“Now, some people might have seen my head getting bigger,” said the Magnificent Jimmy, and she was stabbed with jealousy: she wanted to snatch that vision straight out of the heads of the underserving children. “Did you see it?” he asked the girl with the serious eyebrows. The girl nodded, looked thoughtful, and opened her mouth—to vomit, it turned out.

She was only the first. The sea had grown furious, but nobody had quite noticed. You could tell the mothers from the sisters then: the sisters giggled and flinched, the mothers leapt forward, hands open—for what?

“Oh, sweethearts,” said the Magnificent Jimmy. “Poor things. There’s your mother, darling. All right, all right, she’ll take care of you.”

But what about me? thought Mistress Mickle. She felt a dull and radiating pain in her jaw, and she stood, and threw up, and fled.

She should have gone back to the cabin—to the shower, the clean towels, her full suitcase—but she had the idea that she shouldn’t be sealed in a box. She should be near other people, just in case. So she pulled her coat over her dress (not an unremitting mess: she had vomited directly into a pool of vomit) and stumbled to the open air. The cold was good, and she felt a flare of the day’s joy. Then it passed and she felt doom.

Throw yourself in. Who would care?

Over the years, she’d gone through the list: her parents (they’d get over it), Jonas (him, too), various lovers (who would mourn her or not, but their lives would not be ruined), her soap opera character (if she were currently playing a character, and if such character were consequential enough for her absence to matter, she would be gently written out of the show).

Wait. Wait, now.

There was no writing Mistress Mickle out of Barnaby Grudge. Was it the water or the realization that made her anxious? The wind boxed her ears. She drew her shoulders up to shield them. She was short of breath.

How would they explain it to the children? Would they simply hire another tall woman with a deep voice and an aptitude for stilts? Would they offer young actresses her corset like Cinderella’s slipper?

The parents of those children: they would be the ones who’d hate her.

They replaced Barnaby. They will replace you.

“Ahoy!” came a voice from behind. She turned. The Magnificent Jimmy, in a pillowy orange Michelin Man down coat, his ankles bare to the wind and his little velvet slippers horrid, splattered. “You all right?”

She nodded, though it was a lie. “Quite a finish,” she said. “Was that arranged?”

He laughed. “Never had a show end like that before! A chundering ovation. Where’s your child?”

A reasonable question. She looked around before she remembered. “I don’t have one.”

“Oh,” he said, puzzled. Then, “Me neither.”