A sickening numbness spread through Effie’s limbs. She no longer cared about the possibility of Gabriel learning her secrets. Her thoughts were consumed by that long-ago child. A strange brown little thing. A mere toddler, placed on the roof, her cries of hunger silenced by her terror of falling.

And Effie had been that child.

Her mind couldn’t recall it, but something in her did. The memory was imprinted deep, in her blood and in her bones. A scar gouged upon her soul. Never fading. Never healing. Always there to torment her whenever she ventured too high.

“What became of her?” she asked softly. “Of the child?”

“Can’t rightly say, ma’am,” Mrs. Young replied, drinking her tea. “She disappeared not long afore Mrs. Grace died. Some said she were sent to the workhouse. Others, that the father come and took her away. A lascar, I heard.”

Effie was vaguely familiar with the term. A lascar was a sailor from India. Which meant she must be half Indian.

People had remarked on her singular looks all her life. Had asked if she was part Spanish or Italian or any number of things. Effie had never known the answer.

“But t’were only a rumor,” Mrs. Young continued. “I didn’t see the man meself. I did ask Mrs. Grace where the child went, but she only laughed. Said she never wanted the tyke and good riddance. She were ill at the time, coughing blood and all sorts.”

“Consumption,” Mrs. Sturges supplied. “Isn’t that what you said, Vera?”

“Aye.” Mrs. Young nodded. “She had the consumption. Died a few months after the child disappeared.”

“There, you see, Mrs. Flite?” Mrs. Sturges said. “This Mrs. Grace woman couldn’t have been anyone’s servant. Not unless she’d fallen far since leaving your family’s employ.”

“No indeed,” Effie replied mechanically. “This isn’t the woman I was looking for.” Returning her teacup to the tray, she stood abruptly from her chair. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Gabriel was at once on his feet beside her. Effie didn’t wait for him to speak, or for the others to protest her departing so hastily. She turned and strode out the door, left with only the fleeting impression of the two old women rising from the sofa, and of Mrs. Young extending her gnarled hand for recompense.

Lowering the veil of her bonnet, Effie exited the cottage.

Miss Corvus had warned her not to look backward.

But Effie had insisted on doing so, on learning the truth, like Pandora or Lot’s wife or any other of the countless examples of women who had coveted knowledge at the expense of self-preservation. And the result had been the same. Chaos. Misery. Obliteration.

There had been no kind, self-sacrificing mother. No place where Effie had ever belonged. She was the bastard child of a prostitute and a lascar sailor. Abused. Unwanted. Unloved.