Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1), Nick Wisseman [best novels for students .TXT] 📗

she said once she’d finished reconciling herself to whatever she intended to say. “Derek was here not half an hour ago.”

“Today?” was all Neva could manage.

Rather than pouncing on this stupidity, Mrs. DeBell simply moved on—she really must be trying to impart something significant. “He was looking for Edward and extremely distraught to find him missing; I think Edward sent the boy a note after all. You might ask him about it.”

Neva studied her former employer for a moment. “You know what was in the note, don’t you?”

“I have a notion. But you should ask Derek.”

“I will. Where is he now?”

“He didn’t say where he was headed, but he kept fidgeting with a ticket stub for the Fair—perhaps he’s on his way there to see you?”

The words rang so true for Neva that within a minute she was outside and striding towards the closest rail station, having tarried in the house only to mumble an apology to Mrs. DeBell and tell Hatty, “I spoke with her.”

Would that she hadn’t.

Chapter Sixteen

“NO. I DON’T BELIEVE it.” Neva slammed the note down, then covered it with Sol’s inkwell for good measure.

Derek winced from the other side of the desk. “I didn’t want to either, but ... It fits too well.”

She glanced around the sparingly decorated office. Still empty, except for them—Sol was out, and Wahib had let her use the room after reporting that Derek was waiting for her. “Someone’s playing games with you. This note doesn’t make sense.”

He shook his head. “Whose game could it be? Have you ever known Edward to make such a poor joke? Or, God forbid, Lucretia?”

“Jasper, then. Or Abiah.”

“Neva ...” Derek pressed his hands together in a praying motion, but his palms were straining against each other too hard to look devout. “It’s Edward’s script. You know it as well as I.”

“So he confirmed it?”

“No.” Derek dropped his hands, flexed them, and rejoined them behind his back. “I’ve called on their house three times since I received the note. But he’s been absent each time— missing for more than a week now.”

“Then you don’t know anything for sure.”

“I know it feels true.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She ripped the note out from under the inkwell and pointed to the fourth paragraph—the one that had upended her already tumultuous world. “Damn it all, Derek, I’m not your sister!”

BUT THE NOTE KEPT MAKING its case.

My dearest Derek, the letter had begun, its words running through Neva’s head as she walked dazedly at Derek’s side ...

You have always been my happiest indiscretion—the noblest fruit sin has ever born. I regret that I have never said this so explicitly, but I love you with all my heart and wish bitterly that I had not facilitated your entry into this world while placing such a burden on your name.

She tried to think of something else as Derek led her onto the Wooded Island—much as Wiley had two short, endless days ago—but Mr. DeBell’s elegant letters continued rushing in front of her eyes ...

You know of my regret already, however. Or at least, you know a portion of my regret. But I’m ashamed—deeply, and before now, unspeakably, ashamed—that my regret extends further. For my sin does as well.

There is no easy way to put this, so I will say it plain: you are not my only bastard. Augie is your brother, and Neva your sister.

It was still preposterous. Unfathomable and absurd. And yet, as Derek saw how unmoved she was by the Lagoon and gestured to the Court of Honor, Mr. DeBell’s every action towards her recast itself in a newer, truer light ...

The story is longer and more sordid than I have the courage to write, but suffice it to say that while Nat, their supposed father, fought in my place during the Great War, I began a relationship with Betty, their mother. It was wicked on many levels. A white man—an abolitionist, no less—lying with his Negro butler’s woman? A husband betraying his wife? An employer taking advantage of his employee? I don’t dispute the iniquity of any of it. But I had luck as well as lust: Betty didn’t fall with child—three, it turned out—until years later, long after the war had ended and Nat had come home.

Betty knew her belly swelled with my seed, though; Nat had never quickened her before. And no good sin goes unpunished ... Not that you—or Neva, or Augie—were that punishment. You were all a blessing, despite my shame. No, it was the manner of your birth, the loss of Nat and Betty after: that was my punishment. That has ever been my guilt.

The lies since have pained me almost as much, but I would rather explain them in person, man to man. Come when you can, and I will confess all.

The valediction hadn’t been addressed to Neva, but it might as well have been:

Your father,

Edward

Impossible.

“But you’re white,” she reiterated to Derek as they crossed the bridge that ran above the small island containing the Hunters’ Camp and the Australian Squatters’ Hut.

Shrugging, he repeated his earlier answer: “It’s been known to happen.” Except this time he elaborated. “I made some inquiries—discreetly—when I couldn’t find Edward. It’s uncommon, yet now and again a seemingly pure-white child is born of mixed parents. And the reverse can happen as well. There’s even been a case of a colored child born of two white parents ... Strange things happen when blood mixes.”

“In a set of triplets, though?”

Derek shrugged again, this time more with his eyebrows than his shoulders.

“And you were born earlier than us—August, not October.”

“That’s an easy enough thing to tell children who can’t remember differently.” He led the way past a statue of Benjamin Franklin and into the Electricity Building. “I talked to the servants. Only Hatty was with the DeBells before the Fire, and she gave me the most evasive answer I’ve ever heard from her.”

“That doesn’t make it true.”

“No, but we’re of a height—all three of us were. And when I look