One
New York, June 1908
“Bolivia,” Sid said.
“Bolivia?” Even Gus sounded surprised. “You want us to go to Bolivia?”
Sid nodded. “It’s about time we went somewhere exotic. We’re becoming staid and boring.”
I was sitting with my friends Elena and Augusta (more affectionately known as Sid and Gus) in their big comfortable kitchen on the other side of Patchin Place, enjoying our usual morning coffee together. They had added on a conservatory, and light streamed in between stands of exotic plants, the likes of which I had never seen back in Ireland. Today heat also came in through all that glass, and the kitchen felt steamy—a little how I imagined a tropical jungle would feel. Summer had come early to New York, and we were feeling the heat, which was why Sid and Gus were rushing to make plans for their usual summer exodus from the city. In other years they had chosen acceptable and normal destinations like Newport, Rhode Island, or Southampton. They had even ventured once to Europe, but Bolivia was quite unexpected.
“Why Bolivia?” Gus asked, trying to sound calm.
Sid shrugged, making her bobbed hair dance. “We’ve never been. It’s at high altitude, so it should be cool, and it’s different. Interesting people go there. Butch Cassidy went there.”
“To escape from the law and rob people,” Gus pointed out. “That’s hardly the same.”
“Well, he is an outlaw. We are respectable women.” She corrected herself. “Fairly respectable women.”
I had to smile at this. “But it’s awfully far away, isn’t it?” I was realizing how much I’d miss having my friends around for the summer. “How would you get there?”
Sid shrugged. “We’d take a boat.”
“Isn’t Bolivia landlocked?” Gus asked.
“So we take a boat and then a train.”
“There are trains? Not just mule trains going up the side of mountains?”
Sid frowned. “You seem to be making difficulties about this. Do I take it you’re not keen on the idea?”
“I think it needs more looking into,” Gus said diplomatically. “It doesn’t sound like a journey one could undertake lightly. And it would probably take so long to get there that we’d have to stay for months to make it worthwhile.”
“I hope you wouldn’t be away for months,” I said. “Who would I have my coffee with?”
“Well, perhaps Bolivia is a little too far away,” Sid said, picking up a croissant and idly tearing off a corner. “But I’m tired of all the normal places. Newport. Long Island. All so pretentious and bourgeois—and we do need to get out of the city before it gets too unbearably hot. One hears that there is typhoid again.”
I nodded. “Daniel told me. And not just in the tenements, but in a couple of middle-class households—houses with servants.” I leaned across to wipe an excess of jam from my son, Liam’s, mouth. He had been sitting, good as gold, on his little stool, working his way through his own croissant, piled by Gus with butter and jam. “Daniel has been on at me to leave the city for a while.”
“Then come with us,” Sid said with enthusiasm.
“Not to Bolivia, please.” I grinned. “I can’t see Daniel going for that! Actually, he’s been urging me to take the children to his mother in Westchester County for the summer.”
“You should go.” Gus nodded equally enthusiastically. “You are expecting, after all. In a delicate condition. You don’t want to take chances with a disease like typhoid.”
“I know,” I agreed. I had been walking on eggshells since I found out that I was truly pregnant this time. After a disappointing false alarm last fall, I had worried I was cursed and would never be able to have another baby, but now I was at least four months along. My cheeks were rosy, my belly swelling nicely, and I was starting to hope. “But if it’s a choice between risking typhoid and spending the summer with Daniel’s mother, I’m not sure which I’d choose.”
This made them smile.
“The children would love being in the country,” Gus said.
“Yes, I want to go to Granny’s,” Liam piped up, reaching for the last remnants of his croissant.
“Plenty of good fresh air and room to run around and being spoiled by your mother-in-law’s maid—what’s her name?” Gus continued.
“Martha,” I said. “She’s getting rather old and deaf. I think my mother-in-law’s training another new girl. Let’s hope there’s none of the drama as with the last one. Liam will love the country, but I’m not sure about Bridie. She’ll miss her friends. You know what it’s like when you are almost fourteen—life has no meaning if your friends are not around.”
Sid and Gus nodded sagely. They knew Bridie almost as well as I did.
“At least she has friends now, which is good,” Sid said. “She is finally fitting in at the new school and doing incredibly well in her studies.”
“Thanks to you two.” My friends were paying for my adopted daughter, Bridie, to go to a private academy for young ladies. Bridie had not found it easy mixing with the daughters of the Four Hundred at first but now had made a bosom friend and was generally accepted. She was blossoming into a lovely young woman with a bright future ahead.
Copyright © 2024 by Janet Quin-Harkin (writing as Rhys Bowen) and Clare Broyles
