The Lost Son by Stephanie Vanderslice

Author:Stephanie Vanderslice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Queens, New York

November 1931

How many times had she collected him from school now? A few hundred, at least. Johannes was in second grade, after all. Yet each time her heart beat a little faster as she watched the children come pouring out of the black iron gates of St. Matthew’s Elementary, fluttered until she found his fair head in the crowd.

“Can we stop at the playground today? Please.”

“Not today. I’m making sauerbraten tonight. It’s complicated.”

“I can walk home by myself.” He stood a little straighter. “Joseph and Andrew do.”

“I know,” she told him. “But I am not Joseph and Andrew’s mother. I am your mother. And I don’t think you’re old enough to walk home by yourself. It’s still six blocks from the playground.”

He sighed, his chin sinking to his chest for a moment in recognition that this was not a battle he had ever won.

“So, what did you learn today? What can you tell me?”

He brightened. “Well, you know how we have been reading about Joseph and Margaret and their sister, baby Joan?”

Julia nodded. They were the children in the stories from his reader.

“They went to visit their grandparents at their farm out in the country. They got eggs from the chickens and Joan tripped and fell in the pond but Joseph pulled her out.”

“How nice. A farm,” she said, taking his hand as they reached a stoplight.

“That’s not all,” Johannes said. “Guess what happened when their daddy—that’s what they call their papa—came and brought them back home?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“There was a new baby waiting for them! Peter. He had come while they were gone!”

“Really. Another baby,” she said absently as she watched the traffic light for a safe time to cross. It was late November. The day was brisk and windy and a group of workmen at the corner struggled to raise a gold garlanded star and a strand of Christmas bulbs above the street.

“So I was thinking. I keep praying and praying for Nicholas and Papa to come back but they never do. Now I know what the problem is. We never go anywhere.”

Julia absorbed this news silently. “I’ve never heard you say that prayer,” she said finally.

“I say it in my head. Aunt Lena says we mustn’t talk about it, that it only upsets you.”

“I see.”

“Joseph and Andrew are brothers. I don’t tell them I have a brother too. I don’t think they’d believe me.”

“It’s just as well,” she said. “It would be hard to explain.”

“We need to go away, Mama. Then when we get back, Papa and Nicholas will be here. I think that must be how babies come.”

“Johannes.” She stopped and they faced each other, reflected in the windows of Bohack’s Grocery. She still held his mittened hand. She needed to hold his hand to tell him this.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Nicholas isn’t a baby anymore.”

“He’s not? How old is he?”

“He turned four on August nineteenth.”

“Four! That’s old enough to go to the playground with. That’s old enough to play catch. So when can we go away on a trip? Aunt Lena should come too.

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