“Come!”
This time, she lowers her belly to the ground.
Now what? Well, I can’t worry about her right now. I must get help for Old Gin. But from who?
Bear lifts her head, watching me from somewhere under that shag.
No. The Bells can’t find out our secret. Old Gin had strict rules, rules meant to keep us safe.
Yet, somehow, I don’t think he would mind a change in the rules today.
The Bells’ front door is already open when I scramble up the porch steps. Nathan emerges, shrugging on his coat. When he sees me, his face loses all its scowl lines. “Jo? What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”
“My grandfather,” I cry as a sob amasses in my throat once more. “Billy Riggs hurt him.”
His mother appears behind him, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Oh, my dear.” She shoulders past him and takes my frozen hands in her slightly damp ones.
“Where is he?” asks Nathan. A lock of hair sticks up from his cowlick like a question mark.
“I will show you.”
Back to the abandoned barn we go. If they are worried about its dilapidated appearance, they don’t show it, followingright on my heels. Bear greets Nathan with awoof!and bounds to his side.
“Ah.” He pats her head. “There’s a good girl.”
Mrs. Bell crouches next to Old Gin, her eyes grim. If she feels disgust at the sight of Old Gin’s bloodied and battered form, she only tsks her tongue. “We must get Dr. Swift. Nathan—”
“I will be back as soon as I can.” Bear and I watch him jog away, her tail motoring back and forth. When Nathan disappears from view, the dog plunks herself again at Old Gin’s feet, protecting her injured lamb.
I take Old Gin’s hand again, placing myself on the side opposite Mrs. Bell. She still carries her dish towel, and there’s a streak of flour on her cheek. “Don’t worry, Jo.” She knows my name. “Dr. Swift is quite skilled and lives up to his name. He’ll have your grandfather fixed in no time.” She arranges herself in a more comfortable position, knees tucked under her, the hem of her herringbone skirt picking up the dirt of the barn.
“Could I fetch you something to sit on?”
“No, thank you. But, er, how would you do that?”
She follows my gaze to the open trapdoor. A question lodges itself between her eyes.
I take a deep breath. Then I tell her about our life downstairs. She does not flinch at my recounting or recoil or do any of the things one would expect from someone who has just discovered there are more than rats in her basement. Instead, she sits calmly listening, arms knotted into her marigold shawl.
Old Gin’s eye has started to bleed again, and I wring out another barley compress, my own head a strange brew ofhelplessness, gratefulness, and shame. Now that we are discovered, I can’t expect the Bells to lie to their landlords. “I am sorry, ma’am.”
Her gaze drifts to Old Gin. “Sometimes, I get dyspepsia and have trouble sleeping. I wander through the house, trying to get my stomach to settle. Many years ago, I swore I’d hear a young girl’s voice now and then whenever I’d go into the print shop.”
I swallow hard, remembering the nights I’d fallen asleep to the lullaby of the printing press. Maybe I talked in my sleep.
A smile forms on her face. “Mr. Bell told me it was probably the indigestion giving me gas. Have you been hearing... us?”
I nod guiltily. “But not all the time. Just sometimes, when I need to.”
She presses her hands over her crestfallen expression.
“And only in the print shop,” I add hastily. “That’s where the abolitionists built the speaking tube.”
“Abolition—” The word breaks off. She carefully shifts into a cross-legged position. “I wish I had figured it out earlier. I had seen you and your grandfather a few times before, and thought you must have lived around here. When the solicitor’s wife told me about the Chinese girl in the hat shop, well, I was curious about you, but I still couldn’t work out why you were so familiar to me.”
I wipe my leaky eyes on my palm. She reaches over Old Gin and takes my wet hand in her warm one. “And at last, when Nathan told me you were our Miss Sweetie, I thought, well, of course. That girl is destined to be in our lives.”
“So, you’re not upset?”
