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A sharp cry brought Caty to herself. Her youngest, Eliza, had fallen and someone had stepped on her hand. Eliza’s little face was red with inexpressible misery. Caty shoved her way to her and swept her up, bouncing her in her arms, pressing her cheek to Eliza’s, murmuring nonsense words. Thank goodness, she seemed more alarmed than hurt; Caty couldn’t feel anything broken. Beneath the baby’s dress, Caty could feel her clout sagging. The baby reeked of the sour scent of old urine.

Guilt stabbed Caty, her child wet, hurt, while she stood here gawking. “Where is thy aunt Hope? She was meant to be minding thee!”

Elma might be dead, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still children to tend and boarders to feed. This had gone on long enough. Caty hitched baby Eliza higher on her hip and shoved her way through the waiting throng, ignoring complaints that she was jumping the queue.

Elias stood sentry by Elma’s coffin, ignoring his children, his family, his responsibilities to the living. What did he think he could do by this, bring Elma back to life? She was gone, and this did nothing but track refuse across the floor Caty sanded by hand twice a day.

“It is enough,” she said sharply, and when he still didn’t look at her, she raised her voice to be heard over the throng. “Must we welcome the world into our home, husband?”

Elias muttered something that sounded like “bear witness.”

“They sent doctors to prod at her. Wasn’t that witness enough? It’s not seemly.”

“What happened to her isn’t seemly.” Mr. Croucher was at Elias’s side; he was always at Elias’s side. Caty would have hated him if she’d had the energy left for it. “Don’t you want the world to know what that man did to her? The man needs to be brought to justice.”

“Yes, of course, but . . .” Couldn’t they just bury her quietly? Bury her quietly and let that be the end of it. The end of Elma. Make her disappear as though she’d never been. In her heart of hearts, Caty wished they’d never found her. If it hadn’t been for the muff, floating to the surface . . .

Why had she made Elma borrow that muff?

Caty pushed the horrible thoughts aside, focusing on Elias, trying to catch his eye, to make him look at her, to see her. “To have so many, coming to stare at her . . . to see her shame . . . Why not just display her in the street?”

“Yes.” Elias’s eyes met hers. There was something about his expression that made Caty’s stomach lurch with alarm. “Yes. Let the whole city see what he did.”

“I didn’t mean— Elias!” Caty clutched Eliza too tightly; the girl squirmed to be let down. “Surely, thee . . .”

Elias had already turned his back to her. “Let them see what he did and make him pay.”

“Justice,” murmured Mr. Croucher sagely.

Caty ignored him, holding the struggling Eliza as she made a futile attempt to grab her husband. “Elias—”

But he was already spreading the word about, conscripting strangers as pallbearers. They seized Elma’s plain pine coffin. One hand flopped, limp, over the side, the nails cracked and broken.

“Gently!” Caty cried. Too late, too late. Always too late.

“Caty!” Her sister Hope pushed past, her cheeks wind-bitten, as though she’d been outside. “What are they doing?”

“Putting thy cousin on the street for all to gawk at,” said Caty bitterly. “And where were thee? Eliza was nearly trampled! And she wants fixing.”

“Hush, my little one.” Hope neatly plucked the baby from her sister’s arms, making silly faces at her. Eliza wrapped her chubby arms around Hope’s neck. Hope looked out at Catherine around Eliza’s head. “They’ve put her on the street?”

“For the world to see. As if enough haven’t seen already.” Couldn’t they just bury her and have done with it?

“We were sorely deceived in that man.” Caty’s baby sister was a woman grown, twenty years old and taller than Caty, but in her indignation Hope looked ten again.

“But to show her shame on the public street . . .”

“His shame.” Hope’s chin jutted out in a stubborn way that Caty recognized well; it was like their father when he announced that the call had come upon him to go preaching abroad, never mind what he was leaving behind at home. “He was the one who lured her from her home.”

Hope’s voice cracked. Hope had gone to the charity sermon with Weeks, and to his brother’s house; before the fever, before they’d left the city, they’d all thought it was Hope he was courting, not Elma. If courting one could call it.

“When she told thee he meant to marry her . . .”

“Who knows what lies came from his lips?” Hope’s face twisted with anger. “He asked me to sign a paper saying he had paid no more attention to Elma than to any woman in this house. He knew that was positive lies! Why should he think I’d lie for him?”

“Hope . . .”

Hope wrenched her head away, and made a show of sniffing at Eliza. “Eliza’s soiled her clout. I’ll tend to it.”