“I did not think there was anything to tell,” he said. By now, in our lessons, I had learned to wear a pair of old bloomers and one of Emmanuel’s undershirts. He swam in the nude. I had become afraid that someone—a woman coming to wash her laundry in the dusk, a child looking for frogs in the mud—would find us, but Emmanuel seemed to almost relish the thought.

“You would not tell me about seeing those people burn?”

“You can’t … She doesn’t … You cannot always trust what Ella says.”

“She told me she longs to burn heretics at the stake.”

“She took our family lessons in differently.”

“What does that mean?”

“She is different than me. She has been for a long time. I did not want to tell you at first. It is painful, and then I worried you would treat her poorly.”

I was standing in the pool, just at the depth where the water reached my calves. Emmanuel, kneeling in the water, lay back. He said, to the darkening sky above us, “She was not always this way. Papa says she is mad, but I don’t believe it is so.”

I sank down into the water beside him. “I don’t understand why you did not tell me there was something wrong with your sister.”

“We made a pact, when she began to … began to …” I had never seen Emmanuel halt for words, except when we were together in the dark, but he did so now. “When Ella began to … talk like that. Father and I agreed. There is no one here to treat her. They do not have madhouses in Haiti. And I would not put her in one anyways—because she is not mad, I do not think. And if we were to bring her back to America, where would she live? She is best here. She is best at home. I convinced Papa of that. And if I can find something to ease her burden, then I will have done my duty by her.”

“So you expect me to live beside her?”

“She is harmless.”

“She spends all day dreaming of seeing men burn at the stake.”

“She is. She seems to have taken a disliking to you, but she would never outright hurt you.”

“You choose her over me,” I said. “Every time.”

Emmanuel had not stopped looking at the sky. He said now, “I cannot believe you would believe that. When I’ve shown and said so many times to you that you are my life.”