I stared at the ground.

He sighed. “I know this is hard, being a patient here, but perhaps you shouldn’t focus so much on who has done this to you, and whatever reason they had for it. There’s a larger reason you were brought here.” His face was intent in the shadows. “You’re so different now than when you came. Do you realize that?”

I frowned. “Am I?” It was true, I was different—more gaunt, weak, and strained than I’d been in years.

“Forgive my forthrightness, but it seems your original plans of rescuing women—fine as they were—came from anger. Toward your father, your childhood. You were bound up in resentment, Vivienne. Shielded against being controlled but also against many good things.” His gaze caught mine, making it impossible to duck away. “But here you are digging into the hearts of the lowest in society and finding their song, feeling for the rhythm of their hearts. You’ve been stretched the way my mother used to stretch fabric to . . . to make it softer. You came with a good heart, but I’ve watched it stretch and soften in new ways.”

I blinked, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.

“Perhaps God saw fit to break down who you were becoming and help you build back up the right way. To prepare you for something even greater.”

I grabbed the wall and continued down, releasing the pull his words had on my heart. I’d had enough guilt and control in my life, and I was ready for independence. Needed it.

I knew he was right, but I could cry for want of freedom.

He caught my arm at the bottom of the tower. “Miss Mourdant. I know it isn’t what you had in mind, but I do believe you are the only one who can help her. There is music beating inside you, and there is something of the same in her, too.”

Yes. Yes, the same rhythm. The same lost melody. I shook as I recalled that day with her on the bench, her low voice humming Rosamond’s song. That brought the familiar notes again to the surface, weaving like a ghost through my being, striking all the frenzied chords of remembrance.

He frowned at me. “Are you unwell?”

“Anna,” I said. “Was she ever called Rose, or Rosamond?”

“No, not to my knowledge.”

But it hardly mattered, did it? Anna’s mind was a vault of decaying memories, none of which could be accessed anymore. I needed a key to get in.

A key—like a piano key.

The odd words from Mr. Frederick Harford flashed through my mind. “Music opens up what we once believed lost. Memories resurface, peace invades pain . . .”

Yet how? Helplessness spread through my body. Crippling helplessness. She’d hardly spoken to me, even when I’d played for her. Not a word. But I wanted many words from her. Needed them.