I just saw Aunt Gigi. Is it true about Mom?
There are dots as he’s typing back. Finally, he responds.
Yes
Taylor’s mom’s last letter
Dear T.J.,
I am so sorry I haven’t written in a while. I miss you very much, my little monkey! It’s just that my work has been very busy, and Boston is so exciting that the days fly by. This week I went to an oyster restaurant. I didn’t find any pearls (if I did, I would have saved them for you), but I did eat a lot of oysters. They were very big and salty! I think you would like oysters but you may need to wait until you’re older because they are raw so they can make you sick. But it’s nothing to be scared of. If you like, I’ll take you to try your first one.
It’s getting cold here, it gets so much colder than back home, and we even had our first snowfall! But the city doesn’t go to sleep and hibernate like a bear. Instead it stays alive and exciting. I never went a moment of my life in a place where the locals didn’t know me from day one, but here I am a stranger to everyone. Here, little monkey, I can be anyone. The streets and houses are so old and charming and lit up with beautiful streetlamps that sometimes Mommy feels like she’s in a fairy tale! The only thing missing is herprincess daughter. I’m wearing such pretty clothes that I can’t wait to show you. And they look so good because Mommy is finally nice and thin! You know me, always so vain.
Anyway, always remember that I love you very, very much. And that you will forever be Mommy’s little monkey. I’ll write again real soon.
Love,
Mommy
The Knox
February
Idaresay, I know why Vivian appears familiar.
It took seeing her in a heap at the bottom of my grand staircase, her face as gray-white as Carrara marble, to put two and two hundred years together. That woman is the spitting image of Margaret Thurgood, née Knox. They share identical large green eyes and have the same elegant nose and fine cheekbones. They simplymustbe related.
Why, observing Vivian in that unnatural position brought it all back like it was yesterday: when Margaret lay as cold as an icebox on her son’s medical table in my basement.
I’ll always be grateful to Margaret; she was the one who hired the original Rose, after all, an Irish woman named Aoife. But when Margaret birthed a baby after Teddy had been at sea for eighteen months—well, the math speaks for itself. Margarethadto send the baby away, and, naturally, she entrusted the baby to her most loyal servant, Aoife.
Prior to Vivian’s “accident,” I was not certain whether baby Mercy had survived or passed away. But now, I have no doubt.
Margaret hired another “Rose”—one who called herselfSara—and to my utter delight, the second Rose turned out to be markedly better than the first. When Teddy returned from Canton, China, his bags bulging with opium, and they threw the legendary opium parties, Sara would tidy me up the moment the guests left. Given the nature of those affairs, sometimes that meant the following day, sometimes the following week.
The problem herein lies that Margaret developed quite the taste for opium. She turned to it after losing all those babies. And once she gave up Mercy—her only other child, besides Robert—Margaret grew bereft, relying on more and more opium. Robert grew up rather unattended to; nobody to advise him what was right and wrong.
Naturally here at the society, we follow a moral code of our own devising.
Right can be right, but wrong can be right, too.
Diary Entry of Dr.Robert Thurgood
December 13, 1855
I am fortunate in that my memory, unlike that of my peer counterparts, grows uncommonly sharper as I age. One morning, I did suddenly recall, with not a margin for error, how Mother’s stomach swelled after Father had already been away at sea for well over a year. This, I recalled, was followed by a baby’s cries at all hours through the bedroom walls, until one day the cries ceased, the timing of which coincided with the leaving of my favorite servant, Aoife—who used to sneak me an extra spoonful of sugar in my morning porridge.
The cause for such egregious deception to Father and me I can only attribute to Mother’s reliance on laudanum for her hysteria; this foul, nasty habit persisted to her last dying breath. I pray that future generations shall understand the ill effects, both seen and unseen, of such a weakness, and I hereby dedicate myself to studying this cause.
Taylor
Taylor knocks on the glass of Turned Pages, the bookstore. The sign readsOpen, but the door is locked. It feels fitting; everything in her life is completely backward, after all. Maybe she shouldn’t even bother with the shop anymore, but after she sat long enough on the curb to regain her breath and steady herself, she got up and then approached the door like it was the logical thing to do. Because, fuck, what else can she do right now?
There’s movement inside; a white-haired man slowly comes to the entrance. A bell jangles as the door groans open.
“Sorry; it’s a sticky door. Can I help you?” he croaks.
“Hi,” she says, with a shaky breath. She’s about two seconds away from losing it. Who is she kidding about logical things? She has no idea what is what. “I’m Taylor. Jerry’s friend.”Jerry’s frienddoesn’t exactly roll off her tongue very easily, but she keeps going. “Jerry dropped off some really old books yesterday, and you asked him to come by?”
