In one of his moments of joking, he called me “Black Gal,” and I shivered.

“Do you remember?” I said. “Do you remember Mr. Ben?”

“Oh, Daisy!” Lucien cried in a nasal falsetto, and then fluttered his hands. “But of course.”

Madame Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “That poor man.”

“Do you ever wonder what happened to Daisy?”

“If there’s any justice in the world,” Madame Elizabeth said, “her soul’s repented for all the pain she caused that man.”

“But how is it Daisy’s fault,” I said, “if Ben Daisy was the one who chose to die for her?”

“Well, listen to you, Miss Libertie,” Lucien said. His eyes shifted between me and his mother, sizing each of us up.

Madame Elizabeth tilted her head and held her finger to her chin, a practiced pose of concentration. Then she said, “Love is a mysterious thing, and a gift. A woman is a keeper of love, and when she does not take that duty as sacred, then things like that happen.”

Lucien sighed. “You lose your mind and end up trying to make love to a river.”

“You are terrible,” I said.

“Glug, glug, glug,” Lucien replied, and I saw, from the way his mother held in her laugh, that the joke was not a gamble.

I stood up. “I should go to bed, as well, Madame Elizabeth.”

“Ah,” Lucien said, “we’ve made you mad.”

“Lucien, stop it.” Madame Elizabeth held up her arms, and I stepped awkwardly toward her. “Good night. And say your prayers for your mama and me.” Her breath was murky with the smell of tea and sugar.

Madame Elizabeth and her family lived above the shop. The stairway to get to their rooms was clammy, built into the brick of the house. At the top of the stairs was a short hallway, dim, with only one cramped window at the end, which faced out onto the street. I hadn’t taken a light with me upstairs, and Madame Elizabeth had not offered one, so I moved along the hallway, my fingers running along the doors. I counted, one, two, three—Madame Elizabeth had said the third room was where we should sleep. I reached for the doorknob and turned it and pushed, but the door would not move.

I tried again, turning the knob back and forth, the iron becoming sweaty in the heat of my hand. I thought for sure Experience or Louisa would rise to let me in, but there was nothing. I scratched at the panel. “Louisa,” I called. “Experience.” Still no reply.

I held my ear to the door and heard the faintest shuffle, as if someone in bare feet was moving carefully. Then I bent down to the keyhole to look through. There was no candle, only the very faint moonlight from the window in the room. I could see nothing, really. But suddenly I heard someone on the other side of the door gasp, as if she had been holding her breath for a long time. I blinked once, twice. And then, again, nothing.