Before she left, she went in search of Olive. She found her with Liza, playing a game of whist. Despite multiple stints in the crime yard, they would soon be eligible for tickets of leave as well, they told her. “Hutchinson is glad to be rid of us troublemakers,” Liza said. “We was never any good at wringing laundry anyhow.”

“Remember me sailor? Grunwald?” Olive asked.

Hazel nodded.

“He opened a grog shop in Breadalbane. Asked me to barkeep. I told him I’ll only consider it if he hires Liza to do the ledgers. He’s writing letters for us both.”

“Does he know about . . .” Hazel pointed back and forth at the two of them.

Olive grinned her gap-toothed grin. “He won’t mind. The more the merrier.”

“I won’t skim off the top this time unless I absolutely have to,” Liza said with a cackle.

Olive hoisted herself to her feet and pulled Hazel into a smothering hug. “Take care of yourself,” she said. “You’re a better woman than I am, toleratin’ that stiff surgeon. But I s’pose we all take our ticket of leave where we can find it.”

Later, in the buggy with Dunne, Hazel gazed at the long high wall of the prison on her left, felt the rumble under her feet as they went across the tributary bridge, caught a whiff of the sewage. Then it was gone. She was done with that place. She felt as if she were seeing this world anew: woolly sheep in a field of yellow flowers, gray-green hills in the distance, blue butterflies darting in and out of flaxen grass. Black-and-white magpies laughing in the trees. She half worried that if she turned around she’d see someone coming after her, that she’d be hauled back to the Cascades for some infraction, real or imagined.

She did not look back.

That night, she and Dunne stood awkwardly in the hallway after Ruby went to sleep. She had made up one of the twin beds in Ruby’s room for herself. Dunne’s bedroom was down the hall.

“Is there anything you need?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“No thank you.” All of a sudden she was aware of his muscular forearm under his crisp cotton shirt. The bristles of his short beard. His smell, a not-unpleasant blend of perspiration and lye soap. She heard her own heart pulsing in her chest.

Feeling herself blush, she stepped back. Did he notice? She couldn’t tell.

In Ruby’s room, Hazel took Evangeline’s tin ticket on its red cord and wrapped it in the white handkerchief. (Those faint initials, that family crest.) She opened the top drawer of the dresser and tucked the small bundle under a pile of clothes, then slid the drawer closed.

Someday she would share it with Ruby. Not yet.

Hobart Town, 1843

It was strange to feel so free. Free to feel the air on her face as she sat on a bench at the wharf with Ruby, watching the ships come in. Free to sit under the shade of a yew and marvel at the wide expanse of sky. To peel an orange—or two, or three—with her fingers, and slip the sweetly sour slivers into her mouth. To watch dough puff into pastry in a cast-iron skillet. To go to bed when she pleased, sleep in if she didn’t feel well, laugh out loud without restraint, put her belongings in a drawer without fearing they’d be stolen.