The quarter candle sat flickering just beyond her bare toes. The light danced around the finely wallpapered walls and the shadows of the four poster bed seemed to entertain the baby. Audrey sat on the floor, with her back against her own bed and her knees pulled up to her chin. The baby nestled with his legs against Audrey's gut and his body rocked between her knees. William was soothed by sucking on his hands and focusing his wide-open eyes on his caretaker.

"San Francisco, Jack writes, is the New York of the West if he has ever seen one. Though it is smaller than even Queens and lacks the same history. But it's a city with a heartbeat, with the push and the pull of it." Audrey read softly to William.

The baby cooed. It had become a bit of a habit, on nights when William had taken to being fussy, that Audrey would sit up with the boy. One of his baskets had even been stationed by her own bed.

"I hope even in the lap of society you still feel the life of New York City. I miss it, every day, even when I'm out in the west, free and under the stars I itch to climb a fire escape and feel the warmth and very hum of those streets that once made me feel trapped. I did not know it, I could not, how much Manhattan had become a part of me. Home is home, as David likes to say."

William started to fidget at the word hum and his little fists began to wave around before he let out a wail. Audrey began swaying her legs and leaned down to shush the child.

"Oh come now, Jack's telling us a story." She whispered sweetly.

William sucked in a shuddering breath before letting out a louder wail. Audrey sighed, dropping the letter as she cradled the warm little body into her arms and pressed him against her chest. She continued shushing as she pushed herself up with one hand, carelessly catching on her letter and scattering the sheets.

Audrey glided in the flickering candlelight and the moonlight shining through her open window with her arms wrapped around the baby. She started softly humming as William let out shrill cries. She bounced him and kept a steady pace of walking across her floor in 12 steps and back again. She had learned in the previous weeks, a constant movement tended to calm the child down.

"There isn't a fire escape here little one, I cannot climb out to the roof and find our freedom," Audrey whispered, stealing a glance at the brilliant full moon. William shuddered in a breath and popped his tiny fist into his mouth.

"I hope you will one day be able to climb up to the rooftop somewhere in this city like we use to." Audrey pressed a kiss to the infant's plump cheek. He had calmed and was starting to getting heavier, warmer, falling asleep. Audrey paced her twelve steps just twice more before setting herself down on the end of her own bed. William asleep, she noticed the scattered sheets of her letter, glancing at the elegant curve of Jack's writing before noticing the photograph. She slipped down from the bed again, sliding the baby to be cradled against her torso as she reached for the photograph.

Laces had only ever seen one photograph of Jack Kelly and Spot Conlon, in the Evening World back in July 1899. The reporter Brian Denton had taken it after they had stopped the newspaper wagons during the strike. She had kept that photograph, carefully torn from the front page, and folded into the pockets of her skirt until the ink rubbed the faces into smudges. She remembered that photograph even now, on nights or days when she couldn't picture them. Couldn't remember how tall Jack was or the way Spot had always stood slightly ready for a fight. She always remembered them, those boys she knew, just that way above the fold in black and white.

But the photograph she was staring at now wasn't like the one in the paper had been. It felt soft and cool to the touch and was brighter than any newspaper she had ever seen. Jack Kelly sat as if he had dropped into the chair unwillingly, his torso slightly arched forwarded and his heels pushed down with his toes kicked up. Using her forefinger, Audrey traced his sitting posture until she reached his face. His hair was long, longer than she had ever seen it, definitely unkept and curling like it did when the air in New York started to get warmer. His dark eyes bore into her, across the country and through the paper, with an intensity she had forgotten.

She let her eyes jump from his gaze to the familiar face standing rigidly behind Jack. Spot Conlon was everything she remembered, all sharp points and edges, with a bored look of resigned compliance. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, coming from work or getting ready for a fight and though it was impossible to tell in the black and white she could feel the vividness of his blue eyes.

But there was no denying, as she stared at the captured moment, her boys were men. William stirred and let out a shrill angry cry. Audrey barely bounced the boy once before the knock came and in trotted one of the boy's wet nurses. Audrey surrendered the warm bundle to the woman and watched her hurry from the room. The candle on the floor sputtered a bit before completely extinguishing leaving her in the moonlight alone.

She felt the dampness on her cheeks long before she understood she was crying. She had curled into her knees at the foot of her bed again, thumbing through the sheets of her letter. The letter written on her birthday, just three weeks before.

Thomas Longfellow quietly slipped into her room, he had been sitting out in the hallway listening to her read to his son. The man had been asleep most of the day and as it neared midnight found he couldn't stay in bed any longer. Hearing his son cry had drawn him near to his ward's room. He had watched as the nursemaid had darted out with the wailing baby and sat listening for Audrey. His training as a bird made it impossible not to hear the hitch that signaled crying. And even though he shook from the effort of walking, he didn't even stop before reaching down to pick the girl up. She wasn't as light as she had been as a child, or even as she had been a year before.

"What if they don't recognize me?" Audrey whispered her childlike fear into his chest. She wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"You are undeniably yourself. You always have been." Thomas sighed back, tucking her into bed.