Rain drowns the fires and tempers the heat. Rosalie hears it through her open windows, a calming, tranquil tapping, clearing the air and, she thinks, also the streets. Surely the worst is over. She loves the way rain smells. She has no trouble going to sleep.

But she has a vivid and frightening dream. She’s on a train, the sound of the storm becoming wheels and engines. She’s on her way home, through unfamiliar scenery, thick trees crowding close to the tracks and then suddenly, a man’s grinning face is right next to hers, just the window glass between them. In her fright, she turns to the other passengers, only to realize that they are all dead. She’s been riding in a car full of corpses.

She wakes from this in the still dark, her heart going fast. The rain has stopped and the streets are silent. She falls back asleep and in the morning, the events of the day before and the dream occupy the same space in her mind. Neither feels real.

John goes looking for ice and is back in short order. According to his assessment, the sober German immigrants have left the streets and only the Dead Rabbits, a rabid Irish gang, remain. He’s just seen a group of boys—boys!—behaving with a cruelty he won’t describe. “We have to hide Randall,” he says. “They’re going house by house now, forcing their way in, looking for soldiers and Negroes. And here we sit with both.”

Randall is moved to the basement along with anything that identifies Adam as a Union soldier, though nothing can be done about his incriminating accent and wound. John and Edwin will take over his care. Randall’s not to move.

Rosalie’s fright was well managed yesterday. Today, her chest locks around her heart every time she hears a noise from the street. She watches from the upstairs window. No one is there. No rioters, but also no carriages, no deliveries, no pedestrians. One black dog passes the house. That’s all she sees in an entire morning. She waits in a panic for John to come home with his report and then panics even more wondering what’s happening while he’s at home. Her flask is empty. Her hands shake.

She tries to help Marie with Edwina, reading books, building towers of blocks, pretending all is well. The day passes slowly in a strange mix of terror and tedium.

—