But what sort of blessings can a person find in an asylum? I paused to look across the gardens to where Anna plodded along, her hunched back to me. One step away from the catacombs, they’d said.

The catacombs, that wretched cellar level of Hurstwell where they kept the volatile ones—anyone who might escape or who disturbed the healing environment too greatly. As they claimed Anna did when she couldn’t be soothed quickly enough. They were afraid of what she’d do to those around her, they’d said, and how her panic affected the entire ward with every storm.

My chest squeezed at the notion of this lacy little woman shoved out in the dark where no one would hear her cry out when she was afraid. I still felt the flicker of warmth where her hand had rested on mine, knobby fingers tracing along my knuckles.

As I stared, Anna bumped into a nurse and the woman spun on her, barking something. Anna cowered and wound her box, but the nurse wrestled it away and smashed it on the flagstone walk. Anna shot forward with surprising strength, a guttural scream erupting from her chest as she fell onto the grass and wept, sweeping up the pieces of the splintered box.

I moved toward them, but the nurse yanked Anna up by the arm and propelled her to a bench and left her cowering, a fawn without its mother. Anna fell onto the bench and stared at that smashed music box, sitting forward as if compelled to go to it, to save it, but not moving.

When the nurse departed, I knelt before the shaking woman and held out the little bouquet of wildflowers I’d gathered. She looked up, blinking as she registered the gesture. She took them and I wrapped my hand around hers to form a gentle fist around the stems.

Her chin trembled, and her voice sounded distant. “No more music. No more.” For a moment she held my gaze, tenderness mixed with sorrow. All at once the sweetness of the dream, of the way that woman—whoever she was—had looked at me as I entered the rose room, washed over me with delight. But then in a flash it was over. “Too bad, too bad.” Anna’s attention drifted away, and the absent, slightly troubled look settled over her face again.

Her other hand came around mine and she began that gentle probing of my hand. She stared off into the distance but continued her skilled caress, learning the contours of my hand by feel. She moved up my arm, then to my face, touching my cheek and smoothing my hair away from my eyes. Then she took one of the small purple flowers I’d given her and tucked it with a sad, distant smile behind my left ear and patted my cheek.