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Thornhollow rose from the chair, pacing the room with an influx of energy and anger. “And this same Madeleine Baxter happens to enclose letters to the younger sister of a female inmate who supposedly died under my blade? What if a busybody decides to go through Reed’s letters, or his wife somehow gets wind that he receives missives from a female at his workplace? I didn’t deliver you from that pit only for you to allow sentiment to drive us both back into it!”

“Sentiment, Doctor!” Grace exploded, rising up from her chair to meet him in her fury. “My little sister lives in a more refined pit, but a viper’s nest nonetheless. You truly think I would leave her abandoned to that horror simply to save my own skin?”

“Your own skin?” he bellowed back, not cowed in the least by her display of temper. “What of mine? What of my career? How would it appear if it were discovered that I colluded in the disappearance of an attractive young woman and reappeared with her elsewhere as my dutiful assistant?”

“Am I to be a kept woman, then?” Grace yelled, not caring that his office walls may not hold her voice. “Not for what’s between my legs but my ears? Here to hop to your beck and call when you need a plaything for your night’s adventures, no less of a doll for your own purposes than our killer’s victims are to him?”

“Enough!” Thornhollow roared. “I’ll not be spoken to like this when I’ve risked everything on your behalf. Your father is a powerful man, Grace Mae. You don’t realize what could happen to me if he should uncover our ruse.”

“No, Doctor,” Grace allowed, her tone suddenly cold. “But I know exactly what would happen to me.” She turned her back to him and left the office with all the disdain her mother’s training had instilled in her, head held high.

TWENTY-TWO

Their argument did not sit well with Grace. She searched for solitude under a willow by the lake, aware that her emotions were running high and might find vent through her tongue if she kept company with her friends. It would be a double betrayal of her pact with Thornhollow, wrecking not only the work they’d put in to covering their tracks in Boston but the lives they’d built in Ohio as well.

It was a Sunday, and so the grounds were brimming with people. Though the mad themselves may be a nuisance, the beautiful ponds, rolling green hills, and fragrant orchards of the asylum grounds were open to the public, and they often came. Grace sat quietly in her shaded spot, aware that her plain homespun marked her as an inmate for those too far away to see her scars. The sane had the assurance of the staff that only the meek and mild were allowed free to roam among them, but they stayed to the paths nonetheless.

“Can my Sally have some tea?” a high-pitched voice questioned, and Grace turned her head toward the noise.

A young mother came around the bend, pushing a pram from which a low coo emanated. A small girl trotted beside her, gold curls bouncing, a doll in her hands. “Momma,” she said again, tugging on her mother’s skirts. “Sally is thirsty.”

Grace’s heart plummeted, and her lungs ceased working for a moment as the sun lit up the little girl’s golden hair. Her fingers clenched on Alice’s letter, crushing a corner.

“Sally will have to wait a moment, dear,” the mother said, bending over the pram to adjust the baby’s blanket. “We’ll head back home after this turn; Brother needs his nap.”

“Brother always needs something,” the little girl said, pulling a face.

“Babies are work, sweetheart,” the mother said, looking up from the pram. “Excuse me, I—”

She broke off, her words lost at the sight of Grace kneeling next to the little girl, hands brimming with lake water.

The girl looked at Grace suspiciously, then down at the water dripping from her hands. “For my Sally?”

Grace nodded, her gaze devouring every detail of the child’s face and comparing it to Alice, measuring the bones of their cheeks and the curls of their hair in her mind. They were not twins by any means, nor could they be confused for sisters. But the spark in this little girl’s eyes matched the one in Alice’s, a testament to the spirit inside that had just begun to know itself. The girl dipped the doll’s porcelain mouth in Grace’s hands, unconcerned with the scrutiny.

“Better,” the little girl declared, then peered at Grace closely. “You’ve got a chip in you,” she said, cool fingers reaching up to touch Grace’s scars. “You’re broken just like my Sally.”

“Mary!” the mother chided, and her small hands dropped from Grace’s temples. “I’m sorry,” the mother said, pushing the pram off the path over to them. “I hope she’s not bothering you, and she didn’t mean any offense about your . . . about . . . that.”

Grace waved off the apology and smiled at the mother, not missing the fact that this woman was only a few years older than herself. Her clothes were fine, the pram expensive, the spark in little Mary’s eyes evident in her own. She wore the trappings of what Grace’s life should have been, and Grace felt the hollow echo of disappointment for the first time since coming to the asylum.

The mother looked back at Grace, taking her measure, gaze resting briefly on her scars. She glanced around furtively. “Am I allowed to talk to you?”

Grace shrugged, unsure.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Mary asked, her little hand slipping into Grace’s and sending a streak of warmth through her heart. “She’s a nice lady. And she’s pretty except for being cracked.”

The mother’s mouth fought against a laugh at Mary’s unintended joke, but it erupted when she saw that Grace was smiling. “Except for being cracked . . . ,” she repeated. “Oh, Mary, what am I going to do with you?”

“Why should you do anything with me?” Mary asked, now swinging Grace’s arm with her own.

The mother glanced around once more. “Would you . . . would you like to see my baby?” she asked. Grace nodded, leaning over the pram as the mother pushed the cover back.

“Hello there,” the mother said to her baby. “Hello, my beautiful boy.”

Grace watched his tiny hands come up against the rays of the sun, face squished in irritation. She shaded his eyes with her hand, eyes drinking in the sight of him.

“He’s just six months,” the mother said. “Healthy as a horse. Watch his hands. If he gets ahold of you, your fingers will be in his mouth.”