Page 73 of My Darling Girls

Horace looks at Millie. Sorrow sweeps across his big brown eyes.

“Who killed me, Jo?” Millie whispers.

Her words taste heavy and muddy and rotten when Jo tells her about Grace and Sally, about Gertrude and what she did. She also tells her of Charlie and his game. When she’s done, there’s a sheen of sweat on Jo’s brows. The air is hotter and stickier than a few minutes ago. Millie doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word. Her eyes are closed. When Jo tells her everything there’s to tell, neither of them speak for a long time.

The white mist seeps from the far end of one of the alleys, gets thicker, and swirls around Horace’s legs.

“Your wish will be granted. You’ll never hear or see the dead,” Millie finally says. There are no tears in the bright blue of her eyes. Only eternal sadness. “You did your penance. A deal is a deal.”

A ripple in the well.

Jo leaps to her feet and turns, terrified that the water will beckon her, demand her to dive in to see something awful from her past. But there’s no water in the well. Instead it’s full of shadows with no shape or form. They circle and gape at her with distorted faces that are not faces but grimaces of despair and anger and loneliness. Jo stands motionless, watching their odd dance, the tears running down her face. There’s a sickly hint of decay in the air that drifts to her in waves from the well.

You see them for the last time. A whisper. They’re here to bid their farewell.

Jo peers down the well and waits for something to happen. For the shadows to leave. For the whispers to fade away. But nothing happens. She turns around to ask Horace to explain, but Millie is already sitting in the wagon, the white reins pulled tight in her hands. She’s looking down at Jo with a smile. “You’re free now.”

There’s a beat of wings above them. The crows have returned. Horace scuffs his hooves impatiently on cobblestones, ready to move.

“It’s time.” Millie’s voice trails off. She’s looking down at the alley that expands in front of her. “I’m seeing the door,” she says, pulling on the reins. “It’s opening.” There’s a wide smile on her face. “Do you see it too?”

Jo looks, and yes, there’s a door, and it’s half open and a bright-white light comes from it. It fills the alley, and it seems to be everywhere. It cuts through the space, right into the courtyard and through Millie. Horace steps into the light, and Millie drops the reins, her face full of wonder, and stretches her arms in front of her as if seeing something or someone only she can see. The gray shadows that used to move under her skin break loose and dissolve like smoke.

Millie whispers something, but Jo cannot hear her anymore. The girl becomes the light. A second later, Millie and Horace and the wagon are gone.

“Ruth,” a familiar voice says. She hadn’t thought there would be anyone left in the courtyard who knew her real name. Who might want to talk to her. “Ruth.” Her name again. It floats through the air and sky and settles over her like a mist. It’s a voice she knows, a voice she used to love, a voice that made her mind spin and her core heat up.

The air goes still when Jo turns around. And there she is, Miss Lambert, wearing the same smart dress as she wore on the day she stepped out from the shadow of the trees. Her old travel bag is set on the cobblestones by her feet. Miss Lambert is holding her favorite hat in her hands. “You look terrified, my darling.” She smiles, all gap toothed and very much alive. “As if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Jo takes one stumbling step backward.

“Oh, darling. Don’t be afraid. I’m not here to take you with me.”

“Why are you here?” Jo croaks. Is this her true penance? To face not her past but this phantom? She cannot fully inhale or exhale.

Miss Lambert steps forward, and her fingers touch Jo’s cheek. Her skin is warm. Solid. She isn’t a phantom. Jo tries to speak, her lips move, but there’s no sound. No words. What do you say to someone you loved more than life? Someone whose life you stole? I am sorry seems trivial. Useless.

Miss Lambert is watching Jo with a wry, gap-toothed smile. “I know what you’re thinking. No apology is necessary. You didn’t want to kill me. It was a horrible accident. And I’m not mad. There’s no point in being mad. Now that I’m dead.” Miss Lambert brushes Jo’s cheek again. Her touch is gentle. “I won’t lie, I was furious at first. After all, you were living my life. With my husband. But as I spent more time here, I realized I must forgive you so that I can move on.” She looks around and shakes her head. “No one wants to be stuck here for long. It’s a lonely place.”

“Do you . . . forgive me?” Jo asks weakly, peering into Miss Lambert’s eyes—that warm amber brown with flecks of gold—and Miss Lambert looks at Jo, and both of them reach out to each other at the same time. Jo presses her palm into the softness of Miss Lambert’s cheek.

“Of course, darling. As I said, I need to move on.” She drops her hand and picks up her travel bag. “And Ruth, you did so well. Despite everything. Go back to Omaha. Don’t think of me. It’s time to live your own life. Take a new name. Make it truly yours.”

A new name. A new life. Something releases in Jo. Perhaps her real story hasn’t started yet.

“You can be truly free now, my darling.” And as she says the words, Miss Lambert turns away and walks down one of the alleys where the door opens and the white mist swirls. With the travel bag in hand, and her hat set a bit askew, Miss Lambert steps into the mist.

Jo stands, rooted in cobblestones. The air is warmer again, and the courtyard is silent. The well is gone. The mist has gone too. She doesn’t hear any voices. She laughs quietly, sounding a bit mad.

She’s free.

She ran away from the place where the river flowed, and she spent ten years trying to forget its sounds. The taste of its mud in her throat. The heaviness of the dead body in her arms. She tried to build her dream life in Chicago with a man she barely knew. A man who was kind and caring and who, in the end, died trying to right all the wrongs. And she took his home, his business, and made it hers. There was a point in her life, when August was still alive, when Jo thought she was happy. But can you really be happy living a stolen life? You’re just a ghost haunted by ghosts of your past. Perhaps she can be her true self now that she’s crawled out of her darkness.

There’s a flash, and the light breaks and shatters into a million shards like a broken mirror, and each white piece of it spins and spins and spins around Jo. Her mind cannot keep up; she’s dizzy and weak. The pull of the real world intensifies as Jo falls to her knees and surrenders herself to the storm that is raging in the courtyard.

Epilogue

The bright-yellow envelope arrives with a storm. The rain is quick and brutal, and afterward, a thin layer of fog crawls on the streets.