But she didn’t reject it. “A treat indeed,” she said, wrapping her gums around it and letting the juice run down her chin. She wiped it with the back of a rag-wrapped hand, removing days of grime from one small area of skin.

“Mabel,” I began, but the words wouldn’t come.

Mabel’s cracked lips softened as they sucked on the flesh of the pear. I felt myself flush, and the nausea I thought was over returned in a sickening wave that made me lean against the edge of Mabel’s crate.

“That Lizzie won’t approve of what yer plannin’,” she said, her voice low.

It was a truth I’d been arguing with for days. Lizzie refused to hear me when I said I couldn’t have a child. The plainer my words, the more she would handle the crucifix around her neck. Like her faith, it was always there, hidden and quiet and personal. But in the past week, she hung on to it like it was the only thing keeping her from Hell.

It judged me, that crucifix, and I hated it. I imagined it twisting my words and whispering its translation in her ear. We were in some kind of tug of war, with Lizzie in the middle. It was not a contest I wanted to lose.

“I reckon Mrs. Smyth might still be in the trade,” Mabel whispered, while picking up random objects as if to show me their worth. “She was an apprentice, so to speak, when I was in need. Be an old hag and good at it by now, I’d wager.”

A trembling began in my hands and worked its way along my limbs until my body was shivering with it.

“Breathe normal, lass,” Mabel said, holding my gaze with hers.

I held on to the crate and tried to stop taking the air in gulps, but the shivering continued.

“You got yer pencil and one of them slips?” she said.

“What?”

“Take ’em out of yer pocket.”

I shook my head. It didn’t make sense.

Mabel leaned forward. “Do it,” she said, then a little louder, “I just gave you a word and you’ll forget it if you don’t write it down.”

I reached into my pocket for a slip and a pencil. By the time I was poised to write, the trembling had subsided.

“Trade,” Mabel said, leaning back a little but not taking her eyes off my face.

I wrote trade in the top-left corner. Below that I wrote Mrs. Smyth might still be in the trade.

“You feelin’ better now?” Mabel asked.

I nodded.

“Fear ’ates the ordinary,” she said. “When yer feared, you need to think ordinary thoughts, do ordinary things. You ’ear me? The fear’ll back off, for a time at least.”

I nodded again and looked at the slip. Trade was such a common word.

“Where did you say Mrs. Smyth lived?” I asked.