2
Molly stood there, stunned. “You’re lying.”
The smile did not leave Mother Superior’s face. “She told the priest at confession.”
“That’s supposed to be private! Whatever Kitty told him was between her and God.”
“And now God knows,” Mother Superior said.
Molly wanted to snatch the candy dish and fling it at her face. But it was Kitty’s voice she heard, Kitty’s voice that calmed her. Don’t go losing that famous temper of yours, Molly . . .
She used her tongue instead. “I hope you rot in hell.”
Mother Superior’s smile died on her lips. “You are a very disrespectful little girl.”
“And you’re a very bad nun.”
She watched the woman warring with something in herself. A tic began at the side of the nun’s head, a vein throbbing with anger. But when Mother Superior spoke, her voice was as smooth and hard as river stones. “I’ve asked Sister Abigail to collect your things.”
The words spilled over Molly like ice.
“But my birthday isn’t for another month.” She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. She’d known this was coming, but she’d thought she’d have more time.
“A few weeks makes no difference.”
“Makes a difference to me.”
Mother Superior nodded, pleased. “Were circumstances different, I might have asked you to stay on as a novitiate. As it stands, today will be your last at the orphanage. You may, if you choose, eat noon meal with the others.”
“You killed her, you know.” She wanted it said. Wanted the words out so they did not fester like a splinter in her heart. “You say you help people, but you don’t. You break their spirit with rules so they’ll do whatever you want, and if they resist, you throw them away.”
“Get out.” Mother Superior came toward her, eyes shining with righteous indignation.
“Where am I supposed to go? To the river, like Kitty?” She flung the words.
“You have an aunt that’s sent for you.” A small smile crept to the nun’s lips.
“I don’t have any relations.”
“Be that as it may, someone has sent for you. Count yourself lucky. A girl as unattractive as yourself is more often left on the streets. You’re to ride with Father McClellan into the city this afternoon on his way to Mass. He’ll drop you at the address.”
Molly laughed, understanding. “An aunt. Gave you a big fat donation for the church, did she?”
Mother Superior didn’t answer. Instead, she simply turned away, her large black habit cutting a dark swath across the room.
Sister Abigail entered from the hall, a small bundle under her arm. The usually kind nun shoved it at Molly, refusing to meet her eyes. And when she spoke, there was no warmth in her voice.
“Leave the shoes. They’ll be another one, just like you, needing them soon enough.”
They gave her rags to wrap around her feet.
Molly wanted to refuse the noon meal but was not foolish enough to do so. She’d need all her strength for whatever was to come next. Grudgingly, she fell into line with the other girls, their eyes picking hungrily over her. Finally, the whispers became too much, and she went outside to wait for the carriage.
Sitting on the frozen steps, she opened the bundle Sister Abigail had given her. There was not much useful she’d inherited except for a single worn coat from her mother, too big when she’d come here at thirteen. Molly slipped it on now and was surprised to find that it fit perfectly.
She thought back to the frightened girl she’d been then.
“It’s only for a little while,” Ma had promised.
Molly had stiffened, jutting her chin out like a hero setting off in one of the books Da was always reading—Ivanhoe or Beowulf. There were never any women beginning great journeys.
“Take me with you,” she’d begged. “I can help.”
“You’ll be safer here.” Already, Ma was looking over her shoulder at the borrowed wagon, eager to return to Da’s side.
“If you go, you’ll get sick too.” Molly’s voice quavered. “You’ll both die.”
Ma smiled, her voice growing soft. “If it’s my time, then I’ll go gladly. There’s no sweeter way to enter heaven than beside the one you love.”
Ma had at least gotten her wish, Molly supposed. The consumption killed them both.
She shivered, wiping the tears from her face and folding her frozen feet beneath her dress.
The cut on her hand had slowed its bleeding, but she’d had to keep it pressed to her chest, so that now her dress, too, was smeared with blood. No one had seemed to notice.
Nor did they notice the missing kitchen knife, still tucked like a secret into her pocket.
Overhead, the first fat flakes of snow began to fall. A priest pushed through the orphanage’s doors, nearly knocking into her. “Are you Molly Green?”
Molly rose from the cold stone steps, the fresh snow seeping into the rags on her feet. “Yes.” She tried to look proud, but the man hardly saw her. He wore his holy cloaks, and Molly knew he must be Father McClellan, with whom she was to travel. There were always priests passing through the parish, their beetle-black robes as common as cockroaches.
He sighed, taking in her unsightly appearance, the dirt from the grave still clinging to her. Mother Superior had refused to let her back upstairs to wash.
“Come with me, then. The sisters say I’m to take you into town.”
Molly followed him to the waiting carriage, but when she tried to get in, he stopped her.
“I use this time to prepare my sermons.” He didn’t bother to hide his disgust as he looked at her now. “You can ride up top with the luggage.”
The journey from the orphanage to the city usually took nearly two hours, though the priest’s stopping at passing parishes to bless the sacraments would add another four. At each church, she was told to wait outside. Molly tried to sleep, legs pulled tightly to her chest, but the wind was biting. Finding two large trunks on top of the carriage, she crept between them, grateful for their shelter against the snow. She had not had time to properly grieve for Kitty. It had been three days since her friend disappeared, and during each one of them Molly had prayed she’d simply run away. Now she knew the truth. Kitty was dead. For the first time, she let herself cry for her friend, the tears stinging her cheeks.
The winter sky was so clouded with snow that Molly could hardly see the countryside through which they passed. Kitty had traveled this road each day on her way to work as a maid in Philadelphia’s wealthy homes. Molly herself had not ever been offered such an opportunity. Had been forced, instead, to the kind of chores that did not demand an audience—mucking the stables, pulling the weeds. The nuns had thought her too taciturn, too abrasive, to show to the society ladies.
“You hardly speak, but when you do, your tongue is like to strip the paint off a table,” Sister Abigail had said once, and Molly supposed it was true. She’d never much cared what anyone had thought about her, other than Kitty. And she had especially little patience for those like the rich women who came to the orphanage looking for help. They had never suffered a day in their lives, yet they still complained as if the world were ending if they found a single spot of dust on their silver serving spoons.
The wind sent a shot of pain against the raw skin of her palm. Hissing, she lifted it, trying to see just how bad the wound really was.
A jagged gash a quarter of an inch deep bisected the skin.
But staring at it, it was not her own flesh she saw but Kitty’s.
And the line of blood where the tail had been.
The boy Kitty was seeing must have done it; he’d killed Kitty to hide the baby. But Molly could not understand why he had mutilated her body. The cold, impersonal nature of the cut was far worse than anything the river had done to the woman he’d claimed to love.
Pregnant. How could Kitty not have told her?
For the first time, Molly realized it was not one death she was mourning, but two.
She and Kitty had been like sisters, their bond stronger than blood. Molly had thought that there was nothing the two of them didn’t share. When Kitty had met Edgar, it had been Molly she confessed to, Molly to whom she’d turned for help.
“He says he loves me.” Kitty’s face had flushed when she’d said it, eyes shining like two new coins.
The orphanage lent out its girls to houses in a kind of work program so that they might learn skills that would serve them later in life. Women from the city sometimes came all the way to the orphanage to pick the girls for themselves, teaching them to do menial labor as a form of “charity.” Kitty was learning to be a maid. She’d been to several houses before, and her cheerful demeanor had given her a good reputation. It was at her newest house that Kitty had met Edgar, the family’s oldest son, studying to be a doctor. She’d fallen in love by the end of her first week.
Molly had tried to be gentle. “I just think it might be better to wait. Find yourself a life outside of here first. Meet him as equals.”
“We’ll never be equals.” Kitty had grown solemn. “But he can give me a good life. He wants to, Molly.”
And what could she have said? She knew Kitty too well to argue. It was always like this with her. Kitty’s passions changed as often as the wind. One day, she was saving every bit and bundle of flower and stick she could find, because she wanted to become a florist; the next, she could find no greater excitement than studying the lives of saints.
Surely, Edgar was nothing more than this, Molly had thought. A fancy. Something that would pass.
And so, when three nights ago, Kitty woke Molly, breathless, to say that Edgar was waiting in the woods, Molly had not stopped her, as she should have done. Better, she’d thought then, to let the affair run its course, burn itself out like a fever. Let Kitty find out for herself what it meant to forever chase after the wants and wishes of a man, as Ma had done.
“Come with me, Molly.” Kitty’s fingers had drummed nervously against her pillowcase. “Please.”
“No,” Molly had said. “You don’t need me for what the two of you are going to do.”
Had Kitty hesitated then? Molly thought back, but the memory was too painful.
Come with me, Molly. Please.
She should have gone. If only to make sure Kitty was safe.
The carriage’s erratic bucking jolted her out of her thoughts. Molly saw that they had left the dirt roads and finally entered the city.
Philadelphia greeted her with a cold slap.
Large, belching factories sent a thick, smoky fog into the air. Children with hungry faces stared up at her passage, a few throwing rocks for fun. A half-dressed girl with haunted eyes held out a filthy hand, pleading. The nuns had told them of orphans who ran away to these streets only to have their bodies dug from early graves and sold for a quarter. Molly reached for the hand. With a snarl, the girl lunged. Molly scuttled backward in alarm.
She was in the territory of the Corpse Queen now, and there was little place for morality.
Molly pulled her coat tighter.
Soon enough, she’d find herself at the home of whoever had sent for her. It was certainly not an aunt. Sentimental Ma would have thrilled to tell Molly of such a relation, and Da’s only sister had died when he was young. But such things were not uncommon. A middle-class family, needing cheap labor, would claim one of the orphans as their own. Create a blood tie where none existed. Molly bristled to think what kind of home Mother Superior had sold her into, perhaps for the price of an offering at the church.
At least it was a place to sleep for the night. Certainly, it could not be worse than the orphanage.
But as the carriage continued on, through and out of the slums, Molly began to grow alarmed.
Each house they passed was larger than the last, stone walls flanking imposing brick buildings. They were traveling into what was clearly the wealthiest part of town.
Her heart began to beat wildly. Surely, this could not be right. She hadn’t the training to work in a neighborhood like this.
The carriage stopped in front of an enormous house, its Gothic figure looming out of the shadows. From atop the gabled roof, two stone gargoyles peered at her with dead eyes.
When she didn’t move, the priest jumped wearily from inside. “Get out.”
“I’m sorry, but there’s been some kind of mistake—”
“The Lord doesn’t make mistakes.” Grabbing her hand, he nearly tugged her off the roof.
And before she could protest further, he was gone, the carriage’s wheels rattling over the cobblestone, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the snowy Philadelphia street.