She’d been lied to. Repeatedly. She’d been told that nobody wanted her but the woman she called mother. And she’d believed it.
“Mother said,” Leland said, perhaps not seeing how close Amelia was to losing hold on her emotions, “that you were terrified of being made to leave our family. That we shouldn’t mention it so you knew you were safe and wouldn’t be sent away.”
Safe. Amelia couldn’t help it. She found herself unable to hold back tears any longer. They stung her eyes, dripping down her nose. She hated those tears even as they started down her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’m sorry.” She could hear Leland let out a slow breath. “I am so desperately sorry. I should have said something.”
She didn’t even want to imagine what he could have done. What her world would look like if the truth had been an option.
A warm hand made contact with hers. The comforting weight of a linen handkerchief slid into her palm. She pressed the cloth into her eyes, trying to push back years of pent-up anguish that could only be felt, not comprehended. It was embarrassing. Embarrassing that Captain Hunter had to watch this happen—that he heard how foolish she had been for so long, that he saw how it affected her, that he saw that she couldn’t get herself under control.
She wasn’t sure who set their hands on top of hers. Those thumbs made light circles against her inner wrists, a warm, comforting touch. That convinced her it wasn’t Leland. There was an intimacy to that touch. She knew those thumbs.
It should have been a relief that Grayson was seeing her like this and not scoffing at her, but somehow, his kindness made it worse. The acknowledgment that this wasn’t fine threatened to flood her with emotion.
She wasn’t sure how long she cried, how long Grayson rubbed her wrists. She didn’t even know when Leland came behind her, setting his hands on her shoulders. She wasn’t sure when Merry pushed a warm snout between Amelia’s legs, pressing against her in comfort.
We’re here. We care for you.
Amelia wasn’t sure where one emotion inside her ended and the rest began. She felt anger, fear, confusion, sadness.
Her brother was saying comforting things in a low tone. She heard, “There, there,” and “I’m so sorry, Amelia. God, I can’t ever forgive myself. I should have said.” She shuddered, blowing her nose into the handkerchief before lifting her head.
Captain Hunter had moved closer to her. The breakfast things were still strewn across the table. The youtiao must have gone cold, she found herself thinking with dismay, and then she wondered why she was thinking about the temperature of bread at a time like this.
“I don’t know what to think.” She exhaled. “I really don’t know what to think. Withholding that information from me seems…”
Heartless, she wanted to say, but her mind rejected that possibility, unable to fit the warmth and love she had known from her mother with what felt like the calculating cruelty of making her believe her Ah Ma didn’t want her. Maybe Amelia would have thought it of someone else, but it didn’t fit now. She couldn’t make it fit into the life she’d had.
“It seems violent.” Captain Hunter completed the sentence she hadn’t been able to finish.
Violent. Such an ugly word. Violence made her imagine being struck hard across the face. Her mother had never, ever been violent.
Yet this had that same feeling—of a great, bruising blow, hard enough to send her reeling.
Amelia stood, pulling away from the warmth that they had provided her. Her brother’s arm fell to his side. Merry came to her heel, and Amelia began to walk slowly around her room. Walking made more sense than sitting; walking, at least allowed her to attempt to outpace her feelings.
They were all out of order. Jumbled together. She didn’t know what to do about her mother—that was entirely too much of a mess to manage. She didn’t know what to do about the word mother.
But one thing seemed to rise out of her confusion. One simple, clear thing.
“I need to find her.”
But it had been so many years. One woman, whose name she didn’t know?
She shook her head. “I don’t know how. Did she leave a name? An address?”
Leland shook his head slowly. “If she did, I heard nothing of it.”
“Damn.” Amelia turned back to pacing. “What can I do?”
“What about your liaison?” Leland asked. “Benedict Worth? I talked to him when he was in Hong Kong a while back. He’s searching for his sister. Doesn’t he have some skill in the matter of searching for people who are missing?”
Amelia tilted her head and looked at Leland through her disbelief. “Benedict is delightful, and I’m sure he would love to assist in any way. If my mother were British, by all means I’d consult him. But he has never been to the interior of China. And I don’t have a name for him to ask about. Besides, what spoken Mandarin he knows, I’ve taught him, and he’s not literate in written Chinese.”
“Ah.” Leland looked taken aback. “I had not really thought that one through.”
Amelia shut her eyes. “It’s impossible. But it must be done. But—but I haven’t time.” Her voice was straining. “I have employment. I cannot simply stop. I have error correction to finish. And the codebooks to go over. And—”
“Amelia.” Grayson interrupted her with a hand on her arm. “Amelia. Listen.”
She stopped and looked at him. Under her perusal, he looked away.
“I saw some of your presentation to the taotai,” he told her. “Benedict sent me a letter that brought me back from San Francisco… Never mind. I came in at the end of your practice. I heard what you said.”
This made as much sense as what Leland had said. As the ringing, bruised sensation when she thought about her mother—Mrs. Acheson—God, she didn’t even know what words to use for anything.
“You were there? But you didn’t stay.”
He shook his head. “I heard what you said. I wanted you to have the thing you’d lost—family. That’s why I brought your brother with me.”
She shook her head. “But my employment…”
He turned back to her, a determined set in his jaw. “You may recall what I told you a year ago. There was nobody qualified to encode Chinese characters then because it had not yet been done.”
“Yes?”
“It has now been done. By you. That makes you the only qualified vice president of telegraphic encoding in the entire world. Your employment will wait if you need time to attend to a personal matter. Your employment has no choice.”
“You.” She stared at him blankly. “You are saying that the work will wait.”
“I brought your brother here to see you because I know what it’s like to ache for family and never have them present. I have a mother who I can’t—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head. “You have the chance to make that connection. There is absolutely no world in which I would deny you that.”
“But I don’t know what to do.”
“Forty-three,” he shot back, looking straight into her eyes.
Since that time he’d left her with a stack of opened envelopes filled with universally positive things, she’d gone back and read them. More than once. Enough that she’d maybe memorized them a little.