“Don’t bother to lie.” The blade had already nicked Finney’s throat so that a bead of blood oozed through his flesh. If he was a liar, he was a good one, for there were no white spots on his fingernails and no blisters on his tongue and she saw no evil within him. Still, he had her girl, didn’t he?

Faith ran to her mother. “He is the hero.” She spoke with the authority of someone twice her age. When a child is forced to save herself, she is a child no longer, and Faith had no issue speaking her mind, even to her mother. “He should be rewarded. Without him I’d still be in Brooklyn.”

Maria apologized to the peddler, and was soon convinced to invite him to stay with them on Maiden Lane, for he had nowhere else to go and Faith was insistent that they treat him like family. Truthfully, she knew him better than she knew her own mother.

“Thank you. Much appreciated.” Finney could use the rest, for sleep had eluded him ever since they’d left Gravesend. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw an image of the tall, awkward madwoman who thought she could outrace a horse over a narrow bridge. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d cried out at the moment she fell to the marsh below, and worse, if she’d still been alive when they left her there. That was the thing that haunted him. When he’d gone to peer down into the shallows, the woman was facedown, her gray dress and bonnet soaked with saltwater, unmoving. She didn’t give any sign of life when he dragged her to a higher watermark. And yet, looking back on it, he could swear he’d seen the flutter of her back as she inhaled more water than air before he climbed back into the carriage to wait for Faith. Go on, Faith had told him. And he had. He had done as an eleven-year-old girl ordered him to do because she was fearless and he was not. Finney had actually been shaking as he stood there gazing into the creek. He knew the difference between life and death—a flutter, a heartbeat—and yet he had climbed up in his wagon and he hadn’t looked back.

“What’s done is done,” Faith had told him when at last she’d scrambled back onto the carriage seat beside him, her boots and dress soaked, her hair streaked white with salt. He’d looked at her and nodded and knew it was likely they had killed someone. But the sky was blue and there were miles to go before they made their way across Brooklyn, and it was true, what was done was done and could not be undone.