“Don’t fret, Catherine,” he’d said. “I’ll be home in the winter months.”

But it wasn’t the thought of his absence that troubled her so. It was where he was going. She’d heard tales of the mines in town—how dark and damp they were, how dangerous. Quietly, she said, “You don’t have to go.”

“It’s a fair wage,” John replied, as if this decided things. Her brother was ever and always practical. It was one of the many traits they shared, and it was her practicality that stopped her arguing. She didn’t want her goodbye to be a discouraging one.

Putting her arms around him, she said, “Take care, John.”

In the print shop, Bridget leaned forward in her chair. “Be careful, won’t you, Catherine?”

“Of course,” she said. And with a sigh, she set down her brother’s letter and pushed the box back under her bed.

It was just past the eleventh hour when Catherine reached the cemetery gates. A sliver of moonlight illuminated the marble mausoleums and slanted grave markers, rooted trees and familiar pathways. She fetched the spade she’d tucked away behind the fence, swung it up onto her shoulder, and headed down one of the winding dirt trails.

In many ways, the city’s cemeteries were as much a home to her as her room at the print shop. Invercarn Public Cemetery had existed long before Rose Hill, its age reflected in its surroundings. Here were the oldest headstones: crosses interlaced with knot work; stone angels, their arms outstretched, carved faces upturned in perpetual grief. Ivy grew through the cracks, twining around the monuments, masking their crumbled foundations. The walls of a dilapidated church loomed in the distance, its stones stained by damp and blanketed with moss.

The coffin maker’s plot was unmarked, but Ainsworth had noted it near the old willow tree on his map. Gripping her lantern, Catherine placed her spade outward from the trunk, using its length to measure out the distance to the grave. Reaching the point written in Ainsworth’s directions, she tapped her spade twice against the earth. Guy Nolan had yet to arrive, and with a sinking sensation, she realized that without him, digging up and reburying the coffin would take twice as long. Her eyes itched with tiredness; she looked up into the night, exhaling a clouded breath.

Then she got to work.

She pitched spadeful after spadeful of dirt aside, sweat collecting in the space between her shoulder blades and the small of her back. She cleared another mound of dirt and caught sight of a shadow beyond the grave’s edge.

Guy Nolan stood at the foot of it, pale-faced and specter-like. He carried a spade of his own and wore a thick dark coat and a black top hat. He raised his free hand to touch the brim of it as their eyes met.

“Hello, Miss Daly.”

“Mr. Nolan,” she said gladly. Taking out a handkerchief, she wiped the sweat from her face. “It’s good to see you.”

He removed his coat and hat and set them down next to her lantern. Catherine was pleased to see he was dressed for the work. He wore a plain shirt and waistcoat, brown wool trousers. Joining her in the dug-up grave, he said, “Well, here I am. Is this how you usually spend your nights?”