Asia can’t calm herself. She runs upstairs, slams the door, and yanks her crinoline off so desperately that it tears. She collapses onto the bed, undone by grief or maybe terror. For the longest time, no one comes after her. When she finally stops shaking, she’s too exhausted to move again. She tries to take a deep breath and discovers that she can’t.

The door opens, but it’s only Rosalie. “Mother sent for Dr. Smith. He’s here now. He says Father is dead,” Rosalie tells her. There’s something in the tone of Rosalie’s voice that Asia doesn’t like, but she can’t say for sure what it is. Rosalie has a gift for the seemingly innocent insult.

Dr. Smith enters the bedroom. He takes Asia’s hand, feels her wrist. His fingers are cold and damp. “Your father has passed,” he says. “There can be no doubt of this.” The lenses of his glasses are so filthy she wonders that he can see.

He pours something brown and bitter into a small metal cup. He makes her drink it all though the taste is horrid. Then he leaves. Rosalie helps her out of her dress, which falls to the floor and remains there, a small hill of rumpled black wool flung over the crinoline.

When Asia wakes, it’s nighttime. Sweat, or maybe drool, has stuck her hair to her cheek. Rosalie’s bed is empty and the house is quiet. She rises, wraps herself in a shawl, and moves through the dark to the downstairs. Mother’s door is closed. The coffin has been moved into the pure white room and moonlight streams through the window. The stage is set for ghosts, but thankfully none appear.

For three days, visitors pay their respects. Asia avoids the parlor she worked so hard to make beautiful. She never sees her father’s face again.

—

The Struthoff sisters bring cakes and cordials from their grocery so Mother has something to offer the mourners. The neighbors on the other side are the Brownes. They’ve never been friendly, but they also come, a couple in their seventies, Ann Browne dressed in a severe, unornamented black, her husband, Elisha, whiskered and wizened.

Something about the way Mr. Browne holds his arms, rubs his hands, has always reminded Asia of a fly.

“Fetch your mother,” he tells her. The Brownes bring no food or flowers. They won’t enter the parlor, won’t sit at the dining table. Asia leaves them standing in the entryway, staring past her into the hallway, where a large doily drips from a small table and a painting of Niagara Falls hangs on the wall.

Asia gets Mother. The hand rubbing begins. “I’ll get right to it,” Mr. Browne says, his voice high, his lips cracked inside the nest of his beard. “Your loss is the price to be paid for sin. This has been a sinful house.”