She opened the parcel. Inside was Evangeline’s ticket.

It was a chilly day in early spring. A silver disk of sun washed the grasses on the side of the road in a pale white light. Broom-bristle branches reached toward a sky streaked with wisps of cloud. As they made their way up the hill to Macquarie Street, Hazel looked back at the convicts trudging along on foot and riding in rickety carts.

Dunne flicked the whip again and the horse trotted on, leaving them behind.

Hobart Town, 1842

After some time, they turned from the long stretch of Macquarie Street onto a narrower side street lined with small cottages. When they reached a sandstone cottage with a red tile roof and a blue front door, Dunne pulled down the dirt drive. A sign hung on a post in the yard: Dr. Caleb Dunne, Physician and Apothecarie. It felt quite secluded; the house next door was hidden behind a tall hedge.

Dunne jumped down from the driver’s seat and unbuckled the harness, then freed the horse from its bridle and hitched it to a post.

“Where is she?” Hazel asked, the first words she had spoken since they left the Cascades.

He walked toward the front steps, motioning for her to follow.

Hazel held her breath as she stepped over the threshold into the cottage. Dunne, ahead of her, turned into a room. Her heart racing, she hurried after him.

And there she was: Ruby. Sitting on the floor, building a tower out of wooden blocks.

“Oh,” Hazel breathed.

Ruby looked up, a block in her hand.

It had been more than four months since Hazel had seen her. She was heartbreakingly older. Her face had thinned and lengthened. Brown curls spilled down her back. She gazed at Hazel for a long moment, as if she couldn’t quite place her.

“Give ’er time.” A woman’s voice.

Hazel looked up. “Maeve!” The woman was sitting in the shadows in a rocking chair, holding two knitting needles, a pile of yarn heaped in front of her.

“Welcome. We’ve been waiting for ye.”

“What are ye doing here?”

With a broad smile, Maeve reached up and touched her white braid. “Glad to see yours is growing back.”

“A small price to pay, if it led to this,” Hazel said, tucking a short strand behind her ear.

Ruby’s attention had shifted back to the blocks. Hazel knelt on the floor and crept closer. When she handed Ruby a block, the girl balanced it carefully on top of her tower.

Hazel wanted to give her a hug, but she was afraid of startling her. “Clever girl.”

“Clever . . . mama,” Ruby said.

“Clever mama,” Hazel said, laughing through tears.

Dunne stood aside as Hazel inspected his surgery, ran her fingers along his implements, lifted the lids from tinctures and powders and held them to her nose, tasted them on her tongue. After Evangeline’s death, he told her, he’d had enough of convict ships. But it took three more voyages before he’d saved enough to set up a practice. Almost a year ago, he resigned from his post as surgeon on the Medea and bought this cottage on Campbell Street in Hobart Town, with three bedrooms, a shed with a cistern, and a long narrow garden in the back.