“I promise I’ll be careful,” Grace said.
Grace handed her a piece of paper with the studio address on it.
Nell clutched it in her hand.
“I can’t lose both my children,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears.
At the sight of them, Grace’s suddenly filled, too.
“I am the person you taught me to be,” Grace said. “You do what your heart says is right, no matter how it looks to other people. And I am your daughter.”
“And look at you go,” her mother said. She smiled, watery and brave. “Go, and go, and go. And then come back to me,” she said.
She cupped Grace’s cheek.
“In the meantime, I’ll be having a word with my brother Reginald,” she said. She gathered her dress resolutely in her hand. “If you prefer not to witness the aftermath, I’d stay clear for a few days.”
Grace snorted. “I love you.”
Her mother embraced her, then whispered fiercely into her hair. “No one tells of the freedom you have when you’re no longer bound by society’s opinion.”
“I’m afraid that some days I’m not there yet,” Grace said.
“Nor am I. But I’m on my way.”
Grace watched her mother buy the train ticket, feeling something within her fissure.
She’d been the reliable one, the responsible one, for years now. That had been a gift she could give her parents, becoming one less weight for them, in case they collapsed under what they already carried.
And yet this had been a gift her parents had given back to her, too. That she was worth fighting for as well. Worth worrying over.
Grace waved fiercely, stepping on her tiptoes and watching the train pull away, as though it could go back to the place where her father still sifted flour like snow in the kitchen, where Walt papered the walls with his drawings and she hid in the knotted boughs of the juniper tree. Back to childhood and all the versions of herself that didn’t exist anymore.
She waved at the train until it disappeared.
And then she went home to try to catch a murderer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MAY 10, 1904
Seven Days After the Murder
IN THE MORNING, Grace dressed in formal black for Harriet’s funeral and stepped out to hail a carriage. But as the carriage drew near, her eye caught on something.
“Explosive new claims!” a news seller shouted from the corner. He held a paper in his hand, showing its bold headline: IS A MURDERER STILL ON THE LOOSE AT THE FAIRGROUNDS?
It was her article.
A crowd was already beginning to gather like finches to birdseed. Newspapers were flying off the stands. She felt a special jolt of pleasure, standing anonymously amid dozens of people devouring her words.
It was power. She was entering their minds, beckoning their thoughts where she wanted them to go. They didn’t have to follow, but for a moment she was a prosecutor, presenting her case, and they were the raptly listening jury.
“Is it true? There might still be a murderer on the loose?”
“Apoisoner.”
“That’s it. We’re only eating sandwiches we brought from home.”
