Page 32 of My Darling Girls

“Of course not. Uncle Ira rarely comes over. And Finn? He wouldn’t hurt his family.”

“Was anyone else in the house that day?”

A small, nonchalant shrug of the skinny shoulders. “People always come and go. All the time.” Millie takes the reins and pulls, but Horace doesn’t move. Instead, he looks at Jo in an odd and steady way, taking in her furrowing brows and the tight line of her jaw. “You’re looking in the wrong places, Jo. You need to try harder.” The blue of Millie’s eyes gets darker. “I can’t cross over because you’re distracted. And I really want to move on.”

“I’m not distracted.” A random piece of the puzzle rattles in Jo’s brain. She tries to catch it, pluck it out of all the other pieces, but she can’t. Like water, it slips between her hectic thoughts and vanishes.

“I wish—” Millie falls silent.

Jo takes a few steps forward. “What is it?”

“I wish I could help. What else do you need to know?”

Jo presses her palm to her forehead, not certain what to say. She must help the girl. She also must help Grace. “I don’t know what to think, Millie. Why would someone want to hurt you? Did you see something you were not supposed to see?” Jo thinks back to the night she came to photograph Millie and to the man on the floor, and wonders if what she witnessed that night was an unusual occurrence and not something the Snakes do in a house full of children. Ira and Gertrude would want to shield the children from the horrors of their trade. It must be something else, something she isn’t seeing. “Did you hear something? If I find a motive, I’ll find your killer.”

“I don’t think so,” Millie says slowly. She searches Jo’s face as if looking for a forgotten memory in Jo. “Nothing comes to mind. Talk to Grace. Maybe she knows something that can help.” She picks up the reins again.

“I’ll talk to her.”

Millie nods, clicks her tongue. The wagon rattles, and Horace starts pulling it into one of the alleys. Right before they make a turn, the horse turns and looks at Jo. Can’t he ever look at her without judgment?

A shadow moves. A familiar-looking woman—muddy water pooling by her feet—steps in front of Horace. He bends his head as if in acknowledgment, and she strokes his big white head gently, scratching between his ears. Her face is gray. Her lips are blue. She looks right at Jo and winks. In response, Jo’s blood heats up. How is it possible she’s here—against all the odds, against time and space?

Something sulfurous drifts in the air. Jo brings her hand to her nose and realizes the smell that lingers in the air is hers. The ripeness of it covers the hair plastered flat to her head. It’s in her chemise that clings to all the wrong places. It’s on her skin.

The drowned woman steps around Horace and smiles at Jo, a little gap toothed and a lot vicious.

When Jo wakes, it’s early morning. Her heart is still racing.

She rises and goes down to the kitchen to make herself a strong coffee. Her joints are stiff. Her jaw clicks as she chews on dry toast. In her head, she goes over a list of mindless tasks—clean the kitchen, mop and dust the studio—she needs to take care of before Grace comes in the afternoon. As she is sluggishly shuffling through her thoughts, she thinks of August, retracing her past with him and pondering how she ended up on the path that led her to him and this house. This city. This studio.

Her life with him was good. Especially in the beginning, when she thought she could fall in love again. Under his guidance, she started learning about the photography business. She had hope of being his equal partner—because of Paris and his willingness to help her learn. She still truly believed she could grow his business and herself alongside. August worked relentlessly to build his client list, and as his list grew longer, Jo’s life somehow grew smaller. Her world didn’t become as narrow as it was in Millville, but it didn’t expand enough to make space for her either. She still helped August, she still ushered the sitters inside their studios, and she still made her own photos. But mostly, she was still a wife, a cook, a cleaner. At some point, she lost hope of being a full-time photographer. Because that was the world of men. The world of privilege and money and ambition. But she never complained, never asked for more, because she had chosen this life willingly: the husband with means, the protection of a good man, invisibility of the big city with wide streets. She told herself she had created the life she wanted. She didn’t realize until much later that it was an illusion—and a cruel one at that. And the thing about illusions is, they dissolve fast and without a trace. Not a drop left behind.

And now there’s Grace with her big sad eyes and ripe bruises. She isn’t Jo’s responsibility, but Jo can see in her all the familiar broken pieces, the withdrawal from the world and the haunting, and it all reminds her of a younger Josephine. The one who couldn’t fathom fully what was sensible and right and safe and what was not. Then, of course, there’s Millie and her murder. Perhaps Grace knows more about that day than what she was willing to reveal to a stranger in the opium den.

A shadow moves in the corner of Jo’s eye, and she jumps. But when she turns and looks, it’s only her own shadow on the wall.

Jo finishes her meager breakfast, shrugs on her coat, and leaves her studio. There’s one more thing she needs to do before Grace comes over this afternoon. She locks up her studio and emerges into the streets that are already busy with horse-drawn carriages, cable cars and people and life. A sprinkle of rain nips at her skin, but she doesn’t mind it. The chill cuts her skin and keeps her awake. She knows her walk by heart. All the streets. All the back alleys.

As she turns the corner of her street, the intersection of 92nd and Commercial Avenue, something changes in the air. Time slows down. The cable cars stop moving. The horses stop dragging their carriages. Everyone and everything around Jo freezes mid-step. She’s the only one who’s moving, gasping, searching. A white mist hovers low to the ground, swirling around her feet. She catches a movement, a shadow, a reflection in the glass of a small hat shop. She turns to look, takes a step closer. No one is there, across the street, behind the window of the hat shop. The street is alive and bustling again—was it moving all along?—and someone yells at her to look where she’s going, but Jo’s running across the street, convinced the person she just saw is still in the shop. She must see her. The brown glossy hair cut shorter than appropriate for a lady, the round shoulders, the mischievous amber eyes. She must be there, in the shop. She was in the courtyard. She must’ve crossed into Jo’s world. Her name is stuck in Jo’s throat, tearing her from the inside. She almost pushes it out, almost screams it, but then she’s in front of the store, and there’s no one inside.

She’d never been there at all.

Dread pools in Jo’s stomach. What’s happening to her?

Jo turns away from the window, feeling ashamed of herself—of her despair and her madness—and runs, almost blindly, dodging a couple of bicycles, narrowly avoiding people and cars and possibly her own death. She runs as fast as her legs will allow her. Her muscles spasm, her calves on fire, but she keeps running until she reaches a stop of a cable car. She jumps in, breathless, and finds a seat in the back.

Breathe in and out. In and out.

Her heart keeps racing. The breathing exercise doesn’t help. And when Jo exits the cable car and walks to Old Zhang’s place, one thought keeps pounding in her head.

I will never be free of her.

She bursts inside the steam laundry, wild eyed and gasping for air. The room is dim and prosaic as ever, and somehow it calms her down, settles her almost instantaneously. There is no smell of dust or rot or decay. There are no shadows and gap-toothed smiles. Instead, the laundry smells of clean linen and soap. The woman by the door from two days ago is not in her chair, but Mei is behind the counter, folding shirts. She looks briefly at Jo and shakes her head. “You’re not welcome here anymore.”

“I’m here to pay.” Jo puts a five-dollar bill on the counter. Her hand’s shaking. Must be from the exertion of the brisk walk. “This is all I owe.”

Mei swipes the money off the counter.