The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Lydia Kang

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903388

  ISBN-10: 1503903389

  Cover design by PEPE nymi

  For Richard

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  TWENTY YEARS LATER

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  RANDOLPH HITCHCOCK III

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  RUBY BENNINGFIELD

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  WILLIAM TIMOTHY

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  IDA DIFFORD

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CONALL CULLIGAN

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  AUDREY MARCH

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  ALEXANDER TRICE

  CORA LEE

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The widest land

  Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

  With pulses that beat double.

  —“Sonnet VI,” 1850, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  PROLOGUE

  January 12, 1830

  Long Island, New York

  The baby was small. Not so small as to concern Charlotte, but small enough to announce itself as precious.

  “Aye, she’s a wee thing!” Leah said, swaddling the infant in a thin blanket. The maid had said the obvious, as usual, but Charlotte didn’t mind. She liked to be reminded that the details of the world were real, and warm, and worth speaking of. Her cousin, Elizabeth—the baby’s mother—had never been petite herself, but babies had a way of disregarding what was expected of them.

  The stub of cut-and-tied umbilical cord was beginning to shrivel, but it was still pink—a sight that shocked Charlotte. She’d given birth once, but the babe had been cold and gray. Stillborn. Alexander had wept at the birth, then never spoken of the child again. The dead child had done nothing to convince Charlotte to marry him. He was still an artist and still unworthy—and nothing to redeem her status in her family. At the first sign of her swelling waist, the Cutters had sent her away from their mansion on Chambers Street to this cottage on the edge of Gowanus Bay, in Brooklyn. The wealthy might arrive in carriages to the pastoral loveliness of nearby hills and valleys on weekends, but none visited Charlotte or Leah, who’d followed her mistress from marble halls to these dirt floors.

  This was the life destined for Cousin Elizabeth too—if she survived the birth. Elizabeth lay on the bed, the pool of bloody birth water staining the sheets between her knees. Her chalky visage reminded Charlotte of a ghost she’d dreamt of once.

  “She’s not well. Three weeks too early! And now the afterbirth won’t budge, and the blood is still comin’,” Leah said nervously. They’d been given explicit orders by the Cutter family not to call upon a midwife or apothecary. And since the family held the purse strings, Charlotte and Leah did as they were told.

  Charlotte stared at the widening pool on the sheets. There wasn’t enough money for a doctor plus food that week.

  She threw a dirty sheet over Elizabeth’s legs to cover her decently. “Leah, go find Dr. Grier. He might be at home.”

  “But, Miss Charlotte, they said not to—”

  “Just go. I’ll find the money somehow, and we won’t tell the family. I have an amethyst parure I’ve been keeping by; I’ll sell the set if I must. Call for him.”

  Leah pushed greasy tendrils from her temples and handed the babe over. On went a gray shawl, and she was out of the cottage and into the bitter, uncaring January night. For a second, the brisk wind coming through the valley blew the door open and held it. Moonlight streamed from behind the clouds before winking out again.

  Charlotte wiped the tenacious, waxy white stuff from the infant’s body and swaddled her inexpertly. It wasn’t just the baby’s small size that was unusual. She was odd looking. Hair like burnt molasses, eyelashes the same color surrounding eyes shaped more like a baby rabbit’s. The father was one of several handsome men Elizabeth had met in the oyster saloons near the east docks, the absolutely worst place a lady of consequence could find herself. It was a miracle she had not been attacked. She’d escaped her elder chaperone on four occasions. A mere one of those occasions, however, was enough to ruin her.

  By the time her family refused to allow her attendance at any evening parties or theater events, Elizabeth was already with child. The moment her dresses had to be let out to fit her expanding waist, she was banished to Charlotte’s care.

  The baby cried again, and Charlotte jiggled her in her arms. She dipped a rag in the new milk they’d bought that morning and offered a corner to the infant. Suckling half air, half milk, the babe soon tired and burped before slumbering. Charlotte placed her awkwardly in a box upon the floor. Elizabeth was sleeping soundly, her blonde hair ropy and sweaty against the pillow. Charlotte draped another blanket across her legs. At least the blood had stopped seeping through the bedding.

  An hour passed before the doctor thrust open the door. The odor of stale beer entered before him. So, he’d not been at home; he’d been at the tavern, and seemed none too pleased to have left it on a cold winter’s night. Leah shuffled in behind, red faced and puffing.

  Charlotte wrung her hands. “She’s sleeping, but the afterbirth—it hasn’t come, Doctor. We’ve done the best we can. Leah has delivered a half-dozen babies in her time, and surely—”

  “Be silent,” he snapped.

  The doctor was old—older than he’d seemed when she last saw him in town—but his gray eyes were sharp, though reddened from drink. An extra odor of musty hay and burnt tobacco trailed in his wake, mixing with the metallic tang of blood in the room. After removing his cloak, he bent over Elizabeth’s sleeping face to touch her cheek, then her neck, with the back of his fingers. He held one wrist in his hand, then the other.

  “Her afterbirth—” Charlotte began, but the doctor straightened.

  “No need. She’s dead as can be, probably before your servant even fetched me. Mercy, can you not tell the living from the dead? What a waste of my drink and dinner. And I had me a decent pork joint, at that.”

  Charlotte cried out. She went to Elizabeth’s side. Surely she was sleeping; surely the doctor was wrong. She lifted her cousin’s chilled hand to her cheek and found it was stiffening ever so slightly in the cold room. Elizabeth’s eyes were open to tiny slits, but they stared without purpose. Charlotte dropped the hand, aghast at the truth. Elizabeth—curious, bright Elizabeth—wasn
’t here anymore.

  “Well, I might as well take a look at the child, since I’ve come all this way,” the doctor said. “Bring the child to me.”

  Leah jumped to attention. Later, Charlotte knew, she’d cry over Elizabeth’s death while scrubbing out pots behind the cottage. Elizabeth had been clever and merry, even in her confinement, and Leah had adored her for it.

  Leah bent to lift the sleeping child and handed the bundle gingerly to the doctor. He set the child down on the rough-hewn table by the window, with that fickle moonlight and a pale-yellow glow from the oil lamp nearby. As soon as he unwrapped the swaddling, the baby erupted in a shrill cry, and the doctor nodded in approval. Ignoring the black, muddy stool already staining the fabric, he lifted the child, flipping her over.

  “There is a large birthmark here on the buttocks. Very odd,” he murmured. He flipped the baby sideways, examining the umbilical cord stump tied firmly with a cotton cord. His large hand covered the tiny rib cage, smaller than a year-old roasting hen’s. Suddenly, his breath caught. “Ah. But what’s this? Extraordinary!” The baby wriggled and bleated her discomfort from hunger, or the loss of her warm swaddling, or both.

  “What do you mean?” Charlotte stepped near the light of the oil lamp. The oil was cheap, and she had to wave away the smoke so as not to cough.

  “A pulse.” He lifted the baby and put her chest to his ear. “Right here. Just beneath the rib cage, on the right side.” He laid the child down again and pointed with a broad fingertip.

  There, just between the tiny ridges of the infant’s rib cage, Charlotte saw a rhythmic rise and fall, as if a bird were hidden under her skin, attempting flight. She touched the warm, silky skin. Beneath her fingertip was a beat, beat, beating. It was a familiar cadence.

  “I don’t understand,” Charlotte said.

  “One can feel her pulsations where her heart is, but there is an identical one here. On the right.” When Charlotte shook her head, not understanding, he added, “Why, the child has two hearts. It’s plain as day.”

  “Impossible,” Charlotte said.

  “What? Did she steal it from her mam?” Leah suggested, glancing at the corpse. She was superstitious and too imaginative.

  “Stop it, Leah,” Charlotte said, her tone harsh. She turned to Dr. Grier. “Two hearts? Impossible,” she repeated.

  “Many things are possible. The human body’s mysteries are finite but not yet solved. Your feminine mind couldn’t possibly understand.” Here, Charlotte bit her tongue hard. These were the swallowed exclamations that had gotten her into trouble with her family in the first place. Dr. Grier continued. “But I must know—who was her father? Was he ill in any way?” The liquor seemed to have left him completely; he was sober as sharpened iron, and his eyes sparkled as they hadn’t before. In the lamplight, his expression was grotesque.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Charlotte said, shrinking at his words. “We think he might have been a dock loafer. Or a sailor.”

  “A Chinese tar! Why, that would explain it. The child looks almost as if she’d been delivered from Canton itself. Every day, the ports bring tea ships from China and all manner of oddities. I have heard of such things. Fascinating!”

  Charlotte’s skin prickled with alarm. She quickly swaddled the little girl, who had stopped crying, and held her tight. “Oddities? She’s just a child! What things, exactly?”

  “Think of those connected twins, Chang and Eng! Marvelous!”

  “But they are from Siam, not China,” Charlotte said. “And I don’t believe they had mixed parentage . . .”

  “If the child lives,” he said, ignoring her comment, “she might be barren, for one. But the child shall die, most likely. And then we will know what the nature of her malady is. Internal examination will bring the answer.”

  “Internal,” Charlotte murmured. She had the desperate thought of taking the baby and running as fast as possible away from this man. He threw on his cloak, not noticing her reticence.

  “Some good can come of an unwanted, bastard child. When the child dies, give the body to me, as it will be of no use to you. It might fetch as high as fifty dollars.”

  “For what?” Charlotte asked, her nose curling in disgust.

  “For dissection, of course. She’s an anatomic jewel. She’ll be useful to study. In New York, she’d fill an amphitheater of students and learned men. Imagine, five hundred seeking to learn her secrets, with tickets at fifty cents each. It would be a wondrous gift to medicine.”

  Leah covered her mouth with a handkerchief and shook her head.

  “No,” Charlotte replied coldly. “Never.”

  “If you don’t give her to me, another will take her. Word will get out about the girl with two hearts. They’ll snatch her straight from the grave, and you’ll get nothing. Not a cent.” He glanced about the dilapidated cottage. “And you need more than nothing, I’ve good enough eyes to see that.”

  “Leah. Fetch the crock,” Charlotte ordered. Leah did so, scurrying to the open hearth and returning with the tiny white porcelain bowl that had been sitting on the mantel. Charlotte freed a hand from under the baby and scooped out the scant few half dimes, the one quarter, and scattered copper pennies—all they had to pay for their bread and such for the next week. “Take this. For your fee. We owe you nothing. And don’t return. This child is not for sale, alive or dead.”

  The doctor scowled but tipped his hat, leaving behind his yeasty odor of liquor. The door banged shut behind him, and the lamp flickered. He was gone, but the women’s alarm would not dissipate.

  “What if he returns?” Leah asked, wringing her hands.

  “We’ll move. Out of Brooklyn, and back to Manhattan, though the rent will be dear.”

  “But your family—they’ll only give us brass if we stay away from the island!”

  Charlotte looked over at Elizabeth, whose slit eyes still stared at nothing. The emptiness that her cousin’s passing had left behind made her heart ache. All that bright laughter, gone. Then she looked at the child, so strange, so beautiful. The little girl bleated yet another cry and cracked open her eyes. Unfocused, they were beautiful, shining like wet stones. Charlotte’s lone heart thumped in response.

  “We’ll lie. We’ll tell everyone it’s a boy, healthy as can be. We’ll treat the child like a boy. Dr. Grier loves his drink more than air itself. Everyone knows it. No one will believe his story upon seeing a robust boy, when he claims he attended a sick baby girl. We shall say he was a fool of a drunk throughout the evening. The rumor will disappear. When we can save enough money, we’ll move away. Back to the city, perhaps, or south somewhere. We’ll raise her as a proper lady then.”

  “What shall we name her? The wee thing,” Leah said. She was tickling the baby’s toes.

  “We need a boy’s name. Henry? Samuel?”

  “I like Jacob,” Leah offered. Charlotte’s chin trembled; it was the name she would have given her stillborn son. Leah had so looked forward to caring for a little boy.

  “Jacob.” Charlotte let the name sit with her and found that it pained her not; it nestled about her heart just so. “Very well. Jacob. We’ll give her a different family name. Lee, I believe, is what Elizabeth called the baby’s father. If she belonged to the Cutters, she’d be named Allene, in keeping with family tradition, but she’s ours, not theirs. For her real name—Cora.”

  “Cora?” Leah asked, uncertain.

  “Yes. Cor is Latin for heart. I recall that, at least, from my lessons. That shall be her true name. But we won’t speak of it until Dr. Grier is dead and gone, or we’ve left this terrible cottage behind us. And for that, we’ll need to earn some money, and soon.” There would be work, and there would be heartache ahead. Nothing new to Charlotte, but Cora had no such history to toughen her. Not yet.

  “Cora,” the maid cooed, ignoring her mistress’s frown. “The impossible girl with two hearts.”

  TWENTY YEARS LATER

  CHAPTER 1

  September 1850
>
  New York City

  There were days when Cora Lee loathed her job, but this was not one of them.

  It was cold and rainy, too cold for the middle of September. Cora stepped onto the green lawn of Marble Cemetery near First Avenue. Tuckahoe marble obelisks and stones, newly popular with those who could afford to buy their plots in advance, dotted the green.

  A proper lady like Cora ought to be on Broadway, bedecked in finery beneath a silk umbrella, promenading before the so-called Marble Palace that housed Stewart’s Department Store. But instead, she was here, at the place where God welcomed the young and the old, equally dead as they were. It was a neighborhood of the deceased, with no fewer than eight cemeteries within a four-street radius. But most were no longer accepting burials. Graves were being disinterred and moved to rural cemeteries, as the island was becoming simply too full of the living. Out to Randall’s and Ward’s Islands they went, and to Green-Wood on Long Island, and to the second Trinity Cemetery at the north end of the city. New York accepted the hungry, poor souls from any ship, but when they died, they didn’t stay. Only the wealthy did—like lucky Mr. Hitchcock here.

  Or unlucky, perhaps.

  Cora bowed her head, face covered under a veil as she joined the mourners already gathered about the coffin freshly polished with beeswax. She was a shadow amongst the mourners—an appropriate shadow, in case anyone looked closely: medium height, with a sturdy build and a narrow waist confined beneath a whalebone basque, and a face that was decidedly not Irish but otherwise difficult to place. Her eyes were dark; the braided knot of hair at her crown was the color of tea that had been steeped too long—though in truth, her real hair was shorn short beneath a rather expensive, matching colored wig. There was no chapel on the cemetery grounds in which to conduct the service, so instead, a thin priest, looking like he’d not yet recovered from the recent cholera epidemic, cleared his throat and began. The ground had yet to be turned, for the Hitchcock family owned a below-ground crypt, hidden beneath a few feet of soil and a heavy marble slab that covered the entrance.

  “We leave to rest our very amiable Randolph Hitchcock the third.”