As they walked out of the mansion, Liam carried the title to the Black Rose in his back pocket.
38
Gwen arrived at the college’s greenhouse on Wednesday morning with a couple of students to add an extra layer of insulation to the north side of the structure. Little Mimi sat inside the greenhouse, charged with potting the goldenseal roots they’d prepared the other day. Mimi stared dully at a bowl of potting soil sitting in front of her. It was early, and she was probably sleepy, given the way she stared with limp interest at the bowl.
Gwen helped Hiram and Jake lay a roll of foil into the trench they’d dug around the north end of the building. It took almost an hour, and when they returned inside, Mimi still sat slumped before the bowl of potting soil. She hadn’t touched it yet.
“You’re not going to let us down by neglecting those plants, are you, Mimi?” Gwen teased.
To her horror, Mimi’s expression crumpled, and she curled over, hiding her face.
Gwen gasped, racing to hunker down beside the girl. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” she asked, but Mimi just shook her head and didn’t speak.
Hiram and Jake both dropped what they were doing to stand nearby, looking on in concern.
“You can tell me anything,” Gwen whispered. Mimi was always so cheerful and optimistic. It was awful to see her battling tears. Gwen rubbed Mimi’s back. “Please tell me how I can make it better.”
Mimi lifted her head. Her lower lip trembled furiously, but she was finally able to stammer out a reply. “My walker got broken.”
Gwen glanced at the metal frame with wheels that Mimi depended on to walk. It looked all right from here, but Jake was inspecting it.
“Yup, Miss Mimi, it looks like the bracket on this wheel got bent. How did that happen?”
Mimi’s lip started wobbling again, and tears spilled over. “Some boys on my street took it away from me. They put it up in a tree, and I couldn’t stop them because I couldn’t walk. They left it up there, and when my mama came to get it down, it fell, and the wheel broke.”
Gwen stared, aghast.
“What are their names?” Hiram demanded.
“I don’t know who they were, but they were mean,” Mimi said. “They laughed at how I got stuck on the ground and couldn’t even stand up without my walker.”
“Okay, so what did they look like?” Hiram pressed.
Gwen pulled Mimi tighter in her arms. “Don’t make her relive it,” she murmured to him, but Hiram was just as adamant.
“I’m going to find out who they are,” he whispered fiercely. “No bratty kids are going to gang up on Mimi and get away with it.”
But they would get away with it. Even if Hiram figured out who those boys were and scared the daylights out of them, children could be cruel, and there would be more who would find an easy target in Mimi’s thick glasses and malformed legs. Mimi was only just beginning to understand that she was different, and the coming years were going to be hard for her.
Jake was more pragmatic as he examined the damaged wheel. He cautiously rolled the walker forward. It still worked, but the wheel made a knocking sound as it rotated. “I’ll bet Professor Jenkins can fix this in short order. He’s an engineer and can probably have it repaired before lunchtime.”
“I don’t think it will ever be the same again,” Mimi whispered, and Gwen’s heart split wide open because it wasn’t the walker Mimi spoke about. She scrambled for a way to make the girl feel better.
“Why don’t we go over to my house for a snack?” she suggested. “I have a pan of brownies, and I can’t eat them all myself. I think the three of you deserve a treat.”
Hiram carried Mimi piggyback-style on the short walk to Gwen’s house. Jake dropped off the walker with Professor Jenkins and joined them for brownies with milk in the garden. Word about what had happened spread quickly on campus, and soon the students who worked in the library came over to help cheer up Mimi.
The girl ate part of a brownie, then became engrossed by the fish swimming in the pond. She asked permission to feed them, and Gwen fetched her a slice of bread. Within an hour, Professor Jenkins showed up, wheeling the repaired walker, which had been decked out with ribbons and a bouquet of carnations tied to the handle.
Mimi beamed when she saw it. Even more professors and a couple of graduate students accompanied Professor Jenkins. The garden was full, and Gwen raced inside to assemble a platter of fruit and cheese for the impromptu party.
It was bittersweet. She loved this garden and the parties that had been held here over the years. She loved that Mimi felt safe here, and that the people of the college came out in support of this much-loved little girl. There would come a time when the staff and students of Blackstone College could no longer protect Mimi from the cruelty of others, but it would be better for the girl to have a few more years to grow strong and confident before facing the harsh realities of the world.
Gwen pulled Hiram aside. “Can you stay with Mimi for a few minutes? I have an errand I need to do.”
He looked a little befuddled but readily agreed. “Sure thing, Mrs. Kellerman.”
Tears blurred her vision as she closed the door of her house and began walking toward the heart of campus. Each block was laden with memories. She passed the president’s house, where she had been born and raised. She passed the biology building, where she earned her degree, and the quadrangle, where endless summer days had been spent learning, growing, and making lifelong friendships. She walked beneath the elm trees and silver maples that shaded campus. They were tall now, but she remembered when they were newly planted saplings during the early years of the college.
It had been a wonderful place to grow up. She had been surrounded by adults who were as protective of her as they were of Mimi. This college was a cocoon of learning and a celebration of the world around them. Gwen would be forever grateful for her years here, but she didn’t need the safety of a cocoon anymore.
Mimi did.
It was cool inside the administration building as she headed toward the accounting office. Vivian sat at the front counter, her fingers clicking on an adding machine. Her face cooled when she saw Gwen, but she didn’t move.
“The house is yours,” Gwen said. “You and Mimi can move in at the end of the month.”
It was time to say good-bye to Jasper and the life they once shared. She was ready to move out into the real world and discover who she could become if she had never hidden herself away in an ivory tower.
It was the morning of the vote to buy Carnegie Steel and merge it with ten other mills to form the United States Steel Corporation. Patrick expected it to be a stressful day, but he hadn’t realized he’d spend the final hour before the meeting in the men’s washroom of Blackstone Bank, helping Liam battle the nerves that were getting the better of him. Liam was sweating so badly he’d had to wash his face, and he was now leaning over the green marble washbasin with gold-plated taps.
“Don’t be so nervous,” Patrick counseled Liam. “The vote is a foregone conclusion.”
Liam closed the taps and blotted his face with a towel handed to him by a uniformed attendant. What sort of place had staff in the washrooms to hand out towels? Whenever Patrick thought he’d gotten used to the foibles of the Blackstones, something like this rose up to smack him in the face.