The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

Inara is energized and excited by the renovations to Rothesay, which she has been working on for a full month. She returns to Seattle for a family Fourth of July celebration. She describes the sleeve to her family and everyone is interested except for her father, who dismisses it as something abandoned by a servant. 

When she returns to Orcas Island, Inara conducts a census search for Chinese servants who might have lived on the property. She discovers that a man named Joseph and his wife Mei Lien lived in Dahlia’s house in the late 1890s. She calls Daniel, leaving him a message with the new information. She’s interrupted by an error in the color of the toilets for the hotel, as her father changed the order. She confronts him about his interference. 

She later speaks to Daniel, who has discovered more about Mei Lien’s embroidery work in Seattle. Daniel offers to come to the Island to discuss Mei Lien and the sleeve in more depth. Inara recognizes she’s developed a crush on Daniel.

Daniel arrives and brings out purses and the sleeve to show Inara the similarities. He explains elements of Chinese history in the Seattle area, including the Chinese exclusion laws and the eviction of Chinese people from Seattle on the “Prince of the Pacific” (133) in 1886. He tells Inara about Mei Lien’s birth in Seattle, explaining that all advertisements and discussion of Mei Lien’s father’s shop referenced a son rather than a daughter. Inara recognizes the initials for her family’s shipping company on the sleeve, and begins to sense that her family was responsible for Mei Lien’s pain in the distant past.

Daniel takes Inara to lunch and they share stories of their families. Daniel understands Inara’s struggles with losing her mother, as he lost his father to cancer eight years prior. Inara finds herself comfortable expressing intimate thoughts with Daniel. When he drives her home, he tells her he’s single and invites her to dinner. They nearly kiss. She accepts his dinner invitation, but tells him she’s not looking for a relationship. He says he isn’t either, but points out their connection.

The next morning, Inara encounters a real estate agent sent by her father to assess the property and give her an estimate of the likely sale value. Incensed, Inara walks away from the woman, intending to call her father. She decides instead to go to Seattle and try again to convince him of her dedication to the project.

Joseph asks Mei Lien about her grandmother, and she feels safe enough with him to tell him everything that happened. He’s furious to discover Campbell’s cruelty on the Prince of the Pacific and frustrated that he didn’t know enough to stop Campbell. When Mei Lien encourages him to find a job for her, Joseph asks her to marry him so he can protect her.

Mei Lien argues with Joseph, saying that she doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her. She points out the threat posed by Campbell, and the many drawbacks for Joseph in marrying a Chinese woman. He offers counterarguments and kisses her passionately. She agrees to marry him, even though she worries she can’t ever love anyone again after her trauma with her father and grandmother. 

They are married in a hurry by a ship’s captain. Mei Lien has moments of grief, recognizing that she is losing the opportunity of a wedding in her own culture, and that she is trading her independence and autonomy for the safety and comfort Joseph offers. As they leave Port Townsend, she looks toward the beach where her grandmother washed ashore, promising her family that she will tell their story somehow.

Inara goes to Seattle and visits her father’s company offices. She finds the ship’s logs from February 7, 1889, on the Prince of the Pacific. She discovers the manifests for 347 Chinese passengers from Seattle, and the next entry for Astoria, where the ship took on passengers and cargo. The two log entries show Inara that the ship dumped the Chinese passengers into the ocean, murdering them. She hurries upstairs to tell her father about her discovery. He reveals that the family has always known: Campbell was never secretive and took pride in his actions. 

Inara’s father tells her that her mother worked so hard to do charitable work to try to mitigate her guilt at her family’s wrong-doing. Inara’s father tells her to abandon the research into the sleeve, or he’ll cut funding for the hotel project entirely. She resists, but then gives in, largely because he agrees to give her until the end of the summer to make sufficient progress on the hotel. She realizes she will have to stop Daniel’s research, removing any chance at a relationship between them.