I had thought, up until that moment, with the Graces speaking warmly and Emmanuel joining them in their jokes and conversation, that maybe I could do what my husband was pleading with me to do. But then I thought of a thousand more nights in this beautiful country. Would he order me from the table, as his father did, if I said something he did not like? And would I leave with dignity, like Ella did, leave in a fiction, or would I kick and scream as I wished she would do, as I wanted to do now, and be called mad and unruly.

It was quiet for a moment. Emmanuel turned to Louisa and Experience apologetically. “Ella has not had the opportunities you have,” he said. “She has never been to school. She is a bit unused to polished company, but I hope you will not hold that against her.”

“I would never hold it against her,” Louisa said, and Emmanuel smiled as Bishop Chase raised his head in the air. He’d heard the music in her voice, but he could not quite place it.

I had the satisfaction, at least, of seeing his expression when the world did not make sense for him. If only for a moment.

The Graces were to sleep in the parlor, on the broken-down divan that we pushed to the parlor chairs. I stood in the doorway and watched as Ti Me prepared their bed.

Experience cocked her head in Ti Me’s direction as she knelt over the chairs. “This is life in Haiti, then?” she said to me. “All you do is sit up here and make sure Emmanuel is happy when he returns home?”

“You do not have to take in laundry or mending to stay afloat?” Louisa added.

“You are what those girls at school always wanted to be: a lady of leisure.”

I laughed. “Leisure is stifling.”

“Listen to the cheek of this girl,” Louisa said, leaning over to Experience, “telling you and me, you and me, dear Louisa, that leisure is stifling.”

“I would give anything to be stifled,” Experience said dryly, and this set all three of us to laughing again, so loudly that Ti Me looked up, annoyed.

“Lordy,” Louisa said, when we’d made a configuration of furniture that finally seemed as though it would fit the two of them. “I would never have guessed that you live such as this. Experience and I, each night, would say ‘Where do you think she is now? Do you imagine she sleeps in a hammock beneath banana leaves?’ And now to find you living in something like Cunningham’s dining hall, but just with warmer weather …”

I frowned. “That is unkind, Louisa.”

“Is it?” She looked up. “I did not mean it to be. I only mean, your life seems different from what you told us it would be.”