September 3rd, 1871

Dear Dom,

Every time I get a letter from you or Mal my heart sores. I remember being so worried about Mal during the trip out to the Wyoming territories. Thank the Lord you arrived before she gave birth.

It's hard to believe little Jimmy is 2 already! Please tell me all about the adventures he and his sister are getting into. The last one I heard about involved a game of chase and a large mud puddle. I miss you all dearly. I remember teaching Phillipa how to play hide and seek in your backyard when she was just 3! Helping at your house and taking care of Phillipa after she was born was wonderful, the year I spent working for your family was truly the best in my life.

Send the kids my love! I expect Phillipa to start writing letters to me very soon. I know Mal has been working with her on her letters and it gladdens me that she is taking to learning with enthusiasm!

Please tell Mal I look forward to her next letter! She and I have been exchanging recipes. It's fascinating the difference it makes living in the city compared to the "untamed west". I do love the city and everything it has to offer, but the fresh apple tarts she made last month sounded lovely.

I will not bore you with any more details about cooking and baking though. I am very interested to learn more about the teaching position you mentioned in your last letter. I'm intrigued but not sure I'm qualified. As you know, I have until January at the orphanage but after that I need to find somewhere else to live, so this seems to be the perfect opportunity.

I will not be secretive in this matter, I have a meager savings. I do believe I have enough to buy my train ticket out to Cheyenne, however, I do not know what I could do for room and board once I arrived. Would this job include housing?

Maybe I will be seeing you soon after all! I eagerly await your correspondence and hope this opportunity will work out for me.

All my love,

Ariadne Nicola

Ariadne put down her fountain pen and looked out the window. All she could see was the brick wall of the building next to hers. The dirty, red bricks surrounded even dirtier windows. How anyone could see out of them was a mystery.

She heard two children playing and screaming with laughter as they ran down the sidewalk in front of the building. From her angle, she could only see them for a few seconds before they disappeared from view again.

The trees were swaying back and forth in the breeze and every now and then a yellow or orange leaf would float down to the sidewalk and blow away down the street. There was a tree in the yard and others like it all along the street that had been losing their leaves all month. Those colorful leaves now lay dead on the ground, lining the sides of the houses and had collected against the fence in the yards, ready to be raked up.

Looking skyward, plumes of chimney smoke curled up and dissipated into a dreary, cloudy sky. It had been raining all week and looked like the sky might open up again at any moment.

September rain was always the coldest. By October it would be snowing, but September rain was so cold that it seemed to soak through to your bones for hours. If she wanted to get this letter in the mail today, she needed to hurry. Grabbing her coat and hat she flew down the stairs, only pausing to tell Mistress Laurette where she was going.

Laurette's House for Abandoned and Orphaned Children stood three stories tall. It was as dirty as the buildings next to it and the wear and tear of the last ten years weighed heavily on the roof shingles. The tiny yard would have been constantly overgrown with weeds and fallen leaves, except that the children were tasked to rake and clean the yard on a weekly basis.

It was Mistress Laurette's opinion that, while they could not control the way the exterior of the building looked, they were capable of maintaining a clean and orderly front yard. Even though it had been her home for the last 18 years, Ariadne thought it looked like a building from a horror story. Especially in this dreary September weather, with the trees bare and a chill in the air.

The boys will be out here once they get home from school today. They have been neglecting the raking duties this week! Ariadne thought as she looked again at the fallen leaves.

Ariadne had been at the orphanage since she was a baby. If anyone knew her parents or why she had been abandoned, they never shared that information with her. When she was younger, she had tried to solve the mystery but came back empty handed and heart broken. Nicola was a common Greek name, and there were so many Greek immigrants in New York that without her parent's names, her search was impossible. All she had wanted were a mother and father to love her.

Her childhood had been lonely and sad, but by age 18 Ariadne had learned to accept her independence and hoped one day she might have her own children to love and cherish, the way she never had been.

It wasn't until she was 14 that she began to teach the younger children at the orphanage. Without the proper guidance, many dropped out of school and ran away to live life on the streets. Mistress Laurette and the other staff did their best, but it was difficult to feed and care for so many children while simultaneously keeping a close eye on their individual studies.

The decision to start helping the younger kids after school was an easy one. It started when she came home to find Amy Elliot on the front steps crying. She had failed her spelling test and didn't want to go back to school. Ariadne was able to help her and refused to give up. She worked with Amy for the next 3 weeks and by the time they took their next test, she only misspelled two words. After that some of the other kids started coming to Ariadne with questions.

School had always been a joy of Ariadne's. While others trudged slowly to school, Ariadne would gleefully skip down the street towards school, and absorb every little detail of every lesson. Now that her school days were long over, she was able to relive that joy as she tutored the kids. She had helped raise many of them, loving and helping them as if they were her true siblings. In many ways, she had become a motherly figure to the younger children and they cherished her as she did them.

It seemed she could have lived this way forever, the perpetual teacher and mother, however there were rules at the orphanage.

On January 14th she would be 19 and officially an adult, rather than a ward of the state. Mistress Laurette had bent the rules slightly to allow her to remain through her eighteenth year. Ariadne suspected it was because she helped out so much with the younger children and eased the burden of the staff without earning any money.

However by law, after her 19th birthday, she would no longer be allowed to stay. She had tried to convince Mistress Laurette to hire her on as an actual employee but had been told,

"That is simply not an option. It is time to get out on your own and start a life for yourself Ariadne! Besides, we just do not have the money to hire anyone else."

She had been trying to find a job but everyone seemed to find an excuse to turn her down. Not enough experience, too pretty, too young, too old, etc. The list went on and on. The only jobs she was offered did not offer living accommodations and wouldn't pay enough for her to rent an apartment. She was stuck. And she would be out on the street in a few months if she couldn't find somewhere.

While this had been worrying her for over a year, Dom had mentioned a teaching position out in his small town, in his last letter. It might be the perfect opportunity for her. He seemed to think she could be a teacher. Ariadne wasn't sure that she possessed the abilities to manage an entire classroom but it appeared she was running out of options.

Dashing around a corner, a buggy and horses splashed through a puddle and nearly soaked Ariadne's skirts. The driver yelled and shook his fist at her while she jumped out of the way and realized that her mind had been elsewhere.

Be more careful you fool! She almost yelled until she realized that she had been in the street. She had been imagining the endless plains, cowboys and Indians, saloons and wooden houses that Mal had described in her letters.

How impossibly different, she thought while paying closer attention to the traffic. The dirty streets, crowds of people, and hustle and bustle of New York were all she knew. Could she really give this all up to go live in the middle of nowhere?

It wasn't until she saw the sign for Washington Street that she realized that she had walked past the post office at least 5 minutes ago.

Really? Pay attention you silly goose! The rain is going to start any minute and you could have already been on your way home by now! She chastised herself as she turned around and walked purposefully in the right direction.

After she paid for postage and sent off her correspondence she found her mind wandering again.

It seemed crazy. The whole thing was a stupid and dangerous idea. She had heard terrible stories about Indians and roughneck gunslingers. Who could protect you when a posy of wild and savage Indians rode into town with the intent of killing everyone? Or bandits trying to escape their captors that took people hostage to avoid capture. Was there really even any sort of local law enforcement system?

And what if something happened? What if someone got hurt? She thought with anxiety and fear filling her. There weren't hospitals or proper medical care nearby. At best a horse and wagon could take you to a local doctor and pray for the best.

Why would she put herself through that? She knew that Mal and Dom lived in a respectable little town about two hours north of Cheyenne, wherever that was. And what they called 'respectable' was still assuredly quite wild and untamed compared to New York.

They seemed to love it though. Mal had written about the troubles with adjusting to life in the West for about a year and then it seemed to stop. Now, all her letters were filled with happiness and joy. They had even bought a cow and some chickens and had a family farm where they grew vegetables.

It mattered not. Ariadne was determined to stop thinking about every possible worry and problem that she might encounter if she did acquire a teaching position out there.

Just wait for Dom's letter. Put it out of your mind! You have more important tasks to occupy your time. She determined as she walked up the steps of the orphanage.

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