His head jerked. ‘How so?’

‘There’s no reforming what’s already rotten.’

There’s wickedness in all men. The ones we call good are the ones who care to hide it. And George Benham knew that the surest way to hide your sins is to write your own account.

Langton pretended Negroes didn’t have the same red blood as his, but Benham turned his blind eye on his own estate. Even the way they’d trained me seemed to have been their same old nonsense science, very little rhyme or reason. I asked Benham about it, once, when I found him in a talking mood. They’d both been curious about the limits of a mulatta’s intelligence, Benham convinced Negroes could be taught to some extent, and that a greater capacity for learning might result after the mixing of white lymph with black. Was Langton eager by then to give him whatever he wanted, so long as the money came back? Benham wanted a mulatta to be educated, so that was what Benham got. In any event, Langton had only finished what Miss-bella had started, though it was just like him to cut the truth in half. And the other truth was that I was the only mulatta he’d kept on that entire estate.

It was my own sins Benham thought to write about for all that they were tangled up with theirs. Which is why three weeks later, seeing my chance when he’d gone out to his gentleman’s club, I stole his journal, tucked it into the lining of my pallet. Those pages are still there for all I know – though it’s possible Linux has already scrubbed out every inch of me that was left behind.

I suppose you’ll go looking for them, or someone else will. Just remember not to believe everything you read.

I should have stolen Madame’s journals too, if I’d thought of it, if I had known our days were numbered. They would have been more useful to me. A way to keep her. Which was what I wanted most of all. The pair of us trapped together, pinned like butterflies under glass.

As soon as I went back up, she drew me close, and the smell of her flooded me. The very bones slid out of me. La petite mort, she called it. A little death. Benham forgotten. When she kissed me, I tasted myself. Like the sea, like salt. Like tears. We slipped together into her bath, which she filled herself. That was a sight, more water spilling on the floor than in the tub. She poured water like she knew she wouldn’t be the one to mop it up. But for the span of that afternoon, I was the one being waited on. Tended. She made me feel like a queen. She took my damp hair in her hands and gathered it off my brow and peppered me there with kisses and, after we’d settled in the water, her back to my front, she said, ‘Read to me,’ and rested her head on her knees to listen. Steam rose in wet curls, and her hair fell likewise. I held the book away from me. The water lapped quietly. Beside us, the candle flickered to a stub. The door stayed safely on its latch.