Page 37 of My Darling Girls

“The bruises around your wrist, Grace.” Jo wipes the lens with a soft cloth. Each movement is slow and deliberate. Each word is heavy. “I can clearly see someone’s fingers imprinted on your skin.” She pauses, giving Grace a chance to respond, but when the girl doesn’t say anything, Jo adds, “Don’t be afraid to speak out about those who are hurting you. I want to help.”

Grace, who’s focused on removing a smudge from the glass, sets one of the lenses down. A flicker of uncertainty crosses her haunted eyes, but then she schools her face, and shutters go down. She doesn’t answer, and Jo doesn’t push her. She’ll wait until the girl is ready. Jo’s too familiar with this. She remembers herself—broken and hurting—and how vulnerable she was. She remembers her hopes shattering with each blow of her father’s fist. His face twisted with rage, his hands around her neck, the force of his push. She longs to tell Grace that if she speaks about it, the weight of her pain will be lifted, and she won’t need to carry it alone. But the girl isn’t ready, and Jo doesn’t want to scare her away.

Grace glances again at Jo, thinking. “It’s nothing, Jo.” She sounds not just tired, but bone weary. As if she used up all her energy with her words. “My little brothers play rough. They’re just little boys.”

Jo doesn’t argue. Grace’s path closely resembles Jo’s: hoping for a way out of the situation, finding a friend in the most unexpected place, a horrible loss and a buried pain that she’ll carry for the rest of her life. Jo understands Grace doesn’t want to confront the evil. A part of the girl—the most vulnerable, broken part of her, just like a part of Jo a long time ago—wants to remain in the past, unwilling to fully move on.

They sit in silence. And then, suddenly, Grace leans into Jo and presses her face to Jo’s shoulder and cries. Her sobs are soft, like the whimpers of a child. Jo pulls the girl closer and presses her face into Grace’s hair, inhaling the familiar scent of orange blossom mixed with that odd hint of musk she can never quite place.

I must do something.

I must help her.

The thought keeps circling in her mind. Circling and circling, pushing all the other thoughts aside, conquering the space. But what can she do? Maybe if Grace knows what Jo survived, how Jo became who she is today, if the girl knows Jo’s deepest secrets, it will give Grace hope that she, too, can survive in this world. But there is so much to tell, so much to remember—some of it still raw—Jo hesitates. Then, for a quick moment, Grace looks up and their eyes catch and hold. The girl’s eyes are bright with tears and sorrow. A spike of determination pierces Jo’s heart.

And so Jo tells Grace about Millville and her father’s angry fists, and how the river raged, and how Jo was thrown into the water only to survive it. She tells her about the marriage advertisement and how she arrived in Chicago and became a wife to a man she’d met for the first time on the train platform. Her voice is emotionless. She’s methodical in her facts. But inside, Jo is quaking with fear she hasn’t forgotten and rage she cannot let go. The only part she withholds is her memories of Miss Lambert. She can’t bring herself to tell Grace about her loud and confident friend. Her only friend. For some reason—mostly selfish—she cannot share Miss Lambert. She cannot tell Grace about the woman who changed her destiny and shaped her future.

At some point, Grace stops crying. She listens, without offering a word. Without condolences. But her eyes get darker. Her shoulders soften. As their relationship takes a new shape, Grace finally stops trembling. She brushes her fingers over the bluish-gray bruise on her wrist. Hesitation is set in the bend of her head, the angle of her shoulders, in the soft curve of her lips.

“You’re nothing like I imagined, Josephine,” Grace whispers. “Is that why you go to Old Zhang’s den? To forget?”

Jo’s memories flash—blood in the corner of her mouth. A fresh bruise on her jaw. Her constricted throat. A pain in her lungs. You always find a way to make me angry.

“Yes, I use opium to forget.” Except, it doesn’t work that way anymore. Now, she uses opium to remember.

“I’ve heard that sometimes the opium can take you to the world where the dead live.”

“Who told you that? Mei?”

Grace gives a half shrug and doesn’t say anything.

Jo wants to push for an answer, but a knock on the door makes them both jump. Grace stares at Jo—a cornered prey—and shakes her head, asking her not to open. The knock—three rapid strikes followed by a brief pause and then two slower ones—is familiar.

“It must be Finn,” Jo says. She pushes away from the chair, sets her lens carefully on the table.

“How do you know that?”

“I recognize his knock by now.” Jo smiles. “It’s a bit frantic. And really loud.”

As if confirming her words, Finn’s voice shouts from behind the door. “Jo, I have work for you.”

Jo looks at the front door, then at Grace. “If you don’t want him here, I won’t open.”

“Can I assist you with whatever job he has for you?”

“Let’s see what he’s got first.” Jo walks down the hallway and swings the door open. A sudden rush of chill and a gust of wind swirl through the door. But behind Finn, the sun breaks through the clouds, washing him in shades of orange. He takes a step forward and suddenly, he’s not exactly looming over Jo, but his broad shoulders make her feel like he’s crowding her. She isn’t sure how she feels about it. She isn’t scared, but she isn’t comfortable either. It must be the memories of her father. It’s dangerous opening her mind like that. Those moments from her past when spoken aloud drag her to the places she thought she had banished from existence. She allowed herself to remember, and she did it for Grace, and now she should stop.

“I need you to come with me.” Finn’s voice is raspy. His face is unusually pale, as if he was drained of blood while walking to her studio. “Get your camera. I have a job for you.”

Jo takes a step back but doesn’t invite him to come in. “What kind of job?”

He runs his hand through his hair, already tousled by the wind. “It’s . . . Look, it’s one of Madame Ada’s girls. She’s dead, and they want her pictures taken.”

“Did Ada send you to fetch me?”

“I told her and the girls I know a photographer who takes pictures of the dead.”

“Why were you there?”