April 6, 1906
Eleven days, seventeen hours, twenty-nine minutes before the earthquake
Third Uncle was at his favorite mah-jongg parlor and Suling didn’t expect him back until after midnight. She could get ready for the afternoon’s deliveries without him discovering her ruse.
It was safer to leave the neighborhood dressed as a boy. Too many white men still assumed that a Chinese woman outside Chinatown was a prostitute. When she’d first put on boy’s clothing, she had used strips of cotton sheeting to bind her breasts, which proved too time-consuming. Instead she’d sewn herself a sleeveless vest that buttoned up tightly to flatten her slim figure. Over this she now put on a boxy boy’s jacket. Her hair was already plaited in a single neat pigtail so all she had to do was clap a fedora on her head. It had been her father’s hat and was too large, the brim almost obscuring her eyes. But it hid the fact that the crown of her head wasn’t shaved as it would’ve been if she were really a boy.
Her father would’ve been aghast to see her dressed like this, but Suling was no longer a sheltered daughter. It was even more imperative now that she go with Old Kow on his delivery rounds, opportunities to get out of Chinatown and sell her embroidery to earn a bit more money. Money for train tickets. For rooms and food. For bribes.
Suling touched the red silk cord around her neck out of habit, felt for the ring strung on it. A sharp lancet of pain in her heart made her wince and she considered throwing away the cord and the ring. But she decided to wear it until she didn’t feel even a small twinge. It was a useful reminder of her folly in ever believing she had a future with Reggie.
Downstairs, the caustic smell of lye soap drifted up the stairwell. The workers’ loud conversation and the metallic grinding of clothes wringers drowned out all other noises, including the squeak of the door as she slipped out to the street. Old Kow was waiting for her by the curb, standing beside the two-wheeled pushcart, which was stacked with packages of clean laundry. The elderly man greeted her with a gap-toothed grin. His dislike for Third Uncle made him a willing conspirator in this deception.
“Up the hill or toward the waterfront, Young Miss?” he said, calloused hands gripping the shafts of the cart. Eight months ago, before her parents died, she had been Kow’s employer’s daughter and he still treated her with deference even though Third Uncle now owned the business.
“The waterfront.” She helped with the cart, guiding as he pushed it over the uneven paving stones of Washington Street. It was still early afternoon, not too warm yet, but enough that the stench of dried horse manure rose up from between the cobblestones.
“Miss Feng, you must be impatient for your cousins to get through Immigration,” Old Kow said, as they turned south onto Stockton Street. “Then you can finally get married. Nineteen is rather old, if you don’t mind my bluntness in saying so. By the time my wife was nineteen, we’d had three children.”
He continued talking, more to himself than to her. Kow was one of the hundreds of aging men left without decent employment once the railways were built and the gold rush ended. Suling’s mother had felt sorry for Old Kow and had given him a part-time job helping their delivery boy. Then, three months ago, the delivery boy quit and Old Kow had to make deliveries on his own. But Kow’s English and memory proved so poor that he returned with incomprehensible messages, strange requests that caused confusion at the laundry and irritation to their customers.
“And what will I do when you’re married and gone?” Kow continued. “Your cousins won’t speak English yet; how can they help with deliveries to foreign customers?”
“I’m sure my uncle will think of something,” Suling said, even though Third Uncle had yet to come up with a single useful idea, before or since her parents died.
For several weeks after her parents’ death Suling spent her days almost doubled over with grief, battered by waves of intense and uncontrollable anguish. Third Uncle had made an effort to manage the laundry on his own. But all too soon, even in the depths of sorrow, Suling saw why her father had been so reluctant to turn over all but the simplest management tasks to his younger brother. Third Uncle’s idea of running the laundry consisted of haranguing the workers even when all was well. The workers were longtime employees, diligent and well-trained. But one by one the men quit because Third Uncle insulted them unforgivably, then cut their wages as his gambling debts mounted. Now only the desperate and shiftless were willing to work at Fenghuang Laundry; opium addicts and gamblers who disappeared as soon as they had enough in their pockets for another pipe full of dreams or another game of mah-jongg.
Out of respect for what her parents had worked so hard to build, Suling forced herself to go down to the laundry each day and tried her best to keep everything running. She found that work helped keep grief at bay. She stared for hours at her father’s ledgers until she understood how to keep the accounts, even though that was supposed to be Third Uncle’s job. It was Suling who suggested sending for cousins from China to replace the succession of inept men who cycled through the laundry. Family did not quit a family business; they did what was required. Family did not ask for salaries; they lived together, ate together, and took a share of profits only if the business flourished.
Shortly after this, Third Uncle agreed to Dr. Ouyang’s marriage offer—an offer that included a substantial payment. Couch it in whatever terms he chose, Third Uncle was selling her to the herbalist. Her parents, loving and indulgent, had never pressed her to marry, had always said the decision was hers even though there’d been many lucrative offers for her hand—in Chinatown, young women of childbearing age were rarer than white peacocks. Suling had been blessed to have such parents.
Now that Third Uncle was her oldest male relative, in the eyes of their community he was entitled to rule her life. Her tears and pleas meant nothing to him. The affable young uncle of her childhood who took her to watch Chinatown’s festivities had never really cared about her. He only cared that she was the answer to his debts. He cleared out the cashbox every afternoon before going to a gambling parlor. At least he had enough sense not to demand more; he knew she held money back to pay wages and buy supplies.
What he didn’t know was that she’d begun taking money from the cashbox for herself. She had no loyalty to Third Uncle anymore.
Suling and Old Kow began the afternoon’s deliveries on Stockton Street at the edge of Chinatown, to some white shopkeepers. Their English-lettered signs stood out: a grocery store, a boardinghouse, a stable yard, and a carpenter’s workshop. Chinese or white, families that lived above their own stores were squeezed into cramped rooms too small to hold the tubs and mangles needed to wash, let alone dry, their laundry. Thus all but the poorest households sent their washing to laundries.
When they crossed California Street and out of Chinatown, Kow’s sauntering gait changed to one more purposeful, and at the same time, more inconspicuous and unassuming. “The trick,” Kow said when Suling first began doing the rounds with him, “is to look busy, as if you’re on an important errand for a customer. And you never stare or gawp. Look straight ahead, step out of the way if you must, but as though we inhabit different worlds.”
Different worlds. She should’ve remembered this before getting involved with Reggie. Suling clenched a fist against her heart for a moment. She couldn’t think about Reggie. Not now, not ever again. And certainly not while she was making deliveries.
Suling took an armload of string-tied packages to the servants’ door at the side of the next house. When the door opened, she greeted the housekeeper politely.
“Wait a moment there,” the lady said, looking at her more closely. “You’re not the usual boy.”
“No, madam,” Suling replied. “He left. I’m the new boy.” She had been accompanying Old Kow since the delivery boy quit. That was three months ago, and this woman hadn’t noticed until now. Hadn’t ever truly looked at her, or at her predecessor.
“Well, at least you speak English. Don’t run away yet.” She tore open one of the packages and shook her finger at Suling. “Now then, you tell your people to use more bluing on these sheets next time. I want a nice, bright white.”
“I will tell them, madam.”
“Your work’s been shoddy for months,” the woman said. “I’ve a good mind to go somewhere else. The only reason I haven’t is because those other laundries don’t know English and I can’t abide that pidgin talk. Why can’t you Chinamen talk proper if you want to live here? You and that other boy, you’re the only ones I can understand.”
“I was born here, madam,” Suling said. “Good day to you.” She gave a mental shrug as she walked down the wooden steps, remembering her father’s advice. Once, after a white customer had loudly insulted them at the laundry, she’d asked her father why he wasn’t angry. Feng shrugged. They lived among people who despised them. If they registered every offensive comment, expended emotion at every insult, they’d never manage to get on with their own lives.
She returned to the cart and grimaced in reply to Old Kow’s inquiring look. “I think we might lose that one’s business, too,” she said. “Sheets not white enough.”
He shook his head. “I tell those lazy beggars to soak the whites longer, but they want to hurry off and gamble. They take no pride at all in their work. Not like the old days, Young Miss. Not like when your parents ran a proper laundry.”
But Suling wasn’t paying attention to his words. A horse-drawn buggy had caught her attention, a glimpse of billowing white shirt and dark curls, the passenger’s features shaded by the carriage awning. Then the buggy drove past and sunlight fell on a stranger’s face. It wasn’t Reggie. Suling exhaled, not even aware until that moment that she had stopped breathing.
She couldn’t go on like this.
At the next house a petite woman in a gingham dress and matching sunbonnet was bent over a tiny strip of garden. When Suling approached she stood up and indicated that Suling could put the packages of laundry on the front stoop. Suling then gave the woman a small box.
“Oh good, you brought my collars.” The woman lifted out twelve sets of white linen collars, each exquisitely embroidered. “Daisies, roses, violets. Beautiful work as usual. Tell your mistress I’ll need a dozen more again next week. Any kind of flower. Same price.” She reached in her pocket. “Here you go. And here’s a little extra for you, boy.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Suling touched a finger to the brim of the fedora. The enterprising young housewife sold the collars to her friends for twice what she paid Suling. Since Suling could never get higher prices from a white customer, at least this meant the woman bought up most of Suling’s work. Collars, cuffs, borders, these were all easy. She worked on them during her spare hours and late into the night, needle flashing through cloth, brain calculating how much more she had to save before feeling confident enough to buy a ticket out of San Francisco.
The last house on their route was on Nob Hill. It was an octagon house, an eight-sided structure on Hyde Street, four stories high, with an abundance of windows and topped with a cupola. A veranda decorated with intricate fretwork wrapped around the entire ground floor. A section of the veranda was glassed in, a solarium that served as a foyer connecting to a long conservatory filled with plants and flowers Suling had never seen anywhere else.
Suling took a deep breath as they crossed the street, willing herself not to think of how many times she had been here, not to deliver laundry but to steal some time with Reggie. She tamped down those minutes in her mind, memories now useless except as object lessons.
Kow, oblivious to the roil of emotions behind her smooth features, hurried to the gate. He enjoyed deliveries to this address because his friends worked here. The houseboy and cook’s helper, known as Big Fong and Little Fong, had been hired only a few weeks ago, tipped off by Suling, who’d overheard the housekeeper voicing a need for more staff. In Chinatown, knowledge and connections created bonds, debts of honor and loyalty, transactions that did not involve money.
The tradesmen’s entrance opened to a short flight of steps to the basement where the domestic servants worked. The hurried pace in the kitchen and short, barked orders from the cook made it clear preparations were underway for a large party. Meat roasted in the oven and a huge copper pot simmered on the stove. A scullery maid was shelling a mountain of peas, and across the kitchen table, Little Fong was bent over a cutting board.
When Suling called out a greeting to him, Little Fong merely waved and went back to deboning a duck. Suling pushed open the door to the laundry room across from the kitchen, and Old Kow stacked the packages of laundry at one end of a long table. At the other end, a maid toiled over a gray wool jacket, carefully sponging out a stain. The young woman glanced up, tiny auburn curls peeping out from her cap, perspiration beading on her freckled forehead.
“You takee this,” she said, pointing at two canvas laundry bags in the corner. “You puttee more starchee on napkins. No good last time. Do like this again and we send linens to the Hospital.”
Many Nob Hill homes sent their laundry to St. Christina’s Convent and Hospital, which operated a laundry business. Their cost of labor was free, the work considered part of their mental patients’ therapy. This competition bothered Suling more than the maid’s pidgin English.
“I will let the laundrymen know, miss,” she said. “Is Mrs. MacNeil in? I’d like to see her.”
“What for?”
Suling stifled a sigh. “It’s the first Friday of the month. This is when she pays the laundry bill.”
“I’m busy,” the maid retorted. “Wait until she comes down. Now get out of my laundry room.”
“I’ll see if Big Fong can spare a moment,” Old Kow said when they left the laundry room. “He’ll tell the housekeeper you’re here.”
He took the two bags from Suling and she followed him outside. After only a moment’s hesitation, she turned and hurried along the brick path that circled the octagon house, berating herself for being so weak. The veranda contained the main door to the glass and iron confection that was the conservatory, but Suling ignored the steps to the veranda. She continued around the corner to the gardener’s entrance, screened behind a pair of oleander shrubs. The door opened to a utility area in the conservatory hidden behind flowering trellises of scarlet bougainvillea. Reggie had shown her how to come in this way. Just across from the bougainvillea, beside a display of ginger lilies, they had kissed for the first time. Suling gazed at the spikes of white blossoms, breathed in the spicy scent that was now linked forever to Reggie.
But she had told herself not to give in completely to Reggie, either physically or emotionally. She had held back, paid attention to Auntie’s advice. Because she never wanted to feel the pain of loss again. The overwhelming loss of her parents. The smaller loss, more of a disappointment, really, when she realized her uncle had never cared about her. The loss she would soon face upon leaving Chinatown, her community, and San Francisco, her city.
She touched the red silk cord around her neck, felt the cool metal of the ring between her breasts. If the ring lanced pain through her heart, the conservatory squeezed it through a mangle. Hot tears stung her eyes. She had not done very well at holding back her feelings. She had to accept that Reggie had left, abandoned her and San Francisco for some new interest. But remembering the feel of Reggie’s lips on hers, Suling couldn’t believe she had been just an exotic novelty. She wiped her eyes before returning to the house.
Old Kow was beside the tradesmen’s entrance, sharing a cigarette with the two Fongs. The Fongs knew who Suling was, of course, and grateful for her role in their employment, they would never reveal her deception. She wished they’d been hired sooner, when Reggie still lived there. They might’ve known what happened.
“. . . and the police barged into Ah Ling’s home,” Kow was saying, “as though a family of six living in one small room could hide a missing man. They’re really worked up over this.”
“The missing man is a Pinkerton detective,” Big Fong said, “and there’s a rumor going around that someone from Chinatown is to blame.”
Kow snorted. “Someone from Chinatown is somehow always to blame. The police want to solve the case before the Pinkerton agency does. It’s like a contest.”
Big Fong waved at Suling. “The housekeeper wants to see you, Young Miss,” he called. “She’s in her office.”
As befit her status, the housekeeper’s room was large and served as both office and bedroom. A tall folding screen concealed the bed. The stout and stately woman sat behind a small desk, crossing items off a list.
“Mrs. MacNeil,” Suling said. “You wished to see me about the monthly bill? I have it right here.”
“We can deal with that later,” the housekeeper said, standing up. “The master wants to see you. Let’s go up.”
Mrs. MacNeil patted down her hair at the mirror by the door and repinned the cameo brooch on her blouse. Suling followed her up the back staircase, used by servants to get to the service corridors on each floor. At the second floor, the housekeeper opened the service door and they entered the marble-tiled mezzanine. At its center, a circular staircase with gilded wrought-iron banisters spiraled up from the main floor to the top of the mansion. None of the servants, not even Mrs. MacNeil and the butler, ever used this staircase. Suling risked a quick look over the stairwell as they crossed the mezzanine and stumbled, a brief moment of vertigo, the corkscrew effect of the railings setting off her fear of heights. She much preferred the service stairs, enclosed by sturdy wood paneling.
The housekeeper stopped at a door flanked by two palm trees in large porcelain urns. The door was wide open and inside, Mr. Henry Thornton’s office was as busy as the kitchen downstairs. A clerk sat at a table, fingers pecking away at a typewriter. Another clerk made marks on a large map that nearly covered one wall while a third stood behind him making notes on a pad.
“Get that paperwork to the land titles office at once,” a commanding voice called. “I want that thousand-acre parcel tied up before Felix Brisac changes his mind.”
A chorus of assurances that the matter would be dealt with immediately, and the office emptied with a shuffle of papers and a rush of young men in gray wool suits and stiff collars. Attaché cases gripped tightly in their hands, they hurried down the circular stairs. They lived in their employer’s home as Reggie once did, available to Thornton any time of the day or night.
Suling knew about Thornton. He had business connections everywhere, even in Chinatown. But living at the octagon house, Reggie knew more. He has an office in the Financial District, Reggie had explained, but when he’s got a party, like he does tonight, he prefers his office at home because he can keep working until the last minute before guests arrive.
They’d been snatching a few precious minutes in the conservatory before Reggie had to return upstairs. Suling twisted one of Reggie’s curls around her finger. Coal black, darker than the deep brown-black of her own hair. He makes me attend so many parties. He’s relentless when he’s after something, Reggie had said, with reluctant admiration. Thornton applied the same intense persistence whether he was acquiring a tract of land, a railway, a silver mine, or a work of art. And I’m part of how he’ll succeed in what he wants.
And yet, Thornton had let Reggie go. That was the most curious thing, the question that prickled at the back of Suling’s mind. Had Thornton’s plans changed so that he no longer needed Reggie? Or had Reggie disappointed Thornton and been fired?
Mrs. MacNeil now gave Suling’s shoulder a tug and pulled her to the doorway. “The laundry delivery boy is here, Mr. Thornton.”
“Send him in and you can go,” the voice said. A confident, assured voice.
Suling stood on the Persian carpet in front of the large desk and looked around. The wall opposite the map was lined with bookcases that reached almost to the ceiling, their continuous ranks broken by a doorway that led to a smaller room, a private study.
“Take a message to Madam Ning,” he said, coming out of the study. Without preamble, barely glancing at her. He set down a stack of documents on the desk.
Suling understood immediately. When their delivery boy quit, he’d given notice to her, not Third Uncle. Apologizing with every breath, the boy also explained to her the arrangement between Thornton and Madam Ning. Madam Ning spoke, but didn’t read, English so the boy carried verbal messages between the octagon house and the brothel. This was the first time Suling had been called upstairs to take a message. Thornton hadn’t given a party in a while, at least not one where he wanted Madam Ning’s services.
“I’d like the usual, half a dozen girls; the party’s on Monday,” he said, shuffling through the paperwork on his desk. “It’s an afternoon function. They should be here at one o’clock, they can leave at four. Same work and pay as always.”
“Yes, Mr. Thornton.”
Now he looked up. “You’re not the usual laundryboy.”
“He quit,” she said, “but he told me what to do.”
“Well then.” A pause. “Be sure she sends Susie, or if Susie isn’t available, some other girl who speaks English.”
“Yes, Mr. Thornton.”
The first time Thornton made his unusual request, he had sent a written note. Madam Ning had turned over the embossed letterhead, run her fingers across the thick creamy paper, then called Suling over to read it. The brothel owner had been suspicious at first, then bemused. Thornton wanted her girls to dress up in Chinese clothing, sumptuous gowns that he would provide, and serve drinks to his guests. “Living exotics” were his words.
There followed a discussion back and forth, conveyed every week through the delivery boy until Thornton, no doubt recognizing his equal in negotiations, agreed to all Madam Ning’s conditions.
He would send a carriage to fetch the girls and take them back to the brothel, avoiding any possibility of their being harassed, kidnapped, or endangered in any way outside Chinatown.
He would pay Madam Ning the same hourly rate as what the girls could reasonably expect to earn at the brothel even though they would only be serving drinks.
He would pay double for one of the girls, who could speak English and who would translate his commands to the others. Madam Ning had put in this last condition for Suling’s benefit. “It’s a convenience for him and an assurance for me, since none of my girls speak English very well,” she told Suling. “If you’re there, everyone avoids misunderstandings. And for you, it’s extra money. You need your own income now that your parents are gone, and your uncle is totally useless.”
“But what about my uncle?” Suling said. “How can I explain why I’m going out at night?” Madam Ning pondered for a moment, then smiled. “Leave it with me. He won’t ever know.”
When the time came for the first engagement, Third Uncle suddenly hit a lucky streak at the gambling parlor. Flush with winnings and eager to try his luck again, he sent word to the laundry that he was busy and for Suling to do the closing up. Madam Ning assured Suling he would not return until the morning.
An hour later, her face powdered white, eyebrows penciled to the classic willow leaf shape, and lips stained a deep scarlet, Suling climbed into the carriage with five of Madam Ning’s prettiest whores. At the octagon house, Thornton’s housekeeper, features impassive, took them upstairs to the third floor via the back staircase. A sharp word from Mrs. MacNeil and they trooped into a room where gorgeously embroidered tunics and high-collared jackets hung on a rack. A second rack held an assortment of colorful trousers and paneled skirts. A selection of embroidered cloth shoes, some flat and some with tall wooden platform soles, were lined up against one wall.
Amid much laughter and raucous jokes, the women dressed, elbowing one another away from the tall mirror by the window. The jackets were wide, the tunics flared out down to the knees, comfortable and easy to wear. They tried on the shoes, one pair after another to find the best-fitting ones. Suling wished she had time to study the intricate embroidery, some created using stitches she had never seen before.
“Do you really think we won’t be required for sex?” Butterfly said. Her real name was far less dainty. “How can a man be willing to pay so much without wanting the game of clouds and rain?”
“Let’s see what happens,” Hyacinth said. “Perhaps he’ll want to watch women having sex. Wouldn’t that be nice?” She slipped her arm around Butterfly and pulled her into a passionate kiss.
“Not in front of the child,” Butterfly giggled, but she returned Hyacinth’s kiss.
“The child has seen worse,” Suling said, “but the housekeeper will be shocked, so stop it. She’s knocking on the door.”
But it wasn’t the housekeeper who entered, it was Thornton. “Which of you is the one who speaks English?” he asked.
“I am,” Suling said. “My name is Suling.”
“Sue Ling? All right, Susie,” he said, “my guests arrive in fifteen minutes. Tell the girls they’re going to be in the Chinese Room. The servants will make sure their trays are always filled with glasses of champagne. All they need to do is smile and offer champagne to any guests walking by.”
The women couldn’t help sighing with pleasure upon entering Thornton’s Chinese Room. One wall was paneled in black lacquer painted in gold, scenes of arched bridges and pagodas. Red lacquer panels inlaid with orchids and butterflies in mother-of-pearl adorned the opposite wall. Against a third wall, cabinets with glass fronts held Thornton’s collections: snuff bottles, jade figurines, enameled vases. But it was the glass case at the far end of the room that captured the women’s interest: a blue-and-gold headdress mounted on a stand.
“Oh, a phoenix crown,” Butterfly breathed, pressing her nose to the glass. “This must’ve belonged to an empress. Or a royal consort.”
Only women from the royal family could’ve owned such a headdress. Sapphires, pearls, and rubies traced a pattern around the lower part of the headdress. Phoenixes carved from pale blue-and-white jade flew across the front and sides. Heavy white tassels, which on closer inspection were strings of tiny white pearls, dangled down the back, carved flower pendants at their ends. Strings of larger pearls looped down the sides. But the blue! The upper part of the headdress was covered in hundreds of blue flowers and blue butterflies trembling on gold wires. The petals and butterfly wings were inlaid with kingfisher feathers, a brilliant, intense color more enthralling to the eye than any gemstone or flower, so vivid Suling felt she had never truly seen the color blue before.
The evening had proceeded just as promised. Suling and the others only had to smile and hold out trays of champagne. Guests wandered about chatting to one another, peering with envy at the treasures in Thornton’s collection. The male guests stared openly at the Chinese women.
“Your, ah, serving wenches are rather unique, Thornton,” she heard one man say. “The men are titillated, and the women would be scandalized if they weren’t so curious about the Chinese whores. Which brothel did you use and can I assume they’re . . . ah, available later?”
This last sentence wasn’t whispered, as though Suling couldn’t hear. Or couldn’t understand.
“The young ladies are here to add an exotic oriental atmosphere to the party and that is all they’re here to do, Curran,” Thornton said. “Touch them and you’re off my guest list for life.”
A roar of laughter from the cluster of men around Thornton. Suling bit her lip.
“He’s an odious little toad, isn’t he?” The voice was low and warm, slightly amused. “And I doubt he could afford Madam Ning’s prices anyway. By the way, my name is Reggie.”
Suling now wrenched herself away from the memory. The first time she’d heard that voice, the first time she’d seen that face. The first time she’d fallen into those emerald-dark eyes. Thornton was still talking.
“Speaking of Susie, one more thing.” Thornton disappeared back into the study and returned with a bunch of pale pink camellias in his hand and a cardboard portfolio under his arm. He put the flowers on the table.
Except they weren’t real camellias, they were silk. And Suling knew every cut and stitch of every leaf and petal because she had made them. Camellias were Reggie’s favorite flower, so she’d made six. Flowers that would never wilt. Everlasting blooms, everlasting love. What she wanted from Reggie, but she never said those words out loud.
Thornton pulled a drawing from the portfolio, a botanical rendering of a pure white flower that at first glance resembled a camellia blossom. He took out a second drawing, one that showed the same flower from three different angles; now she saw the unusual outer ring of long, thin petals that could’ve belonged to a totally different plant.
“I understand that Susie makes silk flowers,” he said, pointing at the artificial camellias. “Tell her if she can make twenty-five of the flowers in these drawings by April eighteenth, suitable for pinning on a dress, I will pay a dollar for each flower.”
Suling almost gasped out loud. The most expensive hat she’d ever seen in a shop window cost five dollars. Twenty-five dollars for twenty-five silk flowers. It was an extravagant amount.
“I will tell her,” she said. Then, hardly daring the words, “Please, sir, how did you know Susie made silk flowers?”
“A former employee told me,” he said. He rolled up the drawings and slipped an elastic band around them. He handed the roll to Suling. “Tell Susie to be careful with the drawings. I want them back. And she doesn’t need to wait until the eighteenth to deliver all the flowers. If she can get me a few in time for that party on Monday, I’ll pay for those right away.”
What more proof did she need that Reggie didn’t care about her? Her labor of love was in Thornton’s hands. Left behind, abandoned, like her.