Meanwhile, Rosalie watched the household collapse into madness. She was now nine years old. June was ill and Elizabeth deathly ill. Mary Ann was dead and Mother deranged, defiant, suicidal. This was not the quiet defeat that accompanied Frederick’s death. This grief was a war against the world.

Aunty Rogers came every day to help Ann and Hagar with the nursing and consoling, but Mother couldn’t be consoled. “Let me die,” Rosalie heard her saying, every day, every hour. “Just go away and let me die.” Rosalie prayed for Father to come. Mother wouldn’t die if Father told her not to.

But Father’s arrival improved nothing. Rosalie ran outside to meet him when he came galloping in on his black-and-white pony, still dressed in his tights and cape, thwacking Peacock’s sides with the flat of Hamlet’s sword. He dismounted, handed the reins to Joe Hall, the farm manager, pushed Rosalie aside without a look, and demanded to see Mary Ann, a week dead now and buried. “Show me,” he said. “Show me,” he shouted.

It was a bright, sunny, cloudless day. Mother appeared at the door, summoned from Elizabeth’s bed by the sound of his voice. She stepped onto the grass. She was still in her nightdress, her hair gone wild. He was caked with make-up and dust, as if his face was melting away. Horrid half-replicas of her mother and father. Rosalie was frightened of them both.

And yet, she was also hopeful. Father would fix things. It was why he’d come racing back. She took Henry’s hand, his fingers wet since they’d recently been in his mouth, and they followed Joe Hall, Father, and Mother along the path to the graveyard. Already Father was shouting that he could restore Mary Ann to life and this was a level of fixing things Rosalie hadn’t known was possible. Her heart lifted. “Bring me a shovel,” Father told Joe.

Joe didn’t move.

But the shovel was right there, leaning against the railing. Three steps and Father had it in his hands. “She wouldn’t have died if not for me,” Father said to Joe.

“God’s will,” Joe said. “Nobody’s fault.”

“God’s punishment,” said Father. “I’ve fallen from my beliefs, been careless in my habits. And God noticed.”

The ground was loose over Mary Ann’s coffin, easy to move. He dug and Mother sobbed, begging him to stop; he was breaking her broken heart, she said. And while all this was happening, Ann Hall suddenly arrived to take Rosalie and Henry away. “We don’t need to watch this,” Ann said, even though Rosalie desperately wanted to. Why couldn’t she be there at the moment Mary Ann opened her eyes?

She sat with Henry on the grass in front of the cabin, leaning against Ann’s legs, until Father came stumbling up the path with Mary Ann’s coffin in his arms. Mother floated behind him in her cloud of insanity.