Page 39 of The Manor of Dreams

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me today,” she said in shock. This was her good skirt and her crepe blouse. She’d probably stained it forever.

“I have bad dreams sometimes, too,” Edith said. She carefully swept the glass into a paper bag and got a towel for the wine, pausing before she bent down to look into Vivian’s eyes. “But they’re just dreams, at the end of the day. They can’t hurt us.”

Vivian looked up. She wanted to ask Edith about her dreams, but just then she heard Renata’s voice.

“Mama.”

“Oh— Bao bèi, what is it?”

Her daughter stood in the living room, dressed in her satin pajamas. “I wanted to drink some milk. A Yí said it would help me sleep.”

“Ah,” Vivian said. She glanced over at Edith, who was smiling now that her prediction had come true. “Here, let me microwave some milk for you. A Yí is busy right now.”

Rennie stared at them. “What happened?”

“??was having some wine.” Vivian put a cup of milk into the microwave. Her ruined skirt clung to her. “I spilled a bit.”

“Can I have some?”

Vivian laughed and retrieved the now-warm cup. She set it down on the kitchen counter and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Milk is better for you.”

She watched Rennie hold the cup with both hands and sip from it. Behind her, Edith swept up the remnants of the glass.

“I’m full,” her daughter announced. “But I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to stay here with you and A Yí. Can I watch TV?”

“No,” Vivian said firmly. This was Richard’s fault: now her daughter couldn’t fall asleep without the television on. “You have to go to bed.”

Renata didn’t budge.

Vivian tried something else. “How about I tell you a story? Sun Wù Kong?”

Her daughter reluctantly nodded.

Vivian glanced back at Edith apologetically. Her housekeeper nodded toward Vivian with a small smile, as if to say,Go on, it’s fine.The tips of her gloves were red.

Vivian led her daughter up the stairs. She paused at the top for a moment, listening to the voices coming from the room to her left. The twins had gathered in Ada’s room, whispering and giggling. From downstairs, Vivian could hear Edith and Josiah murmuring quietly.

This house was full. She was surrounded by family, preparing to tell her youngest a story. Edith was right. Dreams couldn’t hurt them.

Rennie crawled into bed and pulled the blankets all the way up to her chin. She blinked expectantly and Vivian spoke.

“Once upon a time, there was a mischievous monkey god named Sun Wù Kong. After he wreaked havoc on heaven, he was imprisoned under a very heavy mountain for thousands of years. But then a monk came and freed him, so Sun Wù Kong could help him look for sacred texts out west…”

Vivian sat at the desk in the small glow of the lamp, staring out over the polished floors and crowded shelves of the library. This used to be a ballroom, Vivian recalled. A decaying ballroom with no chandelier and a warped ceiling that was caving in on itself. They’d torn it all down and put in wall-to-wall built-in bookshelves. The ceiling was repainted a solid olive.

This was her home now. Yin Manor. There was nothing here she hadn’t deliberated on herself, and yet she still felt like an intruder. Unwelcome, but trapped.

Here she was, a Chinese woman, distantly related to a railroadworker, living on the estate of a former railroad magnate. She hadn’t known that’s where the family money came from, but did it matter? Amos Dalby had bent the land to his will by crushing the labor out of immigrants until death.

She pulled out her address book. The number for the apothecary she used to work at wasn’t in there, though it should have been. How often she’d wanted to call and ask for recipes that would calm her nausea during her pregnancy with Rennie. But now she didn’t need to ask about specific herbs. She wanted to ask about the railroad.

She tried hard to summon his phone number. The screech of the dial tone startled her. She tried another, similar number. Nothing.

Then she dialed her aunt’s house and leaned back, stretching the phone cord as far as it could go.

“Hello?”

Her relief was immediate. “??!”

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