now, Grandma Teegan was hers to take care of. Without the ticket, Grandma Teegan had no hope of ever returning home. Dark shadow would grow like a grave around her, too.

"We don't need to sell it," Bridget said. "I can get us food."

"Ye take ticket. Dunot steal."

Bridget ran out and to the stairs. Chased by Grandma Teegan's coughing, she raced down the twisting flights, not slowing until she reached the first floor. She was relieved to see Mr. Wilcox, the man who slept in the foyer, wasn't there with his blankets. He had a room on the top floor across from theirs, but he was so scared of fires he slept nights in the entryway, begging pardon every time someone needed to step over him. Yet, when a candle fell onto an old straw mattress and people cried "Fire!", Mr. Wilcox ran against the flow of people fleeing and up the stairs to bang on doors and help people to safety. He'd been Nera.

Outside, the afternoon sun hung low behind buildings, and much of the street lay draped in shadow. People sat on stoops to escape the heat inside; cranky babies bounced on mothers' laps; men smoked in their ragged clothing; children shot marbles and chased one another. Bridget's heavy feet shuffled. She had to stay close. She wished she hadn't run, but for a moment she'd been certain darkness, the death space, swirled around Grandma Teegan's head.

I didn't see shadow. She was eleven. Grown up. She had to be as brave as Nera, who in the old story stole a finger bone from an angry skeleton. She rounded the building, stepped into the empty alley, and leaned against the wall. I didn't see shadow. She slid down the brick into a squat, tucking up her skirt to keep it off the filth. The narrow space between two buildings was quiet but smelled bad. Fifteen families emptied their chamber pots into the hole in the middle. Or not wanting to get too close, flung their smelly waste in the direction of the hole.

She dropped her head back against the brick and closed her eyes. She wasn't taking care of Grandma Teegan, and Grandma Teegan couldn't die in America, couldn't be buried this side of the water. That was Bridget's biggest fear. Grandma Teegan had sold all her sheep and bought a return ticket to make sure it didn't happen. She needed to go back for the coughing to stop and for her skin to turn pink again, not blue and see-through as paper. And years and years in the future, if she ever did die, she needed to be buried with Grandpa Seamus. But how to live without her? And without all her stories? Folktales, Brothers Grimm, and Irish legends. Especially stories of selkies, who lived in water and on land. Grandma Teegan told stories about them the way she told all her stories. The way she'd spun wool, combing and carding and pumping the treadle of their deeper meanings. She told them holy.

Buzzing made Bridget look up. Mud dauber wasps were building a nest on the bricks several feet above her head. She watched them, blue-black in the dimming light, their long legs dangling as they swarmed. Pushing her feet out, she sank the last inches, forgetting the dirt. Grandma Teegan was dying because of her. Nera would do even the scariest thing to save her grandma. Nera would step up to a skeleton and yank off a finger bone.

Bridget sniffled. How could she do it? Being left again, being without Grandma Teegan, would be scarier than sneaking up to an old, stupid skeleton. Scarier than its bones dancing in the air. Scarier than its eyes turning red and coming alive.

She hugged her knees. Grandma Teegan would never leave her, no matter what. She couldn't be forced into leaving her behind the way Pappy and Mum had. N-E-V-E-R. There was only one way to save Grandma Teegan: leave her. Then she'd have no reason to stay in America. She'd take her ticket and board a ship.

The nice Irish cop who'd caught Bridget stealing had told them about a train taking children West. At the suggestion, Grandma Teegan gripped her red shawl tighter around her shoulders and shook her head. "Olc! Na, strangers!" And would say no more.

In the alley, the shadows deepened. A wasp landed on the wall inches from Bridget's shoulder and began walking up. A cart with a loud squeaking wheel rolled along the walk. Bridget sat up straighter. The cart belonged to the apple vendor who claimed a spot at the end of the street.

She walked out. Indecision and fear kept her well back of the vendor. If she did it, she had to be caught by the Irish copper. The one who'd talked about the train and only pulled her up the four flights to Grandma Teegan — twice, though the second time he'd been much angrier.

There, with him tut-tutting, Grandma Teegan had clutched Bridget as if she herself were the one who'd stolen and needed forgiveness. "Dunot steal," she begged. "Promise."

Bridget hadn't promised. A nod was not a promise.

But the last time she'd tried to steal, a mean and scary cop dragged her blocks and blocks to a police station. He shoved a slate into her hands with her name chalked in large letters. In even larger letters below her name was the word "thief." As she mumbled "Nera, Nera" to try and stop her sobbing, a man used a big camera to take her picture. Then four men pushed her into a chair, circled her, breathed on her. They called her a "street rat," said girls were the worst because they "gnawed away at society." They threatened to make her an inmate of a house of refuge. Then they shoved her out onto a now-dark street, and she walked hours until she found her way home.

Watching the apple cart, she shivered and took slow steps forward. She could never go to the police station again. Not even Nera was that brave. But she couldn't let Grandma Teegan die in America, either.

The vendor in his cap watched her. Gray haired, he'd not been quick enough to catch her before, but he remembered her. This theft, she wanted him to know, wasn't about two apples.

She waited, hardly aware of the street noise surrounding her. Finally, a blue uniform with its flash of shiny buttons appeared half a block ahead. She waited still longer. The cop ambled and talked with people while she socked her stomach. When it was time, she took a deep breath. "Nera, Nera." Would he take her to jail this time? Or would he only huff and puff like before, trying to scare her into believing he would?

She ran at the cart. Though the vendor tried to block her, she ducked under his arm and snatched an apple. "Thief !" he yelled. "Thief !"

Pretending not to see the policeman, she ran in his direction, not veering off until he was nearly upon her. She screamed, but he grabbed her, shook her by the arm, and peeled the apple from her hand. She struggled. "I'll give it back. I promise, I'll never steal again."

He pulled her down the street to shaking heads, whispers from stoops of "caught again" and "poor lass." In front of her building, when he'd shown the occupants on the street he meant business, Bridget quit resisting.

"I have to go West," she said. "I have to go on your train."

He studied her, frowning. "She won't have it."

He had red hair too, and his accent sounded like home — though home and its sounds seemed from another lifetime. Was that why he had patience with her?

"You have to make her let me go. She's dying." She'd not cried in front of the man before and slapped at tears she hated now. "When I'm gone, you have to help her to the boat. She has a ticket. One ticket."

* * *

"Oh lass," Grandma Teegan moaned and coughed at seeing the policeman and his grip on Bridget. "Oh lass," the words full of defeat and heartbreak.

Bridget pulled free. Grandma Teegan's face looked as stricken as it had the day her grandson Rowan died. "It's not your fault," she said.

"How many times?" the copper asked. "Next time it won't be me arresting her." He sighed and took off his cap, tucking it under his arm. "Me mum," he said, "I can't let her go free again. The whole street be crying me foul. She don't smoke, drink beer, sniff the powder. She ain't in a gang of street rats. But all that be coming for her. She best take the train —"

"Na." Grandma Teegan moaned the word and was struck with coughing.

Bridget knelt and dropped her head in Grandma Teegan's lap. Had she gone too far? Would the policeman lock her up if Grandma Teegan didn't agree? Even then, Grandma Teegan would at least be free of her.

"Look at ye," the man said. "Ye pass this winter and what of her? It'll be jail soon enough."

Pass this winter? Bridget licked her lips, then wider, searching for the taste of Mum's tears. Was the copper seeing the death shadow? "I want to go. I want to go," she said again. "The train goes West. I'll find Mum and Pappy. I know I will."

Grandma Teegan made a gasping, wet noise. Tears filled her eyes, bubbled over, and disappeared in her wrinkles.

Bridget licked again, promising herself she did taste Mum's tears. They'd lain together in the grass, watching clouds. Shoulder to shoulder, their hair spilled into one color, and they couldn't tell the long curls apart. Mum rolled to her side, stared into Bridget's face, and a tear dropped onto Bridget's lips. The salty taste of that tear and their matching hair were the two best memories she had of Mum. The rest was all Grandma Teegan.

"I have to get on the train," Bridget said. Her heart was ripping. She'd find Mum and tell her how she'd been brave enough to let Grandma Teegan go home. She'd also tell Mum about her brother Rowan, although she wouldn't admit the death was her fault. "Please. He's going to put me in jail."

The cop nodded.

"Mum wants me to go West," Bridget begged. "Grandma Teegan, you can't put me in jail."

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Excerpted from "River People"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Margaret Lukas.
Excerpted by permission of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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