Outrun the Moon(85)

“You don’t say.” I give her a sideways glance.

“He is from a good family.”

“Someone like him would not be interested in someone like me.”

“For every rule, there is a rule breaker.” Her gaze flits to me. “And a ruler breaker.”

I smile at her well-aimed shot, though I doubt she understands the magnitude of what she’s suggesting. As a general rule, white people do not associate with Chinese people, much less marry them, unless of course they enjoy public ridicule. It just isn’t done. Even so, for a moment I imagine myself on the arm of Mr. Oliver Chance, a bonnet of silk cabbage roses on my head, a pair of fancy patent leather boots on my feet. But when I try to imagine his smooth face, with its shy smile and adoring eyes, all I can see is Tom.

The memory of our last meeting stings me anew, but I force myself to shoulder the hurt. Just keep yourself safe, Tom. That is all I want from you.

Katie hops over a tree root. “Headmistress Crouch said the Southern Pacific Railroad is offering free transportation out of the city, but there’s a waiting list. Tomorrow, she’s going to see about getting us tickets to Texas. If you need a place to stay, Mercy, you know, in case . . . well, in case you do, you can come home with me and Harry. We have heaps of space, and Gran loves people.”

“Thank you. I appreciate the offer, but I’ll stay here and wait for my father.” I never thought about going to Texas before. Were there even any Chinese people in Texas? It seems wrong to leave the city so soon after Ma and Jack’s deaths, as if I were somehow abandoning them. Ma believed the dead haunted places that were familiar to them. I couldn’t bear the thought of Jack looking for me and not finding me.

“You could stay with my family in San Jose, as long as you can put up with my father’s smoke, and my brother’s insufferable manners.” Francesca smiles at me. Her unspoken concern hangs in the air. What if your father doesn’t come?

Elodie glances back at me. “No one wants to live in San Jose. After we rebuild, you may live with Papa and me. You wouldn’t have to leave San Francisco.” Her offer touches me more than the others because I remember her deep scorn. But the thought of living on Nob Hill without Jack or Ma has lost its appeal. Plus, who knows how Elodie will feel once we get our lives back on track. She will still be rich, and I will still be poor. She will be French, and I, Chinese.

Well, that is a problem for another day. “I thank you for all of your offers, especially yours, Elodie, since I know how much it annoys you to leave the window cracked.”

She snorts. “I never said I’d share my room with you.”

We pick our way across sleeping bodies—at least I hope they’re only sleeping—then across a field of giant pine trees.

Francesca nudges my arm, directing my attention to a woman frying eggs on a potbellied stove. “A little stove like that would be perfect for the Kitchen. Burns the firewood more efficiently. I once made enough pies to feed an entire boatload of officers with a stove like that.” When it comes to food, she has a one-track mind.

I walk up to the woman. “Excuse me, ma’am, but have you seen a cow pass by?” The paved path to Stow Lake lies just a few paces from where she’s standing. Forgivus and the deaf man would have had to exit this way.

Her oblong face pulls even longer. “A cow? No, I would’ve noticed that for sure.”

“Thank you.”

We forge on, and the woman calls after us. “Mind yourself by the lake at this time of night. The White Lady might be about.”

Elodie stifles a gasp, and the lantern squeaks in her hand. But when we all look at her, she throws back her shoulders and marches up the steep paved pathway.

It looks almost as I remember but not quite, with rattling trees that don’t tower as high as they used to and a stately carriage house that has seen better days. The rowboats I once longed to ride clack haphazardly against one another, like mah-jongg tiles.

Harry moves as quiet as a shadow, navigating across stones and pinecones, her skirts held to her sides. “Sure is dark here.”

The breeze has blown away much of the smoke, and stars salt the stew of a sky. Elodie raises her lantern higher, and the light gleams off her pearly skin.

We reach the two-arch bridge that ends at Strawberry Hill in the center of the lake. The hill rises steeply, with steps cut into its side. If the man was able to move Forgivus up there, there’s only one place they could be: at the top.

The chill from the water raises the hairs on my arms as we trek across the bridge in silence. I keep my ears open for Forgivus’s gentle moos. The boats’ clacking, the scuff of our shoes, and the rattling of leaves cast a symphony of spooky sounds around us, but no mooing. I wonder how a place so idyllic by day could, by night, look like the kind of place werewolves might do their changing.

My nose tingles with the smell of strawberries, and the tingle flushes all the way to my soles. Didn’t someone once tell me that ghosts smell of strawberries? Or did I make that up? It is called Strawberry Hill; of course this place would smell like its namesake.

A bit of cobweb moss drips into my eyes, and I claw it off with more force than required. I’m not usually skittish—haven’t I walked in the dark cemetery at least a hundred times?—but somehow the collective apprehension around me toys with my otherwise level head.

“What does this White Lady look like?” I ask to break the eerie silence, but also because the best way to banish fear is to spit at it in the eye.