Outrun the Moon(36)

In the silence that follows, the ceiling begins to creak. This time, there are scraping sounds and moaning. Though ninety-nine percent of me doesn’t believe in hungry ghosts, the remaining one percent suddenly becomes an annoyingly vocal minority.

Elodie stops rustling her sheets and lies very still, nose pointed at the ceiling. Sensing how scared she is takes the edge off my own frayed nerves.

At least she is good for something.





15



TOM SWOOPS IN AND OUT OF MY DREAMS, too high to touch and too fast to catch. I wake to the moans of the ceiling, and in my half-dreaming state, a different terror slips under the covers with me. I still can’t shake Tom’s image. But now he’s cold as death, and there’s an emptiness to his eyes. In place of his mouth, there’s a gaping, screaming hole. The mouth of a hungry ghost.

Finally, the morning dawns, ending my torture. I wake, drenched in sweat, my cheeks streaked with salt. Tom will board the Heavenly Blessing soon, crossing the watery mountains to a new life. I thought he would be around forever, but maybe people are like the boats in the harbor, always coming and going, and sometimes never returning.

“Joi-gin,” I whisper.

May he hear our Cantonese word for good-bye, which means “see you again.” He may never be my partner in business or in life, but I hope his boat will return one day.



Unlike Mr. Waterstone, our embroidery teacher Mrs. Mitchell dictates where we sit by pointing with her embroidery hoop. “You can’t lairn to be a good hostess if you stick with your comfy sitch-uations,” she lilts in her Scottish brogue. Her accent is twice as thick as my father’s, but with her white face, it seems no one accuses her of being a foreigner.

The girls hurry to their places with deferential nods and “Yes, ma’am”s.

Mrs. Mitchell directs Ruby and me into a square grouping. I’ve learned to ignore the number four when I’m in this room. Elodie is corralled with us as well, and she maneuvers to the seat on my right, saving us from having to look at each other.

Francesca arrives, braids pinned neatly around her head, her shawl arranged just so on her shoulders. Spotting the empty seat, she starts toward us but stops short as she realizes Elodie is part of the package. I wouldn’t want to sit here, either. She searches for somewhere else to park, but seeing all seats accounted for, she resignedly takes the last chair in our grouping.

Mrs. Mitchell bounces on her toes, clutching her hoop. “Girls, I have a surprise for you. The young lads from Wilkes College will be takin’ breakfast with us day after t’morrow.”

Excited tittering breaks out from the girls, and Mrs. Mitchell raises her hand for quiet. “Therefore, you must have your hankies done by then so’s you can shows them off”—her brown eyes become sly—“maybe even gives yars away to one of the gents. But don’t tell you-know-who I said that,” she quickly adds. I warm to her, figuring she means Headmistress Crouch. In my short tenure here, I’ve noticed it’s not just the students who snap to when she’s around. “Now start yar stitching, and put some love into it.”

Spools of embroidery floss have been placed in baskets on each table. I snip a length of orange thread for the tiger I’m embroidering on my handkerchief. I will have to make it extra large to cover a bloodstain I left there on Friday.

Elodie chose to embroider the school mascot, a peacock. A fitting choice, if not very original. Her fingers nimbly work the needle with even pokes and draws. She glances across the table at Ruby, whose tongue sticks out of her mouth as she struggles to thread her needle. The hanging blade between Ruby’s eyes is visible again.

“Why, Ruby, what a darling frog,” says Elodie. “Probably not what the young men will be looking for, but I’m certain it has a wonderful personality.”

Ruby turns as red as her namesake. It’s clear to me that Elodie’s needling has nothing to do with handkerchiefs, but she hides her zingers behind pretty words so Ruby isn’t sure.

“It’s—it’s not a frog; it’s a leaf,” she stammers.

“A leaf? Oh, I’m sure it will have a wonderful personality as a leaf as well.” Elodie licks her finger and rolls a decorative French knot on one of her peacock’s feathers. “And will your young man be present for the breakfast, Francesca? What’s his name again?”

Francesca glances up when she hears her name, and her eyelashes flicker. “Marcus attends Wilkes, yes, so I imagine he will be there. But I am not his keeper.”

Elodie’s face becomes sly. “You two didn’t have a lovers’ quarrel, did you?”

Francesca says nothing, but her stitching accelerates. At her rate, she’ll have a whole bed of sunflowers on there before the class is done.

“Well, you do spend quite a bit of time in the chapel,” Elodie continues, “playing the organ . . .”

“Father Goodwin is a priest!” Francesca hisses. “And for you to make assumptions about something so—”

“Oh, come off your high horse, sister. We all know he has a cocotte.”

“A what?” I ask.

Francesca and Elodie lock gazes while Ruby looks on, mouth ajar. All embroidery has been forgotten. Mrs. Mitchell is helping Harry untangle a spool of thread and doesn’t notice the knots developing on our side of the room.