Page 85 of The Beautiful Ones

My mother’s Bible lay beside the winter shawl. Beneath them rested a singed coral ribbon, a pair of white gloves stained dark at the fingertips and Cécile’s thin book of music bound with blue thread. Her name had been written across the cover in the small, careful hand that never hesitated.

A folded note waited inside.

Elin,

I do not know what I will become. Please remember that I chose before I changed.

Cécile

My tears spotted the paper.

At the bottom of the trunk lay the contract I had torn beneath the glasshouse.

It was whole again.

The places where I had ripped it were marked by fine blue lines, delicate as veins beneath skin. Across the back, in Adrian’s precise hand, were the words he had written before offering it to me in the gallery:

The service of Elin Andersdotter is concluded. No person or house may claim her labor, her body or her remaining years.

Below it appeared Nathaniel Vale’s name as witness.

That signature was impossible. He had been dead before Adrian purchased the contract. Yet there it remained in dark brown ink, unmistakable beside the commander’s seal.

I nearly tore the paper again.

Instead, I folded it with my other documents. I was free whether the contract existed or not, but ships, magistrates and border officials trusted paper more readily than women. One day I would place it beneath my bed in Sweden and try to remember why I had ever believed it possessed more authority than my own will.

The butterfly descended from the oak.

It landed upon Vale’s letter where it lay between the Bible pages. A second butterfly joined it. One rested across the name Dewey. The other covered George.

Then they rose.

The first flew north along the road Judge Dewey had taken. The second followed the river toward Norfolk.

Neither hurried.

I watched until darkness swallowed them.

Five days later, Lucien and I stood upon the wharf at Norfolk.

The federal clerk had accepted Vale’s letter without promising justice. Judge Dewey possessed friends in Richmond, and Reuben George’s money had already persuaded a ship’s captain to misplace the family name upon his passenger list. Philip had sent Lucien one message through a dockworker:

I found the ledger. Do not follow yet.

It was not enough to convict his father, rescue the living or return the dead. It was enough to keep the truth moving.

My ship waited beyond us, its sails furled against a white morning sky. Göteborg lay weeks away. Västerås farther still. I did not know whether my parents lived or whether they would welcome the daughter whose service they had sold. Home had become a question rather than a destination.

Still, it was mine to ask.

Dinah had left the previous morning with twenty-three others bound for Petersburg. Before climbing into the wagon, she had pressed a loaf of bread into my hands and warned me not to waste freedom by feeling guilty for surviving it.

Lucien carried my trunk to the gangplank.

“If you find Cécile,” I said, “do not demand that she return.”

“I will demand an explanation.”