Won’t he be surprised to see me? Shocked may be more accurate—Jamie has never handled surprise well—but I will get him to see that it is time for him, for us, to move on to bigger and better things, just as our father hoped.

I think back to the telegram I sent him when Ba passed five months ago.

Ba hit his head on post and died. Please come home. Ever your Val.

Jamie wrote back:

Rec’d news and hope you are bearing up okay. Very sorry, but I have eight months left on my contract and cannot get away. Write me details. Your Jamie.

Jamie would have known that Ba had been drunk when he hit his head, and I knew he wouldn’t mourn like I had. When you live with someone whose mistress is the bottle, you say your goodbyes long before they depart.

Someone behind me clears her throat. A woman in a pinstriped “menswear” suit that fits her slender figure like stripes on a zebra watches me, an ironic smile wrapped around her cigarette. I put her in her early twenties. Somehow dressing in men’s clothing seems to heighten her femininity, with her creamy skin and dark hair that swings to her delicate chin. She lifts that chin toward the entrance, where a severe-looking officer stands like a box nail, a puzzled look on his face.

I bound forward on the balls of my feet, muscled from years of tightrope practice. Ba started training Jamie and me in the acrobatic arts as soon as we could walk. Sometimes, our acts were the only thing putting food on the table.

The severe officer watches me pull my ticket from my velvet handbag.

Mrs. Sloane, my employer, secretly purchased tickets for the two of us with her dragon’s hoard of money. She didn’t tell her son or his wife about the trip, or that she might stay in America indefinitely to get away from their money-grubbing fists and greedy stares. After her unexpected demise, I couldn’t just let the tickets go to waste.

“Afternoon, sir. I am Valora Luck.”

The officer glances at the name written on my ticket, then back at me, his steep cheekbones sharp enough for a bird to land on. His navy visor with its distinctive company logo—a gold wreath circling a red flag with a white star—levers as he inspects me. “Destination?”

“New York, same as the rest.” Is that a trick question?

“New York, huh. Documentation?”

“You’re holding it right there, sir,” I say brightly, feeling the gangway shift uncomfortably.

He exchanges a guarded look with the crewman holding the passenger log. “Luck?”