to," Blythe replied. "No one would ever know unless you told them."
"It might make your life harder if people knew," I said, thinking only of Mimi's happiness. "You know how things are in this country."
"Then maybe I shouldn't live in this country," Mimi countered, a note of anger creeping into her voice.
"Not live in America!" Emma said with a gasp. "Where else would you live? How would you even get there? How would we see you?" Amelie, too, appeared stricken by the very idea.
"I don't know yet," Mimi admitted.
It was the word yet that struck fear in us. When Mimi set her mind to something, she made it happen. She might not have our mother's blood in her veins, but she had spent her life observing the mistress of self-actualizing determination, and she'd learned well.
Mother's eyes glistened as she stood. "Jane's right, Mimi," she said. "Nothing has changed."
Mimi nodded in agreement but I saw something in her eyes -- a confusion, a distance -- that had changed already.
***
The rest of that season was a summer of reading. My involvement with Sherlock Holmes grew ever deeper as I finished The Hound of the Baskervilles, devouring a year's worth of Strand back issues in just weeks. Then I moved on to "The Adventure of the Empty House," "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder," and "The Adventure of the Dancing Men." I gleaned from my reading, and also from talking to other people in town, that the character of Holmes had been killed off back in 1893, but the demand for the sharp-witted detective was so great that he had to be revived. Given my circumstances in Spirit Vale, where the dead routinely returned, this did not strike me as odd.
Emma and Amelie were also engrossed in reading. They would sit side by side and read The Way of an Eagle, a new romance by Ethel M. Dell. Blythe was sobbing her way contentedly through Anne of Avonlea, the sequel to her favorite book, Anne of Green Gables.
For her part, Mother had discovered a treasure trove of back issues in the library, as well. Borderland was a quarterly newsletter that had been published in Britain by the famous journalist W. T. Stead. He had made his reputation as a straight-ahead reporter but had come to believe in contact with the spirit world. He was also a psychic who made predictions about the future.
In Borderland, W. T. Stead spoke about his spirit guide, a young woman named Julia. Julia had warned Stead to be wary of ice, so he rarely went out in winter, fearing that he would slip and die by hitting his head.
By the time Mother had read every single issue of Borderland, she'd decided Stead had misunderstood Julia. The threat, she was sure from reading Julia's words, was that Stead might freeze to death, not that he would slip. She sent him a lengthy letter stating why she felt that way, and was thrown into a state of near-delirious joy when she received a response. From that moment on, Mother adored W. T. Stead as much as she revered the Fox sisters.
After the Haitian couple left, Mimi no longer wanted to work for Aunty Lily at the hotel. "It's too much like being a maid" was her only explanation, but it wasn't hard to tell what was on Mimi's mind from her reading list. She put her head into Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and hardly took it out all through July. By the end of August she was onto the brand-new work by Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education. Then she went to a collection of essays that had been published in 1903 called The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. One hot early September afternoon, while we were both reading on the porch, she lifted her head to tell me, "Du Bois says, 'The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.'"
"But it's not a problem here," I pointed out. Spirit Vale had been an active abolitionist town just as it was now full of sympathy for the women's movement. Frederick Douglass had even visited seventeen years earlier in 1894 with his second wife, a
"It might make your life harder if people knew," I said, thinking only of Mimi's happiness. "You know how things are in this country."
"Then maybe I shouldn't live in this country," Mimi countered, a note of anger creeping into her voice.
"Not live in America!" Emma said with a gasp. "Where else would you live? How would you even get there? How would we see you?" Amelie, too, appeared stricken by the very idea.
"I don't know yet," Mimi admitted.
It was the word yet that struck fear in us. When Mimi set her mind to something, she made it happen. She might not have our mother's blood in her veins, but she had spent her life observing the mistress of self-actualizing determination, and she'd learned well.
Mother's eyes glistened as she stood. "Jane's right, Mimi," she said. "Nothing has changed."
Mimi nodded in agreement but I saw something in her eyes -- a confusion, a distance -- that had changed already.
***
The rest of that season was a summer of reading. My involvement with Sherlock Holmes grew ever deeper as I finished The Hound of the Baskervilles, devouring a year's worth of Strand back issues in just weeks. Then I moved on to "The Adventure of the Empty House," "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder," and "The Adventure of the Dancing Men." I gleaned from my reading, and also from talking to other people in town, that the character of Holmes had been killed off back in 1893, but the demand for the sharp-witted detective was so great that he had to be revived. Given my circumstances in Spirit Vale, where the dead routinely returned, this did not strike me as odd.
Emma and Amelie were also engrossed in reading. They would sit side by side and read The Way of an Eagle, a new romance by Ethel M. Dell. Blythe was sobbing her way contentedly through Anne of Avonlea, the sequel to her favorite book, Anne of Green Gables.
For her part, Mother had discovered a treasure trove of back issues in the library, as well. Borderland was a quarterly newsletter that had been published in Britain by the famous journalist W. T. Stead. He had made his reputation as a straight-ahead reporter but had come to believe in contact with the spirit world. He was also a psychic who made predictions about the future.
In Borderland, W. T. Stead spoke about his spirit guide, a young woman named Julia. Julia had warned Stead to be wary of ice, so he rarely went out in winter, fearing that he would slip and die by hitting his head.
By the time Mother had read every single issue of Borderland, she'd decided Stead had misunderstood Julia. The threat, she was sure from reading Julia's words, was that Stead might freeze to death, not that he would slip. She sent him a lengthy letter stating why she felt that way, and was thrown into a state of near-delirious joy when she received a response. From that moment on, Mother adored W. T. Stead as much as she revered the Fox sisters.
After the Haitian couple left, Mimi no longer wanted to work for Aunty Lily at the hotel. "It's too much like being a maid" was her only explanation, but it wasn't hard to tell what was on Mimi's mind from her reading list. She put her head into Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and hardly took it out all through July. By the end of August she was onto the brand-new work by Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education. Then she went to a collection of essays that had been published in 1903 called The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. One hot early September afternoon, while we were both reading on the porch, she lifted her head to tell me, "Du Bois says, 'The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.'"
"But it's not a problem here," I pointed out. Spirit Vale had been an active abolitionist town just as it was now full of sympathy for the women's movement. Frederick Douglass had even visited seventeen years earlier in 1894 with his second wife, a
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