Page 28 of My Darling Girls

I miss you. Have you missed me?

The woman pulls on a strand of her hair, pulling a long, thick lock with a piece of scalp away from her head. She examines it carefully and drops it on the floor by the old man’s feet.

“What do you want?”

The apparition laughs.

Jo’s pulse hammers in her temples as she steps away from the camera, turns on her heels, and goes upstairs where she’s alone: no watchful eyes of the men, no ghosts lurking in the shadows, no camera. Jo pulls a pillow off her bed, presses it to her face, and screams. The sound is muffled, but deep inside her it’s a wretched wail. When she’s done, she puts the pillow back, but the echo of her howl shivers through her body.

She finds two half-burned candles shoved in one of the drawers of her wardrobe, holds them in her hands, and lowers herself into the chair by the vanity. What is she doing? She’s obviously not coping well. It must be all the stress of the situation. The dead man. The brothers. But what is she supposed to do now that she has come so far? She can’t give the money back and not take pictures. She’ll go downstairs. And maybe her camera will cooperate.

And so Jo forces herself to go back to the studio, light the candles, and go behind her camera.

“Look at me, please,” she says softly to the old man. Her hands tremble as she puts them on the camera. It is cool under her touch, but there’s no bone-snapping, skin-cutting frostiness. Her heart slows down. In this moment, she can do anything. Her exhale is a relief bursting from her chest. “Don’t move. Stay still.”

The old man glares into the camera.

Jo adjusts the shutters. She steadies her grasp on the camera and looks at the old man through the lens. His frame is a blur. She blinks, clearing the tears. “Keep still.” She points the camera at him and wishes she never agreed to take his picture.

Shutters click.

I can help, the old man says. You can be free.

Jo doesn’t respond. Instead, she goes back to the staircase and sits down on the steps. Specks of dust twirl in the room. She closes her eyes and allows herself to float in this dark place she calls madness.

A Miller’s Daughter

When Grace and Finn leave, the rain starts its soft drum on the windows. A soothing sound.

Before Jo takes her opium, she grants herself a moment to think about Grace and her bruises. Millie and her request to find her killer. She also thinks of Finn. He never answered her question. But before he walked into the streets, he lingered in the door as if wanting to say something but deciding against it. There was something inexplicably sad in his face, and Jo wanted to reach out and touch him. Instead, she took a step back and closed the door.

Jo is good at sensing danger. She knows how it feels to not be safe. The way your stomach roils when someone shifts their posture, your body preparing for a blow. The way your spine freezes when someone steps closer. The way everything inside you turns to stone when you realize that a smile is really a warning. She’s never felt that way with Finn. Uncomfortable? Certainly. But she never felt he wanted to hurt her. Intentionally inflict physical harm.

Grace is very comfortable, even teasing, with the young man.

It must be someone else.

She gulps down her drink, craving the drug yet anxious about reliving her past.

Jo’s tongue tastes like ashes when she sets her glass on the floor by her bed.

The thing about the courtyard is you never know what you’ll find there.

Today, she finds nothing. The sun is beating down on the cobblestones. The air is stifling. There’s no breeze. No alleys. No crows. No Horace or Millie. The absence of any sound is unsettling.

Today, the well tilts to one side, as if something heavy pulls on it, throwing it out of balance.

Josephine. A whisper, no—a ripple of water.

Her earlier determination to confront whatever is waiting for her in that well is replaced by a creeping sense of unease. She knows what she must do if she wants to complete her penance. If she wants to be free. And freedom is what she craves the most.

She must remember, and so she inches closer to the crippled well and looks down. There’s mud in the water. Thick, sloshy mud. She knows the origin of this dirt.

She has seen it.

She has tasted it.

The memory that lives deep inside her mind stirs. She closes her eyes, and it is right there, behind her eyelids. She wants to scream, to let the sound wipe it away, but she doesn’t do it. Instead, opening her eyes, she calls out, “Millie.” Maybe the girl will answer. Maybe she won’t need to face her past.