“I tried, for so long, to save my mother. I live with the weight of that. How could I leave Eliza to suffer the same fate?”

“You didn’t, Mary. You did save her. You have rewritten the fate of your family.”

“But what fate have we to write now? What can I will into the world with no money at all? And Eliza’s sweet, innocent babe. How could I have left her behind?”

“Because your sister begged you to save her life, and you had to choose. For the time being.”

I took her hands in mine and faced her. “How I’ve missed you, Fan. I do not want to, cannot, simply refuse to live without you. Ever again.”

“I refuse the same,” she said, touching my hair, my face, as if to make sure I was real. “What can be done? Because whatever it is, we must do it as one, and quickly.”

“Never be weak,” I said. “Never submit. Never cower. Not let small difficulties intimidate us. Struggle to the death with any obstacles rather than fall into a state of dependence.”

“Yes. But what will we do?”

Fanny was paler than usual, and thinner than I’d last seen her, but her eyes were vibrant and steady.

This is the next knot in the tree that is me, little bird—when I wipe my eyes and find in my sight a narrow gap between the curtains where a small slice of daylight shines in.

“Start a school,” I say, with a clear-eyed confidence I still remember. “That’s what we’ll do.”

Mrs. B

September 3, 1797

The midwife woke with a start in the morning to find the child gone from her cradle. She hurried to lace her corset with clumsy fingers and fiddled to right her hair, remembering the whispers she’d heard yesterday that they were to build a coffin for the poor little dear. But as she reached for her spectacles, she heard Mary’s voice waft in through a crack in the open door. Mrs. B peered into the bedchamber, where the outline of the missus came clear. She was settled in the chair by the window, smiling and cooing to the baby latched onto her breast, who sucked as if she’d discovered the fount of all life, that miniature fist unfurled, pink fingers holding to her mother’s roundness as if she might never let go. The curtain at their back lifted and fell on the morning breeze, breathing for the whole house. The thinking part of Mrs. B thanked merciful God that her prayers, or someone’s, had been answered. But there was another nagging swell of tears behind her eyes, for soon it would be time to go.