The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  Cora pointed her finger at the floor. “You put up five hundred, and you’re asking for that girl to be murdered before her time.”

  “I’m not asking any such thing,” Duncan said coldly. “It’s a museum, boy. Not a gallows. I don’t fund killing, and I never have.” He said the last words loud enough for half the room to hear. “And I’ll say the same to the watchmen, if they ask me. I don’t wish to make the Tombs my home, and I won’t wish to replace my armchair for a cold one in Sing Sing. I’m a businessman, that’s all.”

  Cora tried not to smile. “So, you don’t know who she is? Who her relatives are?”

  “No,” Duncan said, and he seemed rather perturbed by the admission.

  “And Flint? Does he pretend to know? Because I’ve heard many a boast from him that means naught.”

  “As have I. He’s a young cuss who wants in on the game. He says he’s searching for the items on my list. Didn’t have any, but I can read a face. He was fairly bursting with a secret. If I flatter him enough, he’ll tell me all about it. I’ve seen it happen, time and time again.”

  Cora swallowed, trying to look nonchalant, but she believed Duncan. Flint was a breath away from telling her secret, or cashing his chips. “And what do you know of the girl?”

  “So many questions. Let me ask you one. Do you know her?” Duncan said. He smoothed his mustache downward.

  “No,” Cora said flatly.

  “And that lovely sister of yours?”

  “She doesn’t know either.”

  “Are you so sure? She seems to know an awful lot about all the strangest cases in town. I heard she talks to the fine doctors of this island and searches for the best bodies.”

  “That she does. Like a clerk for the reaper himself.” There was a time when she’d be proud to boast, but it gave her no pleasure any longer. She would be out of the game soon. Very soon.

  Duncan smiled. “She’s clever, she is.”

  “Yes. Too clever for you,” Cora said, nearly growling. “You keep your eyes off my sister, or I’d be happy to pluck one of them out. Gallus Meg doesn’t have a jar of pickled eyes in her establishment, but I could get her started.”

  The redheaded mab returned with a steaming plate of oysters, dotted with black pepper, and the scent of it caused Cora to reel with nausea.

  And she froze.

  Cora loved oysters, as much as all her boys did. Never before had she felt so repulsed by a fresh plate of cooked shellfish. Her hand went to her stomach, and she thought to herself:

  No. Oh no.

  It can’t be.

  Involuntarily, she closed her eyes.

  “Smells that good, eh?” Duncan said, himself closing his eyes and sniffing the platter. He took a two-tined fork and skewered two in a row, like jiggly beads on a string, and stuffed them into his mouth. The oyster juice dripped off his beard, and Cora felt bile rising onto the back of her tongue. She stood abruptly.

  “I’ve got work,” she said hastily.

  Duncan wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, before standing and pulling Cora’s collar, closing the distance between them.

  He whispered, “Listen. I’ve had an offer. Someone who knows they can get close enough to the girl to poison her, maybe smother her, in a way that her body would still be in pristine shape for a public dissection. I did not respond. I’ll not be linked to such a person, but . . . it could happen. If not me, someone else will pay. And if she dies, I want her.” Duncan’s hot, briny oyster breath washed over Cora, and she tried hard not to gag. But something about his words didn’t seem fervently innocent enough. They came too easily, as if he were prepared to have the right things to say—I’ll not be linked to such a person. It’s a museum, not a gallows.

  “Aye. I understand. And who’s offering?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve received two such letters, and it was enough to make me wonder if it will happen soon.”

  “You know it will happen soon,” Cora pressed him.

  “I do not. But if it isn’t real—” He corrected himself. “If she isn’t real—and it is rather unlikely she is—I’ll make her. I’ll have your uncle make me a fine wax figure, or have Flint sew together two hearts in a pretty corpse. It ought to be easy enough to fool the public. But she’ll need to be young, and pretty at that. A striking beauty would be best.”

  Cora nodded, and tried to pull away. She was ready to leave Duncan and his oysters and the half-drunk tumblers of brandy, whose scent seemed to resemble spoiled fruit rather than fine spirits. Duncan wasn’t quite ready to let her leave, however. He pinched her collar tighter and drew her closer for a final word.

  “I like you, Jacob. And your sister. You feel like family to me.”

  Cora could smell his sweat, his breath, his mustache wax. Nausea rose again, and she concealed her discomfort with a raised eyebrow. He smiled and released Cora’s collar. She gratefully inhaled air that didn’t stink of Frederick Duncan. The women had regathered around him and were vulturing about the plate of oysters.

  “I’d give this all up for a good woman,” Duncan said, waving his arm about.

  “You have a good woman. You’re married,” Cora reminded him.

  Duncan sat and refilled his tumbler. “She’s tired of me, and my bed, since the children were born. If she wanted, I’d give her a divorce and a fine retirement upstate. I could do with a fresher partner in life. One who understood my business, perhaps added to it.” He leaned back. “Consider it, Jacob. I could care for your sister. I could give her a life that wasn’t about bargaining over the dead. She could live with the living. She could be with me.”

  “I’ll consider it,” Cora said, because she needed to end the conversation so she could bolt out of the bawdy house. Duncan shook her hand, and Cora simply nodded and left. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Audrey watching from the top of the stairs.

  As soon as she rounded the corner outside of Madame Beck’s, Cora ran to the gutter and pitched forth her stomach’s contents, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  It wasn’t Duncan that had made her sick. Duncan, his greed for her two hearts, and his horrendous and philandering offer of marriage were suddenly the least of her worries.

  Cora was with child; she was certain of it.

  CHAPTER 25

  When Cora reached home, the house was dark. She quietly unlocked the door and crept inside, so as not to wake Leah. Upstairs, Leah murmured in her sleep. Cora removed Jacob’s hat, unbuttoned her shirt and slipped a hand against her chest, then untightened the garment that bound her breasts. She threw the fabric to the floor and rubbed off the darkening makeup on her face.

  Cora lit a tallow candle, then went into the kitchen and found the crock that contained the herbal tea. She sniffed it deeply, then went to the tin that contained the regular tea.

  She sniffed it.

  They were identical.

  Both were tea, though the herbal container still had trace scents of pennyroyal and Queen Anne’s lace. Leah was still adulterating her medicine, even after being confronted about it. And now Cora faced the consequences.

  In the silence and darkness, she wished for Charlotte. If she were here, there would be advice and comfort, and even forgiveness for her mistakes. There would be a shake of the head and a laugh over committing what other Cutter women had been brash enough to do. She’d followed her hearts, her faulty hearts, and fallen for a man when it was the last thing she ought to have done.

  Cora slid down against the cabinet and encircled her knees with her hands. She would not cry. There was no room for weeping, though she ached for release. She had allowed this tiny flame of life to be lit inside her belly, and now it would be extinguished before it had even begun, if she couldn’t outrun the shadows clawing after her.

  Theo—Flint—had been asking Duncan about the girl. But Duncan himself didn’t even seem to know if she was real, and meanwhile he was receiving offers for her death. Requesting it, demanding it. Who would do such a thing?
Dr. Wood, who was building his anatomical cabinet? No, it couldn’t be. He was in competition with Duncan. He wouldn’t be asking for help with killing her.

  Upstairs, Leah’s voice grew louder all of a sudden. She must be having a nightmare, as she occasionally did. But this was different. She seemed to be arguing with herself.

  Cora narrowed her eyes and moved to the door to listen more carefully. No; Leah was arguing with someone. Cora grabbed a knife from the kitchen. The front door had been locked when she came home, but she had no idea whether the back door had been broken through. Thieves were not above going northward to the wealthier neighborhoods, and one of the homes nearby had been robbed of its silver last week.

  Cora didn’t hesitate, didn’t bother with the candle, just ran up the stairs, two at a time, and threw her shoulder against the door as she turned the knob.

  Inside, Leah was fully dressed, complete with travel cloak and a brand-new carpetbag Cora had never seen. On seeing Cora, she dropped the bag to the floor in astonishment. But what was more astonishing was Theodore Flint standing at the foot of her bed, his hand fisted with several sheets of paper.

  “Cora!” Theo said.

  We are with child, you and I.

  It was the first thought that crashed through her mind, but she bit her tongue.

  “What are you doing here?” Cora asked coldly. And then to Leah: “Why on earth are you dressed for travel, Leah? Where are we going?”

  “It’s Leah,” Theo said, taking the papers in his hand and slamming them down on the woolen bedcovers. “She’s the one. She’s been asking Duncan, and my professor, Dr. Wood, for a bidder to kill you. She’s been shopping you around like a side of beef.”

  Cora’s stomach churned, and she felt her head go light like tissue paper in a fireplace. She bore down, forcing herself not to get more light-headed.

  “What are you talking about?” Cora asked.

  “These. Dr. Wood gave me these letters he’d received. Leah admitted they were from her. They asked for a minimum bid of five hundred dollars for your body, delivered to the university. She was going to up the bid to seven hundred dollars if you became with child.”

  Leah stood motionless, just clutching her hands together. Her face was stone, not sad, not guilty, not giddy at the relief of revealing herself.

  “We ought to leave,” Leah said, somewhat hoarsely. “Because this man—” She pointed to Theo. “This man is threatenin’ to kill us both! I was hurrying to pack your bags, and he came at me, waving these letters, like a madman.”

  “Leah. You’ve continued to change out my herbal medicines. I’ve noticed” was all Cora seemed able to say at the moment.

  “Because I thought it would help yeh get married!” She brought her hands to her face, digging her fingers into her eyes, as she did when she was tearful. “I wanted yeh to stop your job. I thought this . . . this man, he’d make a good husband. And I’d get more brass, in a regular way. But he wants you dead, Cora! He’s got the arsenic in his room. He tol’ me. He wants me to help, because he cannot do it himself.”

  Cora looked at Theo, whose face was livid.

  “She is lying, Cora. The letters are hers. Don’t you recognize her handwriting?” He thrust the papers into her hands.

  Cora took the letters. She read a line.

  . . . And I wuld like a sum of five hundred dollars for payment if the body be delivered . . .

  Cora frowned. Leah always misspelled the word would. Also, Cora recognized the paper from the portable writing desk in Leah’s room, and the words sounded like Leah’s spoken ones.

  “Oh, Leah.” Cora let the letters fall to the floor. “Leah. How could you?”

  Leah hadn’t moved. She looked at Theo, then Cora, the despair in her face disappearing rather quickly, replaced by a stubborn expression. But Theo stayed resolutely silent, and Cora did too. Leah always spoke in a silence, as if quietness were too painful to endure.

  “How could I?” she finally blurted out. “The doctor said yeh wouldn’t live this long. He said you should’ve died years ago. All I’ve ever done is patiently wait. But you never make enough money, not enough for this life. Everything I’ve put into yeh, I ought to get something back. What do they call it, those mutual—what is it called? In that grand building on Wall Street. Life insurance. Back pay, for what I’m owed.”

  “Owed? Owed?” Cora could barely stutter the words out. “If we hadn’t paid you enough, then you should have left me and Charlotte!”

  “I loved Charlotte, as if she were my own! But she said that you’d take care of me, and the money would come steady-like, with your work. But it weren’t never enough. Why else might I work for a mongrel?”

  “I am not a dog, for God’s sake!” Cora hissed.

  But Leah didn’t hear her. “That cousin of yours would have kept paying, if she hadn’t talked to yeh. ’Twas all ruined.” She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, because she’d been spitting out her words. “And if you’d had a babe in your belly, I’d have made an extra two hundred. That’s what the university doctor told me.”

  Cora stared at her, the words seeming as if they’d been spoken by someone else. Leah—her Leah—had been prepping her for a slaughter all this time. Her Leah had never cared for her. She’d cared for her body, and those two lumps of throbbing meat in her chest. She had been a job, from the day she was born. She thought back to moments when Leah tenderly cooked and fed her gruel when she had the grippe, or sewed a beautiful new gown for her. Every single moment, false.

  “Leah, please tell me you didn’t reveal my name.”

  Leah said nothing.

  Her silence was worse than a brickbat hurled at her face. Cora folded the letters carefully, and put them on Leah’s bed.

  “I thought you wanted me to marry him,” she said, unable to say Theo’s name.

  “Aye, so you’d get pregnant and fetch a good price.”

  Theo was dumbstruck, as was Cora. She couldn’t move a limb.

  “Get out,” Cora whispered, not looking up. When Leah hadn’t moved, she raised her face, her eyes feeling like she’d dropped thistles beneath her lids. “Get out,” she seethed, trying not to scream.

  Picking up her carpetbag, Leah lifted her chin and pushed her shoulders back. She walked to the bedroom door. Without turning around, she said, “He offered to kill yeh, you know. Your Dr. Flint, here. He was ready to sell yeh off, neat as can be. He made a whore out of you and planned to skin you alive. You ask him!”

  Cora heard her footsteps going down the stairs. The bedroom door shuddered with the draft from the force of the slamming front door.

  Leah was gone.

  “She’s lying,” Theo said, his face reddening.

  Cora said nothing.

  “She’s lied to you before, hasn’t she?” Theo said. He drew closer to Cora, but she flinched at his proximity.

  “Did you talk to her about wanting to kill me?” Cora said.

  Theo sighed. “I did. But it was only to bait her. I suspected she was trying. She’d said things to me before that I couldn’t understand, that one time I brought you home after you’d fainted. How you would be good for my career, one way or another. I thought she meant marriage. And then I realized maybe she didn’t. I had to find out . . .”

  “Who else did you tell about me, Theo?” Cora turned around and looked at him. He looked different than the quiet, cold, and confident Flint at the bawdy house with Frederick Duncan. He looked directionless.

  “I didn’t tell Duncan,” Theo said.

  “That isn’t what I asked. Who else did you tell?”

  Theo sighed, and this time he sat on the chair by the door. “I told Professor Wood and Professor Draper. I asked if it was truly possible for someone like you to exist, but I didn’t say your name, or who you were. And they both said no, it wasn’t possible.”

  Cora shook her head. “But you had more to tell them, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You couldn’t help but say what you knew. That you felt two hearts i
n my chest. You examined me when I was asleep, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t on purpose. But—”

  “But you told them! Oh God, and Leah told them my name!”

  Theo sighed again. “I did. But I swear, I never told Duncan. He doesn’t know who you are.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Everyone is looking for me. Between Leah and you, and Dr. Grier . . . the rumor is larger than the both of us. A woman with two hearts, with one Chinese parent. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes me, like they took the girl with the tail. And the tall man. They’re coming for me, Theo.” She started pacing the room, like a trapped thing. “And you told them I was real. You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone. And you even told Leah you would kill me? With arsenic?”

  Cora held her belly—a reflexive gesture that Theo wouldn’t understand. What if this child had two hearts too? Her problems would start all over again. They would find her and her child in Philadelphia. They would find them in Virginia. There would be no end to her fear.

  Unless . . . there was no more rumor to be afraid of.

  Unless there was no more Cora.

  “You need to leave,” she said. “Now.”

  “Cora, I’m sorry! I only said these things to draw out Leah. To make her tell the truth. And I have found the truth. And Leah’s gone now! It’s over.”

  “It’s not over. I’ve been followed, and Jacob has been attacked—because of me. It’s never going to be over, until I’m dead.” She went to the door to open it. “You have to go.”

  Theo stood there, fixed, while Cora’s head swirled with a thousand anguished things she couldn’t say. Finally, he headed for the stairs.

  Mechanically, she went down after, locked the front door behind him, and then went to the window to be sure it was secured. She checked the kitchen door at the back of the building, then looked about the kitchen like a lost child, barely registering that several items—Leah’s favorite cookery tools—were missing.

  Oh. The crock.

  Cora went to the crock above the kitchen hearth, where they kept their money. The most recent resurrections had left a pile of coins there—eagles and half eagles, dollars and half dollars. It was empty. All the money Cora had now was in her vest pocket—five dollars, forty-two cents.