“Isn’t that true for all of us?” I said. “Could you have imagined traveling the world with Experience, sleeping in stagecoaches, arguing with impresarios as naturally as if you were debating the merits of philosophy back at Cunningham?”

“No,” Experience said. “This is true. We could not have imagined that.”

“So then life is different for all of us.”

“Is that why you have not written back to your mother,” Louisa said, “only sent her one telegram telling her you are with child and scaring the poor old girl half to death?”

I started. “How do you know anything of that?”

“Our last performance, before we left the North, in Manhattan, she had heard we would perform, and she came. She showed us the telegram herself. She said, ‘Will you write to her? Will you find out what she means? Will you send her my word?’ And I said, ‘I will do you one better, madame. We will be traveling to Haiti ourselves and can deliver any message that you wish.’ And so she gave us this.”

And here, Louisa reached into her pocket and handed me a folded-over piece of paper, much wrinkled where it had been pressed up against her hip.

“It is from her?”

“She said to place it in your hands if you were alive, and onto your grave if you were dead.”

“She thought I was dead?”

“She said you have not written her a word since your marriage. I think she is justified in thinking you had passed.”

The paper was the same yellowish shade as the pages in her accounting book. I could not bring myself to open it.

“Libertie, it is very cruel of you to send a telegram like that to your mother and never write a letter,” Louisa said.

“I did not know what to say.” My voice came out low. “How would you explain this house to her, if you had to explain it?”

“I guess that is fair,” Experience said.

“Are you safe here, Libertie?” This was Louisa. “Are you well?”

I did not know how to answer her questions. I took the letter and bowed my head and said, “Good night. I will see you in the morning.”

I had promised Emmanuel, for the sake of our guests, I would not sleep in the shed that night. As I climbed the stairs to our bedroom, I felt the letter wrinkle in my hands. I did not want the ink to smear.

When I opened the door, he was there already, of course, in bed. He looked up, expectantly.

“Are they comfortable?”

“I think so.”

“Will you be comfortable?”

“I do not know.”

“At least lie down.”

I set the letter carefully on his desk. I pulled my smock over my head and dropped it on the floor, so that I stood naked in front of Emmanuel.

He sat up in bed. “Come closer,” he said. “I mean, if you please.”