RESPONSIBILITIES
1902—New York
As the streetcar rattled north toward Fifty-Second Street, where her uncle and his family lived, Cela couldn’t stop her voice from cracking as she told Jianyu about how Abe had been killed in their own house. Tears fell down her cheeks as she explained how the theater workroom that had been her pride—her sanctuary—had been turned into her prison.
“I knew you were there,” he said.
She nodded. “I heard you, but I didn’t know who you were. With the night I’d had . . . Then you went on about Darrigan, and I didn’t think it was smart to reveal myself, not after everything else.”
“It is understandable after what happened to your brother and your house,” Jianyu said simply, an acknowledgment that Cela didn’t quite understand.
“I didn’t say anything about my house,” she told him, her stomach suddenly feeling like she’d swallowed molten lead.
“You do not know?” His expression faltered. “When I came to find you, it was burning.”
Even sitting down as she was, it was her turn to sway and his turn to steady her. That house had been her daddy’s pride and joy. It was his mark in the world, and if Jianyu was right, it was gone. Just like her brother. Just like everything she’d loved. All in a single night.
The vines around her heart grew thorns, and her breath felt like it was being pressed from her.
Cela pulled away from the comfort of Jianyu’s hand over hers.
He let her go, but his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“What?” she demanded, her very soul raw and weeping from the losses that had been piled one on another.
“Harte Darrigan lied about many things, but he did not lie about you,” he told her softly. “He chose well.”
“Well, he should’ve chosen somebody else,” she told him, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Jianyu let out a ragged breath, a sigh that Cela took for agreement. They rode in silence for a while longer, but eventually he turned to her again. “Darrigan’s mother?” he asked gently. “He told me that he left her with you. She was not in the house?”
“She died before I left,” she assured him. Before it burned.
“Who was it that killed your brother?”
“I hoped that you would know,” she said. “I was in the cellar when it happened. I heard the gunshot, and I ran. I don’t even know why I ran. It’s like I couldn’t stop myself. I left Abe there. I left him like some coward.”
Her voice hitched, and the memory of Abe—his laughing eyes and his strong features that were so much like their father’s—threatened to overwhelm her. Threatened to pull her down so she’d never get back up.
“You are far from a coward, Cela Johnson.” Jianyu reached over and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. It was a strangely intimate gesture, a liberty that he didn’t have any right to take with her. But she didn’t stop him. She simply accepted his comfort as the gift she knew he’d intended.
“It’s because of Darrigan, isn’t it? Everything that happened to me—to Abe—it’s all because I took his mother in and accepted that damn ring as payment.”
“I cannot be sure, but . . .” He inclined his head, wincing a little at the movement.
“It’s why Evelyn locked me in my workshop. She wanted the ring Darrigan left me,” she told him. Cela still didn’t understand how the stupid wench had managed to get it out of the seam of her skirt, or why she had given it up without so much as a fight.
“Do you still have it?” Jianyu asked, his eyes cutting to her and his voice suddenly urgent. “Did Evelyn get the ring?”
“She must’ve taken it,” Cela said.
“No—”
“Good riddance to it, too. Evil old thing didn’t bring me anything but bad luck.”
Jianyu was looking paler than he had before. His skin had golden undertones before, but now the color all but drained from his face. “It’ll bring worse luck if we do not retrieve it.”
“We. There isn’t gonna be any ‘we,’ ” she told him. The streetcar was pulling to the curb and she wasn’t going to continue on this ride. “This is my stop. I’m going to go to my family, heaven help them, and you can go wherever you’d like, but I don’t want anything to do with that ring, or Harte Darrigan, or anything else. Now, I freed you, and you freed me, so I think we’d better call things even and part ways right here and now.”
Jianyu frowned, but he didn’t argue.
“I can’t exactly say it was a pleasure, but it was interesting.” She held out her hand. “God go with you, because lord knows that if you go after that ring, you’re gonna need every bit of his protection.”
He reached for her hand, but Jianyu’s skin barely touched hers before she registered how cool it felt—too cool—and then he was collapsing as though the life had gone right out of him. It was only her quick reflexes that kept him from hitting his head a second time.
She hadn’t realized he was in such bad shape. He’d seemed fine a moment before. Well, he wasn’t her responsibility. Cela propped Jianyu back up onto the seat and then started to go. But she got only about four steps away before she turned back.
She couldn’t leave him there. She should, but she couldn’t.
With a sigh, she jostled Jianyu until he was conscious again, just enough to get himself up. Even then she had to support his weight—his arm draped over her shoulder—to get him down the aisle and off the streetcar, apologizing to the folks who were watching her with clear disapproval as she went. Once outside, Cela took a moment to get her bearings. Jianyu was barely conscious, but he was at least on his feet.
“Come on,” she told him, heading deeper into the neighborhood. “Let’s get you somewhere before you go and pass out again.”
She hadn’t been relishing the idea of going to her family to start with. If her uncle Desmond and his brood looked disapprovingly at her before, she could only imagine what he would do when she showed up on his doorstep, homeless, grieving, and with a half-dead Chinese man in tow.