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“Just follow my lead,” Evie whispered back. “Welcome to the Pears Soap Hour, Miss Knight. I understand you have no memory of your former life in Russia?”
“I only have this scrap of blanket. It was with me when I was found at the orphanage. If you could find something about my lost family, why, I’d be awfully grateful, Miss O’Neill,” Theta said, like the great actress she was, and Evie had to bite her lip to keep from giggling.
“Leave it to me. And to the spirits, of course.” Evie took hold of the scrap of blanket Theta had brought. The wool was old and scratchy and rich with memory. Evie could sense its power, but, as promised, she’d taken precautions: Backstage, she’d glued small squares of paper to her palms in the hope that it would dull the signals from beyond. She closed her eyes and pretended to go under. “I see a sweet little boy… perhaps your brother?”
“Oh, gee, I hope so!” Theta said, playing along.
Evie drew in a sharp, sudden breath. The audience gasped, too, on the edge of their seats. “Oh. Oh, no.”
“Miss O’Neill? Are you all right?”
Evie staggered. “Why, this has never happened to me before… I’m… I’m receiving a message from beyond.…”
Evie peeked through her lashes. The audience was eating it up. Here goes, she thought.
“We… are the ghosts of Ward’s Island,” Evie intoned as if in a deep trance. “Help our spirits rest or face…” Face what? What would get her back to the asylum? “Our vengeance!”
Evie swayed softly, meaning to faint for pure drama—why not?—but something wouldn’t let her. Some very real memory was fighting its way through to her, paper shields be damned. The whispers of Theta’s past curled inside Evie’s mind like smoke. She saw white. A blanket of fresh snow. Blood dotted the snow. A trail of it led to a tiny village thick with black smoke from burning houses. Bodies lay facedown in the bloodied snow like discarded dolls. There were men moving through with rifles. Evie’s muscles tensed. She’d seen those men before—the gray suits. A frightened woman clutching a baby to her chest waited until the men had turned the other way, and then she ran frantically from the burning village up the hill toward the cover of trees. Her moccasins sank into the heavy snow with each step, and her long black braid thumped against her back. The memory of this mother’s terror was strong; it wormed its way inside Evie’s own chest. Just as the woman reached the tree line, the rifle shot found its mark in the woman’s back. Gravely wounded, she dragged herself toward an ancient oak, secreting the bundled baby inside a hollow there. And then she lay back, her lifeless eyes staring toward the unforgiving sky. The eyes were deep and brown. Just like Theta’s. As the men pulled away from the village on their horses, a trapper emerged from the woods. He fell to his knees in that same snow and wiped tears from his bearded cheeks as he retrieved the bundle of fussing baby, warming it against his chest under a fur pelt. This golden-bearded man was the baby’s father. Evie could feel his fear and great sorrow as he grappled with a heartrending choice. Next, Evie saw the church steps, saw the light spill out from inside the church as the nuns approached the wriggling baby swaddled in its only inheritance, a blanket.
Evie stumbled out of the memory to see Theta’s face, so like the faces in the snow.
In the back row, Sarah watched closely.
Harriet took notes.
“What did you see?” Theta asked later at their favorite booth in the Hotsy Totsy. Theta kept looking nervously over her shoulder for anyone who might be one of Harriet’s spies.
“Theta, do you have any memory of a village on fire?”
Theta’s eyes widened. “It’s a dream I have sometimes. There’s all this snow. And then I can smell smoke and see blood on the snow.”
“I’m not sure that’s just a dream.”
“What do you mean?”
“Theta, I saw those fellas in the gray suits. They were shooting up a village and then they set it on fire. I think it was an Indian village. And I saw your mother. She tried to run away with you, but they shot her. And then, a trapper came along and found you—your father. He was the one who left you on the church steps. I could feel that he didn’t want to, but he felt he had to; you weren’t safe with him.”
Theta took in a shuddering breath. She’d had a mother who had loved her enough to spend her very last breath protecting her, and a father who’d tried to do the same. Theta blinked back tears thinking about what her life could have been with parents who loved her so. “Where was this? Could you tell?”
Evie shook her head. “Out west somewhere. There were mountains and trees and snow. It was really pretty. Like a postcard.”
Theta’s chest was tight and achy. She’d never known so much about her past before. “Feels like there’s this hole in the center of me, and I keep trying to fill it but I don’t know how,” she said, drawing on her cigarette. “Like there’s part of me that’s just been erased.”
“But you’re not erased! You’re here. Right now.”
“That’s not it. You know where you come from. Your parents. Your brother. Your house. Your town. You got a story. Me? I got no story. I’m making it up as I go along.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“It’s not the same thing.” Theta’s eyes welled up with both sadness over her emptiness and frustration at not being able to make Evie understand.
Evie covered Theta’s hand with her own. “I’m glad I’m part of your story.”
“Me, too, Evil. Even when I wanna kill you for acting dumb.”
Evie frowned. “Was that nice?”
“No. But it was honest. That’s how much I love you.”
