Chapter Nine #2
pork, stale cornbread, and weak coffee before climbing narrow stairwells to collapse on mildewed horsehair mattresses, the
sheets coarse with grit. Sleep was shallow and restless. We rose at first light to press on.
As we moved north, red clay hills gave way to wind-scoured fields and stone farmhouses. In Virginia we passed field hands
mending a fence, their breath rising in clouds, the ground brittle with frost. By the time we crossed into Maryland, the tavernkeepers
spoke with clipped precision. Our meals—dense rye bread, pickled fish, bitter ale—tasted alien on my tongue.
As we neared Pennsylvania, the horses strained at their traces as our driver lashed them through ruts half churned with ice.
Philadelphia lay somewhere ahead, an unfamiliar city at the end of a long, bleak road.
I couldn’t remember the last time Addie and I had spent so much uninterrupted time together, much less united in a common purpose.
It was no secret that she wished for a different kind of sister—prettier, more vivacious, more attuned to her interests in furnishings and tableware.
She’d always been vaguely impatient with me.
If we hadn’t been bound by blood, we probably would not have been friends.
But here, with no one else to charm or impress, she turned her light on me—sharing sly observations, drawing me into laughter, letting me stand in the warm center of her regard.
As her partner in this strange adventure, I was finally enough.
If this was what it took to live in a world where my sister valued my company, then perhaps that alone was worth it.
When we reached Philadelphia, we went directly to the boardinghouse where the twins were staying. We found them in the front
parlor, reading newspapers. At the sight of us, they leapt to their feet.
Addie’s eyes welled with tears. “You must not do this,” she told them. “Not for us. Not given the risk.”
“It is more of a risk to lose you,” Chang said.
She squeezed his hands. “We are committed to both of you as you are.”
“Are you sure, Adelaide?”
She nodded vigorously. “I’m sure.”
Eng turned to me, his voice hesitant. “And you?”
I met his eyes, and for the first time neither of us looked away. In his gaze I saw the fear of what he’d nearly done and
the desperation that drove him to it. I saw his relief at possibly being given a reprieve.
If I was going to marry this man, I would need to accept him for who he was—a dual being, both singular and plural. And I
would need to accept more than that. I would never be alone with him. Another heartbeat would always echo beside his. Our
children would have a father whose attention, by its very nature, was divided.
I would need to accept that I was marrying both of them.
I thought of the life that awaited me if I turned back.
The narrow path already laid. Eng and Chang were unbound by convention because they had never fit within it.
What might have broken other men had only hardened their resolve.
Their difference set them apart, yes, but it also freed them.
They’d fashioned lives on their own terms, carving space where none had been offered.
I had thought of their condition as a hardship. But watching them now, I saw it differently. They lived inside the skins they’d
been born in, as we all do. Their needs and opinions, dreams and desires had been shaped by their proximity to each other.
Chang was as much a part of Eng as his own heart and blood.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Addie watching me, not with impatience or judgment, but in solidarity. We had come here
together, united in purpose. We had crossed a threshold.
I reached for Eng’s hand.
No, I didn’t feel certain. But certainty no longer seemed necessary.
I was on the brink of a decision that was beginning to feel inevitable.
Before Addie and I left Philadelphia—Eng and Chang were staying on a few more days—Eng pressed a brocade purse into my palm.
“For what you spent to come to us,” he said.
The drawstring cord was fraying at the tips, and the fabric, blue and gold, had faded with use. Inside, I glimpsed a folded
stack of banknotes, crisp along the creases, and a handful of silver coins that clinked as they shifted. I didn’t count the
money until we were on the road: seventy-five dollars exactly, the amount Harris had told us to bring and what he must have
reported to the twins.
The journey home was mostly silent, each mile bringing us closer to the reckoning that awaited. When our carriage pulled up the drive, Papa stood on the porch, his face like stone. What followed—the tears and accusations, Papa’s thunderous voice, Addie’s defiance—was a storm I’d rather forget.
Mama stayed locked in her room.
By late evening, an uneasy peace descended over the house.
I waited until Papa had gone to bed. Then I crept into his study, unlocked the drawer, and, by lamplight, returned what we
had taken, down to the last bill, careful to replace the papers as I’d found them.
He never said a word about it, if he noticed at all.