Sold on a Monday

When Ellis and Lily return, Lily calls the sanitorium from her work and learns from the workers that Geraldine died. 

They also learn that Alfred J. Millstone, who lives in Long Beach, California, is the banker that bought the kids. Ellis asks Dutch to use his contacts in San Francisco to look into Millstone. Then Ellis’s mother, Myrna, comes for an unexpected visit. Ellis has no important leads, so he agrees to take her to lunch.

Myrna tells Ellis why his father dislikes reporters. Jim was involved in freeing a breaker boy from the gears at a mining accident. When Jim brought the child out and laid him on the ground, reporters started taking pictures and often the newspapers had the stories before the families. Jim attacked the reporter, who sued the coal company, which settled the lawsuit but required Jim to apologize publicly, which he did. The family then moved to Allentown. Myrna tells Ellis that his father is proud of him. But Jim’s connection of reporters to his own past and grief makes it hard to express his love for Ellis. Ellis thinks his “father’s coolness began long before” he became a reporter (154).

When Ellis returns from lunch, Dutch tells him that Millstone was in a story concerning a child.