I rode back to the Jekyll residence at a gallop, and still it felt as if we were wading through water or sand. I didn’t know what I would say to Mrs. Jekyll or even to Henry when I got there.
Henry and Hyde were one and the same. It made no sense, but I believed Lanyon because I’d seen it, too. I hadn’t known what it was at the time, but Enfield and I had seen Henry’s face change as we stood in the garden.
When I reached Leicester Square, I dismounted before the horse had come to a complete stop. I rushed up the steps and let myself in, not bothering to knock. I was met with angry shouting. The door to Dr. Jekyll’s office stood open.
I slowly approached the door and saw the back of Mrs. Jekyll’s head as she stood in front of his desk. Dr. Jekyll leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed.
“He is my son and I demand to know what role you’ve played in all of this!” she shouted.
“You saw how he was with Utterson,” Dr. Jekyll snapped. “You saw how they looked at one another.”
“I saw how happy he was,” she said. “I saw him happier than he’d ever been cooped up in that lab with you!”
Dr. Jekyll slammed his hand down on the desk and I jumped. “He is brilliant and I was not going to allow him to squander his opportunities!”
“His brilliance wasn’t diminished because he cared for Gabriel,” she said. “You could have minded your own business! You could have been there for him regardless!”
“And be ostracized for it? Shunned in polite society?!”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, that polite society thinks you’re nothing but an uppity Black man who has overplayed his hand.” She sighed and her shoulders rolled forward. “They hate us. They always have and still you strive to be among them. You think if you have enough money and power you can be one of them. You can’t. And neither can Henry and neither can I. And why should we want that? Wake up, you fool!”
I stepped into the room, knowing I was out of line, that it wasn’t my place, but Dr. Jekyll knew more than he was saying.
“The tonic you crafted with the purple powder split Henry in two,” I said.
Dr. Jekyll slowly rose to his feet, glaring at me.
“What tonic?” Mrs. Jekyll asked in a whisper. Her entire frame shook as she rounded on Dr. Jekyll. “What did you do?”
“He has been experimenting on Henry,” I said. A clear picture was beginning to unfold in my mind, and it was devastating. “He wanted to excise from Henry any feelings he had for me. But he didn’t anticipate what would happen.” I looked to Mrs. Jekyll. “The tonic created Hyde. He and Henry are one and the same.”
“How did you—” Dr. Jekyll came around the desk and Mrs. Jekyll stepped between us. “How did you know that?”
“It’s true?” Mrs. Jekyll asked.
“Don’t you see what I was trying to do?” Dr. Jekyll bellowed. He stumbled back to his chair and collapsed into it. “I don’t want my son to have to bear the burden of caring for you! I don’t want that! I did what I could to put a stop to it, but he wouldn’t listen, and so I had to take things into my own hands!” He slammed his hands on the desk again. “But in Hyde I’d created a manifestation of his love for you.” He glared at me. “I had to do something to turn Henry’s attention away from Hyde, to show him how truly terrible that aberration is! So that he would never want anything to do with it ever again!”
A thought bloomed in my mind and I stepped past Mrs. Jekyll.
“Carew,” I said.
The look on Dr. Jekyll’s face confirmed what I had begun to suspect. He was responsible for Carew’s death, and while I did not mourn the man, I had one question.
“Why?” I asked.
“To show Henry how despicable Hyde is! To show him how he would do well to rid himself of the fiend.”
“You framed him for Carew’s death hoping Henry would fear him?” I asked in disbelief. “Did Henry tell you what Carew did to me?”
Dr. Jekyll scoffed. “Of course he did. It was all too convenient. Hyde had the motive, the opportunity … the weapon.”
Mrs. Jekyll gasped and took another step back. “Murderer,” she whispered. “Fiend. Liar.”
“Henry was questioning me!” Dr. Jekyll bellowed. “He feared me when it was Hyde Henry should have been fearful of! Hyde is everything he should be ashamed of, and he must be excised by any means necessary!”
“When Hyde is suppressed, Henry is not himself!” I screamed at him. “There were times when he acted as if he didn’t even know me! I thought him mad but it was you all along.”
“I want nothing more than to see Henry forget you ever existed,” Dr. Jekyll spat.
Mrs. Jekyll pushed me behind her. “What kind of monster are you?”
“Monster?” Dr. Jekyll repeated.
He didn’t see it. He couldn’t see himself for what he truly was.
There came a sound from the hall. Footsteps. I waited for Mr. Poole or Miss Sarah to walk into the office, but the steps proceeded to the kitchen. There was a click—the sound of a lock being turned and the back door creaking open.
Henry’s parents were staring at each other, locked in a sort of standoff—neither of them seemed to have heard the noise. I shifted from one foot to the other and leaned out into the hall. A sinking feeling settled in my bones.
A moment later, Mr. Poole was racing down the steps. “Henry isn’t in bed!” he cried.
I bolted down the hall and into the kitchen where the rear door was ajar. I ran out into the cold night air just in time to see the hem of Henry’s crisp white sleeping gown disappear through the outer door of the laboratory.
Mrs. Jekyll moved to catch me by the elbow. “What’s happening?”
I tripped down the rear stairs and across the garden scattered with dead leaves. Dashing inside, I knocked my knee on a chair that had been tipped over in the middle of the hallway. I kicked it out of the way. A commotion erupted from the garden behind me—Mrs. Jekyll’s cries, Mr. Poole’s shouting, and Dr. Jekyll’s angry cursing.
This was his doing. All of it. He hadn’t been trying to save Henry; he was trying to change him into something he wasn’t.
I stumbled into the lab where Henry stood still as a corpse in a shaft of silvery moonlight that streamed through the skylight. His frame was skeletal beneath his sleeping gown.
“Henry,” I said softly.
“Don’t come any closer,” he said. His voice was his own, but it was choked with a bitter sadness.
I stopped. Henry held in his hand a liter-size reagent bottle, filled to the brim with the viscous purple liquid. He trembled so violently it sloshed up and over the rim, staining his gown and dripping onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked gently. “Put that down. You should be in bed resting.”
The corners of Henry’s mouth turned up, and his smile seemed to shift in the moonlight. It was Hyde’s familiar grin paired with Henry’s gentle eyes. I stilled myself.
“This ends now,” Henry said, parroting his father’s angry words.
“No,” I said. “Listen to me—”
I was interrupted when Mr. Poole and Mrs. Jekyll barreled into the room behind me. I motioned for them to stop and be quiet. Mrs. Jekyll clamped her hand over her mouth and held fast to Mr. Poole.
“Henry,” I said calmly. “Whatever your father has done, whatever it is he has convinced you of, he is wrong.”
Henry’s eyes filled with tears as the dimensions of the bones in his skull shifted. He gritted his teeth. “He isn’t wrong. I cannot exist this way.”
I stepped closer, keeping my eyes locked on his. “Why?”
“Gabriel,” he said. “You know the answer to that.”
Yes. I did. But I was still there, as was Henry. We hadn’t disappeared simply because polite London society wished us to be invisible. If I wasn’t rendered invisible for loving Henry, I’d be rendered invisible because of the color of my skin. There was nothing polite about it.
“We can exist,” I said to him. “And we do. We endure because we have no other choice.”
“I have a choice,” he said. He held up the flask. “My father has given me a choice.”
“No.” I stepped forward and he moved the flask to his lips. I froze. “Your father tried to separate you from yourself.”
“And he succeeded,” Henry said.
I shook my head. “Do you not see how different you are? Do you not see how you’ve changed? And not for the better. And then there is Hyde. He—”
“You prefer Hyde to me,” he said. “That much is clear.”
“You are Hyde. Hyde is you. Hyde is all the things you have been made to believe you should be afraid of.”
“I am afraid!” Henry cried. “I am afraid of myself! Of Hyde, because I know very well he is a part of me. The formula my father created suppressed him, but I’ve had to increase the dosage just to keep him at bay. I could not fathom my life without you, Gabriel. My father would not allow it, and I could not bear it.”
My chest ached from keeping a sob bottled in my throat. Henry tipped his head up and looked at the sky through the skylight.
“Sometimes it didn’t work and Hyde became the dominant one.” He leveled his gaze at me. “I saw you through his eyes. I felt you through his touch. I envied him that he could cast aside his doubts. I envy him still.” He looked at the flask. “If I drink enough of the formula, I can permanently suppress him, and I can be free of this burden.”
“Burden?” I asked, a knot twisting in my throat. “Is that what loving me has been to you? A burden?”
Henry stared at me. “My father hates me for it. I owe him more than that.”
Mrs. Jekyll was suddenly at my side. “No,” she said to Henry. “You don’t owe him this. Please, Henry. Please don’t do this.”
“I’m doing this for all of us,” Henry said. “So that we may be free.”
He lifted the flask to his lips.
I rushed forward and put my hand over his. “Henry, please.” Tears streamed down his face. “Don’t you see? I was drawn to Hyde because he is a part of you. And even then I longed for you, because Hyde is not fully himself, either. You are both missing something when you are separated.” I pressed his hand down to his side but he still gripped the flask. “Do you remember when we went to the circus? Do you remember the moment we shared in the park?”
Something lit in Henry’s eyes. A spark. His face shifted again and resembled Hyde, save for the color of his hair.
“Tell us,” Hyde’s voice said. “Let us remember who we are—together.”
“The fireflies were brilliant,” I said, clutching Henry’s wrist. “They were so bright and the park smelled of firewood. The music, do you remember hearing it? Do you remember taking my hand and twirling me around, knowing full well I can’t dance to save my life?”
The corner of Henry’s mouth lifted.
“You were whole, Henry. And I loved you with my entire heart. You were enough just as you were and we are enough as we are—right here, right now.”
Henry looked into my eyes. “I’m afraid.”
I couldn’t deny him that. There was much to fear. I knew that better than anyone, but I made up my mind in that moment that I would not let it rule me. “I understand. But I am here with you. We will face whatever lies ahead together.”
Henry stared into my eyes, and finally, finally, I saw the boy I’d known, the boy I’d loved.
The flask slipped from his hand and shattered against the floor. He pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine.
For the first time in months, I felt whole. Like I had been missing a part of myself as surely as Henry had been.
We were whole, and that was all that mattered.