Chapter Nine
As fall turned to winter, Addie and I were all but confined to the premises. We corresponded with Eng and Chang in secret,
slipping letters into the hands of trusted farmhands or tucking them between the pages of borrowed books.
One chilly evening, hunched over my desk with a guttering candle, I found myself writing what I hadn’t dared say aloud.
I don’t know whether it’s merely that you are attached, as you are, to your brother, that gives me pause, I wrote to Eng.
Or whether you, alone, are not the husband for me.
I dipped my pen, hesitated, then pressed it to the page again.
If only you were your own person, unattached!
His reply arrived days later, folded in the pocket of my coat by a discreet messenger. The pages were creased, bearing the
imprint of their journey, but the script was precise.
I am my own person, Sallie. When I write these words, my hand moves across the page alone. When I think of you, the thoughts
are mine alone. My heart beats its own rhythm. My brother’s presence is like the weather—a condition of my existence, not
its meaning.
In the stillness of those long, dark evenings, his words lingered. I am my own person. Was it true? Could it be? What would it mean to bind my life to his, knowing that his shadow, his brother, would always be
there?
I hated Papa’s words—the smallness of them, the raw self-interest. But they had taken root. As much as I resisted his judgment, part of me understood that he wasn’t only protecting himself. He was afraid for us, for what we would face, what our children might endure.
I tried to picture a child with Eng’s dark eyes, his solemn brow, his sharp cheekbones. Would our neighbors cross the road
to avoid them? Would their teachers seat them apart?
Addie claimed she’d fallen in love with Chang, and maybe she had. She said she felt it deeply. But Addie felt everything deeply.
She was only nineteen. My extra year of maturity—and my plainness, and my recent unfortunate experience, which tainted everything—had
given me what I liked to think was a clearer perspective. But was it? Somehow, though I’d voiced my misgivings from the beginning,
I’d let the months unspool without taking a firm stand. Now I found myself swept up in my sister’s insistence that marrying
the brothers was the right, the only, thing to do.
Addie had always been a romantic, casting her fate with the flip of a penny, the pluck of a daisy petal. But when she wanted
something, she was formidable—and what she wanted now required me. She couldn’t marry Chang unless I married Eng; the law
demanded both or neither. So she framed my involvement not as a sacrifice but a solution. A necessary step toward the future
she envisioned for us both.
They’re the richest men in the county. They import their china and silver from London.
You’ll wear silk dresses and satin shoes.
This is our chance to be extraordinary, Sallie, can’t you see that? This is the only reason anyone will ever remember us.
Her arguments grew pointed.
You owe it to me.
Who else will have you?
Addie was relentless, you had to give her that. Her desire was a surging wave, and my resistance a mere pebble on the shore. If I refused to marry Eng, as she kept reminding me, I would be the one to ruin her life.
But love should feel like certainty, shouldn’t it? A leap, not a question.
The thought made my stomach churn.
And there was something else—something I could barely admit, even to myself. This arrangement would bind me not just to Eng,
but more completely to Addie. Already her voice filled our shared space, crowding out my thoughts. Already I found myself
retreating into silence when she spoke, my own wishes growing smaller, less substantial.
What would it mean to live forever in the shadow of her desires, her decisions? To wake each morning knowing there was no
escape from her judgment, her demands, her occasional cruelties disguised as sisterly concern? I loved her—of course I did—but
I also feared her: the way she could reduce me with a glance, dismiss what mattered to me with a shrug. Now she was asking
for the rest of my life. Not a portion of it—all of it, with no door through which I might slip away for a moment’s peace.
“What about . . .” I struggled to force out the words. “I don’t think I can lie abed with you. With . . . another.”
Addie patted my hand. “Remember what they said? ‘Alternate mastery.’ You know how in Quaker meeting, if no one is moved to
speak, and the silence stretches, and your mind drifts elsewhere? I imagine it’s like that.”
I pondered this. “You don’t know, though.” I hesitated. “When Papa talked about the children . . . I hadn’t let myself think
that far. But that’s a worry too. What if—”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said. “We don’t have to think about everything right now. Only the next thing.”
“But—”
Addie sighed. “Oh, Sallie. You wouldn’t really deny me this chance at happiness?”
When she turned away from me it felt as if a cloud had crossed before the sun.
Early one morning, a knock sounded at the front door. Glancing out my bedroom window, I spied Charles Harris on the porch.
As it happened, Papa was in the horse stalls, overseeing the birth of a foal.
I called for Adelaide and hurried down the stairs.
When I opened the door, wind gusted into the house, nipping against my neck. A dusting of snow stretched down the grass to
the drive, where Harris’s horse was tied to a post, stomping its foot, its breath misting the air. The dawn sky was streaked
with blue and pink, like ribbon candy.
“Good morning, Mr. Harris,” I said, stepping onto the porch and pulling my shawl tightly around me. “Forgive me for not being
more hospitable. You see—”
“I understand the situation, Miss Yates,” he said, cutting me off gently. “Where can we talk?”
I glanced behind me into the house. All was still. I motioned for him to follow.
We stepped into the parlor just as Addie hurried down the stairs to join us. She shut the door behind her and turned to Harris.
“What is it?”
Harris removed his hat. “I thought you might want to know that the Bunkers are in Philadelphia, consulting with physicians
at the College of Surgeons. They’re convinced that separation is the only solution.”
“Separation?” Addie frowned. “They told us that was impossible.”
“Apparently there’s no way to know until they’re in surgery.”
We all stood there for a moment, his words settling heavily in the room.
“They feel it’s worth the risk,” Harris continued. “They are, quite honestly, distraught at the idea of losing you.”
Addie pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Whose idea was it?” I asked.
“The brothers are in agreement,” Harris said, “though I believe it was Eng who proposed it. Knowing that you’ve been reluctant,
Miss Sarah.”
The words I’d written in ink swam before my eyes. If only you were your own person!
“Mr. Harris,” I said, “what can we do?”
“I think it’s clear. We must go to them,” Addie said.
“I can escort you to Philadelphia and secure lodgings,” Harris said. “I have contacts along the route. But you’ll need funds
for the journey.”
“How much do you think the trip will cost?”
“Oh, let’s see . . . stagecoach fares, tavern lodgings, meals . . . I’d say at least seventy-five dollars for the both of
you, there and back.”
“Seventy-five dollars!” I said. “That’s what the overseers receive for a year’s wages.”
“Safe passage for two young ladies doesn’t come cheap.”
Addie and I exchanged a look. Like most plantation owners, Papa relied on both paid and unpaid labor. When the corn needed
putting in, he hired white farmhands by the day, paying them from a leather pouch he kept locked in his desk. Taking money
from him would not be forgiven easily. But the birthday money and pocket money Addie and I had squirreled away wouldn’t come
close to covering the cost.
That afternoon, while Papa was occupied in the barn, I slipped into his study, with its familiar scents of pipe smoke and saddle soap.
I found the key under a vase on the mantel and unlocked the bottom drawer.
Beneath a sheaf of receipts and invoices was the pouch.
My hands trembled as I counted out the bills.
Sitting at the dining room table, Addie composed a note to our parents. Her hand was steady, even as I trembled beside her—not
only from nerves, but from the gravity of what we were about to do.
Dear Papa and Mama,
We have no choice but to go to Philadelphia. The operation to separate the Bunkers will almost certainly result in the loss
of life. Though your opposition pains us deeply, and we fervently wish you would support us in this decision, we must follow
our hearts.
We are, both of us, in love. Please try to respect our wishes. What we are doing may seem reckless to you, but to us, it feels
like hope.
Her pen paused above the paper, as if searching for the right words to bring it to a close. I wondered if she was going to
confess that we’d taken the money. But after a beat, she wrote, simply,
Yours always,
Adelaide the thin
windowpanes were opaque with frost. We huddled close under wool blankets, stopping only when night fell.
At rough-hewn taverns along the route—The King’s Arms in Greensboro, Traveler’s Rest outside Danville—we choked down salt