Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [140]
Despite Tucker’s warning, Olympia is shocked, not so much by the question itself as by the notion that she could ever have had such a relationship with anyone but Haskell. “No,” she answers vehemently. “No possibility whatsoever.”
“Good,” he says, and he looks genuinely relieved. “That is fine. Did you then contact John Haskell to tell him of the news?”
“No.”
“Tell me what happened on the day you were delivered of the child?”
“I am not sure what happened. I had been given laudanum toward the end of my confinement, and it made me sleepy, so that when I woke from the ordeal, the child had already been taken from me.”
“But you saw the child.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew it was a boy.”
“I was told it was a boy.”
“You had a physician with you? Or a midwife?”
“A physician. Dr. Ulysses Branch of Newbury Street in Boston.”
“Was it he who took the child from you?”
“I do not know. I assume whoever it was did so at the request of my father, since he had once or twice referred to ‘arrangements’ that had been made. Though he never spoke directly to me, either then or later, about what had been done with the child.”
“Did you ever ask him outright?”
“No,” she says. “I did not.” And it strikes Olympia as odd now that she did not. How was it that she accepted her fate so willingly?
“Your father left your house that night?”
“No, he did not.”
“Then he must have given the child to someone else?”
“Yes. I do not know precisely to whom he gave the child. But I have reason to believe the baby shortly entered the care of John Haskell himself.”
“The reason that I am lingering on the details of the birth is that the issue of how and when the child was taken from you may be important,” he explains.
“Yes, I understand.”
“How was it you came to know of the child’s whereabouts?”
“By accident,” she says. “Soon after I arrived in Fortune’s Rocks — that is, returned to Fortune’s Rocks, this July — I had a visit from an old friend of my father’s, Rufus Philbrick — ”
“Yes, I know the man,” Tucker says, interrupting her.
“During this visit, he inadvertently let slip about the child’s being in the Saint Andre orphanage.”
“And how would he have known this?”
“He is a member of the board of directors,” she says. “The next day I went to Saint Andre’s and spoke to a nun who I believe is called Mother Marguerite Pelletier. She told me the child had been at the orphanage but had been placed out. She told me the boy’s first name. She would not tell me his last name.”
“But you say the child’s name is” — Tucker consults his notes — “Pierre Francis Haskell.”
“Yes,” Olympia says. “I paid a call on Rufus Philbrick and asked him to find me the boy’s whereabouts. He told me the child’s name had once been — if not still was — Haskell. Later he was able to confirm this.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“He could tell me little else on that particular day, but later he wrote me that the boy’s guardians are Franco-Americans, Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc. They live at one thirty-seven Alfred Street here in Ely Falls and work at the Ely Falls Mill. The boy is three years old, and Rufus Philbrick’s letter said that he was healthy. I have seen the boy, and he appears to be so. That is all I know. Oh, and he was baptized into the Catholic faith.”
“You spoke to the boy.”
“No, I saw him from a distance.”
Tucker removes his spectacles and cleans them with a handkerchief. “Did anything about the boy’s appearance suggest that he was the son of you and John Haskell?”
Olympia knows she will never forget the shock of seeing the boy’s face. “Yes. Definitely. He looks very like his father. I believe anyone would remark upon this resemblance.”
Tucker puts his spectacles back on. “Have you spoken to either Albertine or Telesphore Bolduc?”
“No.”
“Have you told anyone of your desire to reclaim your child?”
“Only Rufus Philbrick.”
“And you say you saw the boy again today?