Some of the women gave in to despair. You could see it in their eyes: a smoky haze. They stopped thrusting their bowls forward or trying to secure a space at the tubs. Every few days one of them was discovered unconscious, collapsed in a heap. When the guards came with food, they’d drag the body to a corner of the courtyard by the heels, leaving it for hours, sometimes days, before carting it away.

The only way to get through this, Hazel saw, was to just . . . let go. She couldn’t think; she only needed to react. If she thought too much she would be paralyzed with dread, and that wouldn’t do her any good at all.

Hazel tried not to think of Ruby, alone at the orphanage. She focused her attention on the sopping laundry, the stains and spots, the bar of lye soap in her hand. Warm water, rinsing water, ice water, mangle. As soon as she finished one piece, she started another. She did not retort when provoked by the guards. When she needed to move, she did so stealthily, like a cat. At mealtimes she wended her way toward the gruel without drawing attention. She stayed as quiet as she could. This, she found, was the trick: you didn’t have to react to each little thing. You could just exist. Let your mind simmer over a low fire.

One morning, a month after arriving in the crime yard, Hazel looked up from the washtub to see Olive coming toward her. She sat back on her heels in surprise.

Olive grinned. “Ahoy.”

“What’re ye doing here?” Hazel whispered.

The guard gave them a sharp look. Hazel put a finger to her lips.

Olive knelt at the tub. “I needed to see ye, so I whistled at muster. As I figured: three days at the tubs.” She looked around. “Can’t believe I’m back in this shitehole.”

She glanced at the guard. Hazel followed her gaze. A convict had slipped in the mud, and he was prodding her to her feet.

“I had to let ye know,” Olive stage-whispered. “Buck’s the reason ye lost Ruby. He got his mate from the ship to smuggle the ledgers to Hutchinson.”

Hazel’s mouth went dry. “How do ye know?”

“Buck was here. On a crew building the new cells. He was bragging about it. Thing is, he escaped. Climbed over the wall.”

“That’s enough, ye two,” the guard called. “C’mon now, up!” he said gruffly, poking the woman in the mud with his shoe as she struggled to rise.

Olive stuck her hands in the water and sucked her teeth. “Forgot how bloody cold it is.” Splashing loudly, she said, “He’s out there talking revenge to anybody who’ll listen. Says it’s just a matter of when.”

Hazel thought of the way Buck’s eyes had bored into her as she stood before the captain on the ship, telling him what she’d seen.

“He wants Ruby. He’s been asking around, trying to find someone to get her from the orphanage.”