“I don’t know you at all!”
A strange look crossed her aunt’s face. “How can you say that? We’re the same, you and I.”
“No.” Molly shuddered. “I’m nothing like you. The police are coming. And I’m going to tell them everything you did. Both of you.”
“If the police come, they’ll take you too,” Ava said calmly. “You stole every body I ever asked you to.”
“I never killed anyone.” Molly raised the knife higher, waving it at her aunt’s face.
The blue velvet circled Ava’s neck like a snake. “The key,” Molly said, finally understanding. “You didn’t lock the door against the doctor—you locked it against me.”
“You weren’t ready for the truth. You needed time to understand.”
“I’ll never understand.”
Ava reached for the knife, but Molly dodged swiftly out of her reach.
“Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good,” Ava said. “Those people were never going to do anything for this world. But you—you can. You’re special. With your help, the doctor’s hospital will save thousands of lives!”
Molly cut the knife in an arc, barely missing her aunt’s fingers.
Ava pulled her hand away with a cry. “Stop it. Listen to me.”
“No!” Molly swung the knife again, its thin steel blade slicing through the air. “I don’t care if you are my aunt. I’ll kill you if I have to.”
The flames flickered to life against the pale blond of Ava’s hair. “You stupid girl,” she said, stepping forward. “I’m not your aunt—I’m your mother.”
* * *
Ava’s fingers slipped between Molly’s and gently pulled away the knife. In her shock, Molly did nothing to resist. It was as if her entire body had turned to stone.
“You’re lying.”
Ava threw the blade out of reach, and it skittered against the closed door.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
Molly’s body grew rigid. “Ma’s my mother. Not you.”
“Sweet girl, no.” Ava pressed her lips to Molly’s ear. “It’s me. It was always me.”
And suddenly it all made sense. The way she’d never quite fit with her own family, the quick, burning connection she’d felt with Ava.
“Please,” Molly begged. “Stop.”
“They made me give you away,” Ava said quietly. “Bessie was just sixteen, but she took you. Thought she was saving a child from a madwoman.”
Molly didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted it all to be taken back. To return to her life before. Before Ava. Before this city.
“Listen to me, Molly. You’re mine. You’ve always been—”
But before Ava could finish the sentence, the door swung open. Ava turned, face wide with alarm.
The fire-flecked eyes of a rat appeared before her in the doorway.
42
Dr. LaValle stepped into the room, picking up the knife—Molly’s knife—and holding it aloft, the red ribbon like a cut across his hand.
“Where’s the body?”
Ava stepped in front of Molly. “Francis, listen.”
“I’m done listening.” He pointed the knife at Ava, its ribbon fluttering wildly. “I told you the damned girl shouldn’t be here, and now she’s ruined everything.” His voice grew stony. “Step aside.”
Ava laughed. When she spoke, her words were bitter. “You haven’t got the guts. You never have.”
“How dare you?” LaValle’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the one who made us. The one who built our name. I’ve given you everything.”
“You?” With the power of a Grecian goddess, Ava stood tall, her hair wild as Medusa’s, her eyes lit with fire. When she spoke, each word was a poisoned sweet dripped into his ear. “You’re nobody.”
He lunged. Face contorted in rage, ridiculous peacock’s outfit thrusting awkwardly against her, the doctor plunged the knife into her breast.
Ava barely flinched.
She took one step back, then two, the knife sliding out of her, its ribboned handle still clutched in the doctor’s mad grip.
For a moment, Molly had a funny thought: Ava hadn’t been stabbed at all. She didn’t know where the blood on the knife had come from, but Ava herself was perfectly fine. Not a speck of blood on her anywhere.
Just a small hole in the center of her breast.
Then blood, thick and dark as molasses, welled up, blooming across her chest in the beautiful pattern of a flower.
Ava’s eyelids fluttered once and then closed forever, their furious light gone as she sank to the floor.
* * *
“You killed her!” Even saying the words, they did not feel real. Staring down at Ava’s blank face, Molly bit back a sob.
Her mother. Gone before she’d ever really known her.
The doctor’s face was wild. He looked at his hands, as if unsure of what had just happened. “I’ve never had to do it before.” He spoke softly, as if to himself. When he looked up, his gaze was frantic. He thrust the bloody knife toward Molly. “Here. You can do it. Ava, she did it for me before, but you can do it for me now! Make me bodies. I’ve seen what you’re capable of, girl. This is nothing more, just a—”
“No.” Molly spoke the word firmly, her eyes filled with hate. “I’ll never do anything for you again.”
The doctor’s face hardened, and he seemed to regain something of himself, his focus snapping back into attention. A cunning smile spread across his face, which chilled Molly to the very bone.
There was nothing in his eyes. Nothing at all.
The knife came down in an angry slash, and she barely had time to twist away, the blade catching at the tulle of her skirt, ripping it like flesh.
“You’re the reason she had to kill them,” Molly said. “All those people . . .”
LaValle gave a harsh laugh. “Ava made her own choices.”
The knife edged closer, and she flattened herself against the wall.
“Hold still, you bitch!” His voice was unnaturally light. “I’ve a hundred people waiting for a body tonight, and you better be damned sure they’re getting one!”
He stopped, suddenly, as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Or two . . .”
Molly shrank back even more.
“Two murderesses,” he muttered, not moving. “Ava was crazy, and now here you are, just as insane, showed up on her doorstep to kill your long-lost mother. I wonder if it’s something in the blood? Of course, we’ll have to cut you open to find out.”
He lunged.
And in that moment, weaponless, Molly did the only thing she could do—she became the knife.
Flinging herself forward, she struck.
Not just for herself but for all those who could not. For Ma, who was so much more a mother than the dead woman on the floor had been, and for Da, who had loved her, even though she was not his own.
And for Ginny, who was a true friend.
And for Kitty, whom she’d failed.
Molly became the knife for the dead girl with the mark above her lip, and for Josephine, the old woman in the asylum.
For Sophie, who was too young to die, body picked clean by men with scalpels.
For Jane, the mother who never got to see the child delivered by her.
For the unnamed dozens whose faces were ripped away like blotting paper under a careless surgeon’s hands.
For all of them—the ones who spoke but were not heard.
And, yes, even for Ava, who had taught Molly strength.
As her body hit with a force she did not know she possessed against the doctor’s stomach, she watched the real knife slip from his hand.
He fell with a grunt against the table.
The blade clattered to the floor, lost amidst peppermints a
nd arsenic, and landed beside her.
Molly grabbed it.
The handle was cool and firm in her hand—fusing to her as if it had always been there.
Dr. LaValle struggled to get up.
But she was faster. Molly stood above him, knife raised. From here, she could see every inch of his body. Every throbbing vein and route to his heart stood out as clearly as a medical text in her mind.
She could end his life with a single stroke.
But it was not fear that stopped her. It was power. Real power.
She had the power to choose life over death, and she would not give it up for this man.
Bending to her knees, she pressed the knife against the fallen doctor’s Adam’s apple and watched it tremble.
And keeping the knife pressed firmly against his throat, she held him there.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the needle and plunged.
The doctor pulls you from me, bright and bloody, your body as thin as a sparrow. He wraps you in a tiny blanket to take you away.
“You’ve already tried to kill it once,” he says. “Better to let them think you’ve done it again.”
I thought I’d be glad, but my body aches to have you back. When he tries to take you, it is like he’s taking my own heart.
“There is no choice,” he tells me. “Give it away or you can stay here and hang. Maybe someone in your family will look after it.”
And so for a final time, I grab you close and breathe you in. I smell the scent of you that is me, that is us, and I whisper into the tiny seashell of your ear.
In the dark, I tell you what I have told no one else.
I tell you the truth.
“Dear daughter,” I say, and know it is the only time I will ever get to use those words . . .
“Dear daughter, here is my confession.
“On the third of September, I killed a man. He killed me first, but no one remembers that part. How he took the white handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the bits of blood from between my legs that first time. ‘A virgin,’ he said, as if it were a surprise. He begged me to marry him afterward, promised me a room in his large house far away in England. No matter that he already had a wife. She was crazy, he said. We’d lock her up in the attic. Keep her there while we loved below.
“A few weeks later, the sickness started, a hard knot in my belly. I could keep nothing down but his kisses. He gave me a draft to drink, and when it did not work, he told me that he had to leave. That it was only a summer dalliance after all, and he could not be responsible for every girl in County Cork who’d open her legs to a stranger.
“This from the same lips that had promised to marry me.
“This from the man who’d slipped as sweetly inside me as honey into a comb.
“The night that I told my family of my condition, Ma cried and Da said he’d have no girl of his ruining a good name. They were to send me off to the convent, let the nuns deal with me. Only dear Bessie stood beside me, said she’d love me no matter what, and the child within me too.
“They packed my bags and readied the wagon they’d use in the morning to sell me to God and his brides. It was the same one they used to deliver meat from Da’s butcher shop.
“But that night, when all were sleeping, I crept out with my newly round belly and made my way to all our old places.
“To the market, where he’d met me selling Da’s meats, the trampled grass dark and quiet.
“To the tavern, where he’d bought me my first drink amidst the good-natured urgings of his gentlemen friends.
“Down to the water’s edge, where he’d taken me. Where he’d split my legs wide and filled me with what he called love. I carried the little jeweled picnic knife with me, the one he’d laughed to see me admire so. ‘It’s only fake,’ he’d said, seeing me eye the pretty rubies hungrily. ‘Bought for a pence in town.’
“But it was the grandest thing I’d ever seen.
“Down, down to the water’s edge I carried it, pressed it against my breast as if it might bridge the break in my heart.
“And there he was. Or someone like him. At the time, it did not matter.
“Pants down around his ankles with a whore no older than me—I knew her by her red petticoat, her skirts up around her head. His eyes were blank as he rutted, making her the same promises he’d made me.
“And if I tell you that the knife leapt out of my breast and into my hands, will you believe me?
“And if I tell you I meant to stab myself afterward if a passing fisherman hadn’t pulled me off, would you believe that too?
“I can only say what is true. I would have killed you then if I could have, the same as I would have killed myself.
“But I have grown stronger since they put me in this place. I have made its walls my womb, ready to birth a woman of stone.
“And if you never see me again, know this:
“I give you up so that I can find you. I release you so that I can make a world that we will walk in together—blood by blood, stone by stone. I will do whatever it takes to make this true.
“But, dear daughter, if such a future is not to be, perhaps you will hear this and remember.
“Never love a man above yourself.
“Never let someone hold you when you can stand.
“Take what can be took, and don’t give it away for free.
“Love is a lie, but power remains.
“The doctor is going to take me away with him tomorrow, and when I go, I will be free. I’m to have a room of my own, a place that I can lock and unlock whenever I want. I will look up at the sky and breathe it in, and I will never, ever be afraid again.
“Men want to make us their toys, lock our pretty pieces up in a dollhouse, and play with them until we break.
“But the doctor wants something else from me. He is from America. He is going to help me escape before they can hang me in the morning. He says I am smart and pretty and he will make much of me in the New World. He only wants what my sin-stained hands can do.
“And, dear daughter, I will give it to him—for now. Until he sleeps like a dog before the fire. Until I find you.
“And when I do, we will make our own lives together. And when I do, I will never tell you I love you.
“I will give you something better.
“We will be stone and fire together. We will turn the dogs out with poisoned meat bones.
“We will steal back what they have taken.
“We will be flesh that does not yield, hearts that do not break.
“Dear daughter,
“Dear daughter,
“Dear daughter . . .”
EPILOGUE
Have you seen this?” Tom strode into the kitchen and slapped a newspaper down on the table. A headline blazed across the front.
KNIFEMAN MURDERS!
Doctor Accused of Poisoning and Mutilating His Patients. Philadelphia Left Shaken in Wake of Madman's Arrest.
Molly’s mouth set in a hard line. LaValle was in prison now, awaiting trial. She’d delivered only enough of the needle’s mixture to make sure he would live to face his fate.
Ava had not had that luxury.
Molly supposed it was better this way. Ava’s reputation remained mostly intact; she was considered a victim by those who could not see a woman capable of such crimes in her own right.
But Ava had made her own choices, dark as they may have been. And a part of Molly wanted people to know it. To lay claim to that darkness, to allow it to breathe in the light of a world that had denied her everything else. Because Ava was a part of Molly now too. Ava’s strength and Ma’s kindness twined around her heart.
She turned away from the screaming headline, exhausted.
“Are you all right?” Tom looked worried.
They’d held Ava’s
funeral that morning, four days after her death.
Molly had acted as the official host, but in reality she did little. Ursula came to her aid, busily planning the service and ensuring that everything was proper, as befitted a “lady” of Ava’s station.
Now Molly and Tom were alone.
Left here to say their goodbyes.
“Are you sure you won’t come with me?” He moved closer, and she could feel his breath hot on her neck.
They were awkward around each other now. Wanting to start something that might never be finished.
“You know I can’t.”
“You could. There’s people could use you out there. More even than here. Doctors are scarce on the frontier.”
She wanted to tell him to kiss her. Instead, she stepped back.
“I have business to attend to. As do you.” Her voice was firm, but she knew he wasn’t fooled. Lifting a hand, he brushed it across her trembling lip.
The sound of footsteps drove them apart as two children stumbled into the room. Their faces were joyful, their grins as wild and beautiful as Tom’s.
“Jaysus, you two. Colin, quit chasing your sister.”
“Keira were chasing me!” the boy protested.
The little girl lifted a cherubic face. “Only because he deserved it.”
“You both deserve it, is what I think.” Tom scooped them up, tossing one over each shoulder. Turning in a dizzying circle, he ran with them to the garden, their delighted squeals following him outside.
Molly smiled. He was happy. Not two days after Ava, his own mother had died. Now he had these two, the littlest of his siblings, as his own. Tomorrow, they’d leave for Kansas. And Tom would start his new life.
He came back in through the doorway, panting. “Those two are like to kill me!” But he was still grinning.
“Here.” Molly held out a piece of paper, on which she had scribbled a list of times. “I’ve got the train schedules for you to review. Now if we—”
“We’ve been through this a hundred times, Molly,” Tom said. “I won’t let you down.”
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