On hot nights Maria and Juni escaped through the window so they might prowl the island. They were young and the heat made for restless sleepers. They were alive and wanted more than the room they lived in and the interests of people other than themselves. They’d grown close, for now it was only the two of them. The Manchester sisters, Katy and Susannah, had worked off their debt, and had then been free to marry the first men who came along, wretched suitors Maria warned them to deny. She looked into the sisters’ tea leaves and into their palms and told them to wait, there would be other men to choose from, or perhaps it might be better to set off on their own lives. The sisters hadn’t listened, and they’d married two silent, gloomy brothers. Their lives had changed very little since they had worked for the Jansens, only now it wasn’t a grand house they cared for, but wooden shacks near the harbor, one wedged next to the other on stilts above the blue sea that rotted the floorboards and left a silver sheen of salt over every dish and chair. When the trade winds came up, the sisters had to nail their furniture to the floor and tie themselves to the decks of their houses with jute rope. Their husbands were off fishing most of the time, and for that they were grateful, for they treated the sisters badly; sex was for the husband’s pleasure and women were not to speak back to men. Maria visited the sisters and brought them crisp red apples, an unusual fruit in this climate, for which she’d paid dearly. She told the sisters to prick the fruit with a needle as they said their husbands’ names, then bake the apples into pies which, once devoured by the men, would bring about kindness and a bit of consideration from the sour, ill-tempered sailors they’d wed. After that the sisters embroidered a blue shawl for Maria, and every bird on the island was sewn into the fabric, for both sisters owed her a huge debt of gratitude, and later both would name their first daughters Maria so that they said that name a hundred times a day with love and devotion.

On nights when Maria and Juni climbed out the window to poke around and look down lanes and sandy paths, they felt more fortunate than the Jansens’ daughters, who wore heavy silk dresses and undergarments constructed with bones, and tight shoes that left blisters on their feet, and were rarely allowed to go out on their own, even now that they were married and living in their husbands’ homes. Juni was called upon by young men and boys who were dazzled by her beauty, but no one noticed Maria. She’d learned a lesson from Hannah and Rebecca, and to protect herself from love she wore a black petticoat under her dress, the hem stitched with blue thread, the fabric washed with cloves and blackthorn. She knew how to walk in the shadows so she wouldn’t shine in the darkness. No one looked at her twice.