From where Maria stood on the dock all she could see was the nervous Cornishman driving a wagon drawn by an old horse with one eye, and Keeper beside a girl who scrambled in order to stand on the seat of the wagon. Maria narrowed her eyes. This tall, angular girl had raven-black hair falling to her shoulders. She was pale and lanky and wearing a dress that fit like a sackcloth and fell nearly to her ankles. She was all arms and elbows and freckles, unfamiliar in every way, and yet she was calling out “Mother,” waving her arms as joy spread across her face. There was her darling girl, her vanished daughter, who now, five years after she had disappeared, stood on the carriage seat, a fearless eleven-year old who had gleefully journeyed through Hell Gate on an ordinary day when miracles happened.

In the time they’d been apart, Faith’s gray eyes had paled to silver; her red hair had been dyed with ink, although a few blood-red hairs shone through. Her narrow, expressive face was marked by a sharp intelligence that included both wit and suspicion. It was possible to see the woman she would become, and yet something of the child she’d been when she’d been taken still showed in certain aspects of her features: her wide grin, for instance, and the brand of mischief in her eyes, the black mark of her bloodline on her left hand, which Martha Chase had tried her best to scrub away with the use of a stiff wire brush and lye soap, rubbing until Faith yowled with pain. Try as she might, none of Martha’s efforts had made the slightest difference. When you are so marked, you are marked for life.

Faith climbed down from the wagon and raced to her mother, and Maria hugged her close. Her child smelled of salt, for she was still a girl of the flatlands, sunburned and wild. Yet in her mother’s arms she was a child again. Maria might have never let go of her if she hadn’t caught sight of Jack Finney climbing down from the wagon. She didn’t take the time to look inside him, for the instant she spied him she imagined he’d had a part in abducting Faith. Maria ran toward him in a fury. Before he could step away, she held up a paring knife she always carried, so close to his throat he felt the blade.

“What you’ve done, you’ll pay for,” she told him.

“You have it wrong,” Finney assured the outraged woman. He’d broken into a sweat, which made him appear to be a guilty man all the more. “I’m the hero,” he said in a voice that wavered as he spoke.