Excerpt from The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter One

I pretended to be asleep until Ank left the room. Florence was with Ank's sister Viola in Kingstown, and the house was quiet. When I could hear Ank in the shop, I jumped from bed and dressed, stuffing two books, a penknife, a dress, a salami, a moth–eaten tartan cape, and Maddie's letters into a cardboard suitcase. The letters are two years old, but I have read them so many times, I know every word by heart. She says there is work to be had in the West, not just saloon–girl work like in the penny weeklies, but work you wouldn't be ashamed to do. I wonder if she will be surprised to see me. Surprised to see I am alone. She never believed I would do it. I counted the money I'd saved, which came to forty–two dollars. I kept thirty dollars for myself, and wrapped the rest in a piece of butcher's paper, sealed it in an envelope, and addressed it.

When I heard Mr. Lombardi in the alley, I invited him into the kitchen for coffee. He delivers a supply of colored glass stones to the shop on the last Monday of the month and I was expecting him. I told him I needed to get to Boston, where my sister was ill. I have no sister, but he did not know that. If he would take me to the Fox Point station when he left, I could catch the afternoon train to Boston. When he agreed, I asked him not to tell Ank. I said I had been forbidden to see my sister as she lived in sin with another woman. It was the worst lie I could devise.

My wrist is bandaged where my husband burned me with the soldering flame, and I saw Mr. Lombardi glance at it, but he said nothing. He knew Ank did it. Everyone in our street knows Ank likes to hurt me. Viola knows. My mother knew, although she never did anything to stop it. "It is only what you deserve," she said. "Anyone with the name Aniketos cannot be a proper Christian, and has to be a foreigner, maybe even a Greek. Or worse, a Turk." How she determined that Greeks are not Christians is a mystery, but there is a long list of mysteries where my mother is concerned. Who, for instance, is my father? She refused to tell me. Maybe he, too, is Greek, which would account for my black eyes and hair, and the faint line of hair above my lip. She believed that during conception, the partner who had the strongest orgasm determined the looks of the child, which suggests that my father is Greek, after all. Or a Turk. And that she was is as cold as ice, but I knew that.

I met Mr. Lombardi on Eddy Street as we had planned. It was raining and we didn't talk much, perhaps because we had nothing to say, and we were soon wet through, despite the tarp he threw over us. He had a pint of whiskey in his pocket and now and then took a drink, but he did not offer me any. He dropped me at the Fox Point station and I again reminded him that he was not to tell anyone he had seen me. When he handed down my bag, he slipped a half–dollar into my hand, which caused me to wonder if he believed my story, after all. As I watched him turn the corner, I told myself that everything that happened from then on would be a sign. Even the rain was a sign. It would erase my footprints.

I mailed the envelope and ran into the station. I arrived too late to catch the train to Albany, and spent the night in the waiting room. I thought the porters who wandered in and out might not like it if I sat on one of their benches in wet clothes, so I walked in circles to keep warm, eating the salami and shaking with cold. Every time a man came through the door, I was certain it was Ank and hid my face in my sleeve, but no one bothered me, except for one man who asked if I was free for the evening.

I read Maddie's instructions for the hundredth time. Once I reach Boston, I am to take a train to Albany, where I will board an Erie Canal packet boat which will get me as far as Buffalo. In Buffalo, I am to board a lake steamer to Chicago. The fare in steerage will be three dollars. In Chicago, I am to find a place on a wagon traveling to a port on the Mississippi River called Galena. Then another steamboat from Galena to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I am to find a stagecoach that will carry me to the town of Shakopee, where Maddie will be waiting for me.

* * *

I must have fallen asleep on the train to Albany, as I don't remember leaving Boston. I was nudged awake four hours later by the conductor, surprised to see wheat fields and cows and barns. I asked him if he knew how I might find the Erie Canal Navigation Company in Albany, which turned out to be a fifteen minute walk from the station.

Excerpted from The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore. Copyright © 2023 by Susanna Moore. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.