“I’m sorry,” Ling said.
“I won’t hear any more!”
“I’m trying to protect you!”
“I won’t hear it!” Wai-Mae stood up. She backed away, shaking her head. “No. You are wrong. I will be a wife to a merchant in America. A good man! A respected man!”
“Wai-Mae—”
Wai-Mae spun around, her mouth tight, her eyes hard. “You had no right to do that. To spy on me like an immigration official, questioning everything! I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” Ling said. She reached out for Wai-Mae’s hand, but Wai-Mae yanked it away.
“You will not take my dream from me!” Wai-Mae growled deep and low, her face hardening with anger, a transformation as startling as any they’d made themselves inside the dream. In the cup, the tea boiled over, splashing onto Ling’s hand. She gasped and dropped the cup as the liquid scalded her. An angry red welt rose up across the length of Ling’s thumb.
She’d been hurt inside a dream.
And Wai-Mae had done it.
Cradling her hand, Ling leaped up and marched toward the wood.
“Where are you going?” Wai-Mae asked, fearful.
Ling didn’t answer.
“But it isn’t time for you to wake yet! Let’s play opera. Or… or we can do more of your science, if you like!”
Ling did not turn around.
“Everything will be fine, sister! I know it will,” Wai-Mae said, trotting after Ling. “Please, don’t worry. Here—we can make something wonderful.”
Ling didn’t want to make anything else. The dream had turned sour. She kept walking.
“Come back, please!” Wai-Mae called. “You promised! You promised!”
Ling ran down the hill and through the forest, calling Henry’s name.
Henry and Louis lay side by side on the dock with their feet in the cool river, enjoying their last night on the bayou. His train was scheduled to arrive in New York tomorrow, and there’d be no need for these nightly visits anymore. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough for Henry.
“Henri, there’s somethin’ I need to tell you ’bout,” he said, suddenly serious, and Henry’s stomach tightened, like sensing the first drops of rain at a long-planned picnic.
“Sounds like an awfully serious talk to have without your shirt on,” Henry joked.
Louis sat up. “I shoulda told you ’bout it before. Concerns you.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re not coming to New York after all?” Henry propped himself up on his elbows and stared out at the sun patches dotting the river. “You got the ticket, didn’t you?”
“That ain’t it,” Louis said, and Henry was relieved.
Louis took a deep breath. He twirled a fallen leaf between his fingers, making it dance like a ballerina. “Just before you left town, your daddy tried to get me to go away. He sent a man over to Celeste’s with a fat envelope fulla money and said it was all mine if I’d agree to leave town on the next boat up the river and never see you again.”
“Bastard,” Henry muttered. His father ruined everything. He didn’t want to be related to a man like that. How did you learn to be a man if the one who raised you was a bully who wasn’t worth your respect? “How much money?”
“A thousand dollars,” Louis said.
A sinuous fear wrapped itself around Henry’s heart. “I suppose a fella could live pretty well on that, if he had a mind to.”
“I reckon he could.”